Дом с привидениями (1999)

1999 American supernatural horror film
the 1999 remake

House on Haunted Hill is a 1999 American supernatural horror film directed by William Malone and starring Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs, Ali Larter, Bridgette Wilson, Peter Gallagher, and Chris Kattan. The plot follows a group of strangers who are invited to a party at an abandoned insane asylum, where they are offered $1 million each by an amusement park mogul if they are able to survive the night. Produced by Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver, it is a remake of the 1959 film of the same title directed by William Castle, and features special effects by famed make up artists Gregory Nicotero and Dick Smith. House on Haunted Hill marked the producing debut of Dark Castle Entertainment, a production company that went on to produce numerous other horror films, including additional remakes. House on Haunted Hill premiered on Halloween weekend in 1999. In the tradition of William Castle's theater gimmicks, Warner Bros. Pictures supplied promotional scratchcards to cinemas showing the film, offering ticket buyers a chance to win a money prize, similar to the movie's characters. The film received negative reviews from critics, but was a commercial success, opening number one at the box office, and grossed $43 million worldwide. In 2007, the film was followed by a direct to DVD sequel, Return to House on Haunted Hill, which was released in both rated and unrated editions.

In 1931, the patients at the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane revolt with a prison riot against the staff, headed by the sadistic Dr. Richard B. Vannacutt. The patients start a fire which engulfs the building, killing all of the inmates and all but five of Vannacutt’s staff. In 1999, Evelyn Stockard Price is in a disintegrating marriage with Steven Price, an amusement park mogul who loves playing tricks. At Evelyn's insistence, Price stages her birthday party at the long abandoned hospital. The building's owner, Watson Pritchett, is convinced it is evil, having lived there as a child when it was converted to a private residence. Five guests arrive for the party: film producer Jennifer Jenzen, baseball player Eddie Baker, former television personality Melissa Marr, physician Donald Blackburn, and Pritchett himself. The guests are not the ones Price invited and neither of the Prices know who they are. Despite this, Price continues the party's advertised theme, offering $1 million to each guest who remains in the house until morning; those who flee forfeit their $1 million to the others. The building's security system is mysteriously tripped, locking everyone inside – a stunt which Price blames on Evelyn. Evelyn and Steven are at one another’s throats, each trying to kill the other. Jennifer, Eddie and Pritchett search the basement for the security system's control panel. While exploring the labyrinthine basement, Jennifer confesses to Eddie that her real name is Sara Wolfe, the recently fired assistant to the real Jennifer. She impersonated Jennifer, hoping to win the prize money. Shortly after, Sara is nearly drowned in a tank of blood by a ghost impersonating Eddie, but the real Eddie arrives in time to save her. Melissa subsequently disappears, leaving behind a massive trail of blood and a camera that shows a little footage of what happened to her. Price visits his assistant Schechter, who is supposed to be managing the party stunts, but finds him horribly mutilated. On the surveillance monitor he sees the ghost of Dr. Vannacutt walking around with a bloody saw. Evelyn seemingly dies in front of the others, strapped to an electroshock therapy table. Price pulls a gun on the guests, demanding to know who killed his wife. Eddie knocks him out and they lock Price in the "Saturation Chamber", an archaic zoetrope device that Vannacutt used to treat schizophrenics. Blackburn volunteers to guard Price. When the others leave, he turns the chamber on, leaving Price to be tortured by the moving images and ghostly hallucinations, resulting in a seizure. In Vannacutt's office, Sara and Eddie find a portrait of the hospital's head staff and realize that the party guests are descendants of the five survivors of the 1931 fire. Pritchett deduces that the spirits themselves hacked the guest list on Price's computer. The only exception is Blackburn, whose name does not appear among the staff. Blackburn is revealed as Evelyn's lover. They have faked Evelyn's death, plotting to frame Price for the murders, hoping one of the guests will kill him in self defense. Evelyn heartlessly kills Blackburn, adding another victim, then releases a delirious Price from the chamber. Sara finds Price, covered in blood and with Blackburn's severed head nearby, and shoots him. Eddie and Pritchett arrive and bring Sara upstairs, after which Evelyn approaches Price to gloat. Price, protected by a bulletproof vest and posing as dead, attacks Evelyn. As they scuffle, Evelyn is thrown through a decaying door, revealing the evil entity of the house – The Darkness. The shape shifting creature, composed of the spirits in the house, consumes Evelyn, killing her and adding her spirit to its mass. Price then discovers Melissa's dismembered body. The Darkness turns to Price and tries to add him to its mass. Shortly after, Pritchett is also killed by The Darkness, allowing Price to flee. Price tells Sara and Eddie that the only escape is through the attic. The Darkness seeps through the house, following them. Price opens a window in the attic, then sacrifices himself to give the others time to escape. Sara gets out, but The Darkness closes an iron gate, trapping Eddie. As The Darkness prepares to assimilate Eddie, he reveals that he is adopted and not a true descendant of the original staff. Pritchett's ghost appears and opens the iron gate. The Darkness is distracted by Pritchett long enough for Eddie to escape. Pritchett's ghost and The Darkness fade away as Sara and Eddie watch the sun rise. They find an envelope on a ledge, containing all five checks, made out to cash. They are relieved to have escaped and won the money but are stuck on the roof of the house, unsure of how to get down. In a black and white post credits scene, the spirits of the 1931 patients are seen torturing the Prices, presumably doomed to eternal damnation in the afterlife.

