House on Haunted Hill
A millionaire offers a group of diverse people $1,000,000 to spend the night in a haunted house with a horrifying past.
- Director: William Malone
- Genre:Horror / Thriller
- Runtime:93 minutes
Cast
Geoffrey Rush : Stephen H. Price
Famke Janssen : Evelyn Stockard-Price
Taye Diggs : Eddie Baker
Peter Gallagher: Donald W. Blackburn, M.D.
Chris Kattan : Watson Pritchett
Official Site:-
The film is set in an abandoned asylum, the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane, where numerous murders were committed in the past. The head of the facility, Dr. Richard B. Vannacutt, performed grotesque experiments and medical procedures on the patients, killing many in the process. The hospital was closed when some of the so-called “patients” escaped, killing almost the entire staff and burning the hospital. Vannacutt had rigged the building with numerous iron gates, activated by cranks and levers, to serve as barriers to keep patients from leaving the building, should they escape; some of these were controlled by huge, clock-like timers that wouldn’t open for twelve hours. During the fire, he released these gates, keeping the inmates, employees and the fire itself contained. After several unexplained deaths during reconstruction of the facility, it was dubbed “The House on Haunted Hill”.
The story revolves around the disintegrating marriage of Evelyn, a spoiled trophy wife, and Stephen Price, an amusement park mogul with a wicked sense of humor, each of whom would gladly kill the other. Evelyn fancies spectacular parties, so Stephen leases the house from the owner, Watson Pritchett, for Evelyn’s Halloween birthday bash. Evelyn gives Stephen a guest list two pages long; he shreds it to spite her and then creates one of his own. The five people who show up for the party — Jennifer Jenzen (aka Sara Wolfe), Eddie Baker, Melissa Margaret Marr, Dr. Donald Blackburn and Pritchett himself — aren’t the ones he invited. Neither Evelyn nor Stephen know who they are. Despite this, Price continues the party’s theme, offering a million dollars to anyone who stays in the house and survives until morning, with any person not making it having his money added to the pot.
Shortly afterward, the security gates are tripped, locking everyone inside and forcing them to remain there until the gates unlock in the morning. Price scolds Carl Schecter–a company employee, who has developed a series of harmless traps to scare the guests—for not letting him know he planned to pull a stunt like that. Schecter said it wasn’t him who did it. Price is then convinced his wife did it somehow. Shortly after, Melissa is killed by one of the ghosts when she wanders off into the basement of the house. It’s revealed that the spirits themselves created the guest list specifically to include the descendants of five members of Vannacutt’s staff who didn’t die in the long-ago fire. Also, it is revealed that Evelyn and Blackburn are in working together to bring down Stephen. Evelyn then kills Blackburn and uses his body to frame Stephen. After a deranged Stephen attempts to kill Evelyn for orchestrating his murder plot, the two accidentally unleash the Darkness of the house when he throws her through an ancient and decayed door. The Darkness is a dark, shape-shifting creature composed of all the spirits in the house, led by Dr. Vannacutt; this force comes after and tries to kill all the remaining guests. It starts by assimilating Evelyn into itself, killing her while Price watches in horror. Read more
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