House on Haunted Hill was the first film produced by American production company Dark Castle Entertainment. Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis had discussed remaking William Castle's 1959 film as early as 1997. Castle's daughter Terry Castle served as co producer on the remake. Director William Malone was a fan of the original film, which he had seen in his childhood, which served as the impetus for his directing. Malone and producer Dick Beebe worked on the film's screenplay for a year and a half. According to Malone, he wrote approximately twenty percent of the screenplay, though he did not take a writing credit on it. Co producer Gilbert Adler noted that he felt the film was "totally different" from the original, but retained the spirit of the original, in terms of "how we're telling the story, and the basic tenets of the story itself. We contemporize it as much as possible." The unethical psychiatry methods and experimental procedures featured in the film were loosely based on medical experiments conducted by the Nazis.

Geoffrey Rush signed on to appear as Steven Price, the theme park mogul in the film. Taye Diggs was subsequently cast as Eddie, the ex professional baseball player attending the party, and agreed to appear in the film after Rush signed onto the project. Ali Larter, who had previously appeared in Varsity Blues (1999), was cast as Sara Wolfe, a woman who poses as her ex boss, film executive Jennifer Jensen; the film marked Larter's third screen appearance. Famke Janssen was cast as Price's aloof wife, while Saturday Night Live star Chris Kattan was cast as Watson Pritchett, the caretaker of the building. Terry Castle stated that Kattan was cast in the part for the sake of comic relief, and that the filmmakers allowed Kattan to "just [be] who he is."

The film was shot in late 1998 and early 1999 in Los Angeles, California, with exteriors of the house's driveway being shot in Griffith Park near the Griffith Park Observatory. Adler commented on the unorthodox nature of the house: "Instead of being a typical sort of haunted house, this [one] is much more modern, with a touch of Deco. It's not what you'd expect to see." Larter stated in an on set interview: "The set is dark and dirty, and everyone's been sick, and [Taye Diggs] and Chris [Kattan] keep me laughing. We really have had a good time." The "Terror Incognita" roller coaster at Price's amusement park featured in the beginning of the film is actually The Incredible Hulk Coaster at Universal Islands of Adventure theme park at Universal Orlando Resort in Florida.

In keeping with the spirit of William Castle's tradition of releasing each of his films with a marketing gimmick, Warner Bros. and Dark Castle supplied movie theatres with scratch off tickets that would be given to moviegoers. The scratch off ticket would give each patron a chance to win money, like the characters in the film. The cash prizes totaled $1 million, including rentals from Blockbuster. Dark Castle had originally intended to release each of their films with a gimmick much like Castle had done. They had considered releasing the remake Thirteen Ghosts in 3 D with special glasses similar to the ones used by the characters in the film. These plans were scrapped and House on Haunted Hill remains the only film released with a special marketing gimmick.

House on Haunted Hill premiered in Los Angeles on October 27, 1999, at the Mann Village Theater. Janssen, Kattan, Larter and Wilson were in attendance with director Malone, as well as producers Silver and Adler. It was released theatrically in the United States two days later, on October 29, opening at number one at the U. S. box office and earning over $15 million in sales its opening weekend.

House on Haunted Hill received generally negative reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a 31% rating, based on 62 reviews, with an average rating of 4.7/10. The site's consensus reads, "Unsophisticated and unoriginal film fails to produce scares." Metacritic reports a score of 28 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said, "House on Haunted Hill is the kind of horror movie that's not a bit scary and quite a bit gross. Yet it's also mildly, even pleasantly, entertaining, at least by the diminished standard set by this summer's The Haunting [it] sets up hostile relationships between the characters, which allows the audience to wonder who is doing what to whom. Finding out is not so interesting, but getting there isn't so bad." Maitland McDonough of Film Journal gave the film a similar review, saying "The proceedings are all utterly conventional, but watching them unfold is mildly diverting if you're in the right frame of mind, as many moviegoers apparently were over the Halloween weekend," also favorably comparing the film to Jan de Bont's remake of The Haunting, which was released several months prior. Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B− rating, calling it "trash, but creepier than you expect." Joe Leydon of Variety gave the film a favorable review, noting its "cheap scares," but adding: "Given the irredeemable cheesiness of the original 1958 House on Haunted Hill, the makers of the remake had nowhere to go but up. So it's not exactly a stunning surprise to find the new horror opus is a slicker and scarier piece of work." In their review, The New York Times called the film "a sorry reincarnation" of the original, and said: "This film wastes the talents of actors like Geoffrey Rush and Peter Gallagher in hollow roles and relies heavily on its sets and special effects to do the work that should have been accomplished by its director and writer." The Austin Chronicles Marc Savlov echoed a similar sentiment, writing: "The nicest thing I can say about this remake of William Castle's 1958 shocker is that Geoffrey Rush, god bless him, sure can do a fine imitation of Vincent Price's original mustache, even better than John Waters' which is no mean feat."

It was nominated for Worst Remake at the 1999 Stinkers Bad Movie Awards.

Warner Home Video released House on Haunted Hill on VHS and a special edition DVD in April 2000. On October 9, 2018, Scream Factory released the film on Blu ray for the first time in North America as a collector's edition featuring new interviews with Malone and other crew, among various other features. This is the revered edition amongst fans, as previous releases had inferior transfers and colour palettes.

In 2007, the film was followed up with a direct to DVD sequel, Return to House on Haunted Hill, with Jeffrey Combs reprising his role as Vannacut and was released in both rated and unrated editions. The film had no involvement from William Malone and received poor reviews, mainly due to plot holes, continuity in the building design and various other features of the film, but it was praised for its state of the art Blu Ray feature in which the viewer can change the path of the story.