House On Haunted Hill (1999)

House On Haunted Hill...1999...93 minutes...R...starring Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Ali Larter, and Taye Diggs (appearance by Jeffrey Combs)...written by Dick Beebe...directed by William Malone

If you've seen my notes on the original "House On Haunted Hill", then you know the basic story consists of a birthday party thrown by a wealthy eccentric at a legendary haunted house. The guests are told that if they spend the night, they get a large amount of money for their troubles. $10,000.00 may have seemed like a large amount of money in 1959, but now a cool million for each guest is up for grabs. Of course, the house has turned into an asylum where the head doctor was nuttier than his patients, if just as homicidal.

Geoffrey Rush plays Steven Price, the wealthy amusement park owner who has gone along with his wife's crazy idea for a party. (yes, this is the Frederick Loren character redone and named in homage.) Even though this movie may not be up to the caliber of other films he has both starred and won awards in, the man still plays the role with gusto. I'm not sure he's our age's equivalent to Vincent Price, but there are few other actors I can think of who would be as appropriate. Famke Janssen steps into the role of plotting wife, now Evelyn instead of Annabelle. The guests are played by recognizable talent, and all of them deliver as well as the movie itself will let them.

Sad to say, the movie really doesn't do much to improve upon the original. Without spoiling the ending of the 1959 movie, the script was trying to stay true to the idea of the original film...but they had to make it predictably different as well. The two threads make the movie a bit convoluted, and inserting some dramatic effects-scenes doesn't help the sense that the story has become a jumbled mess. The very end of the movie didn't make me thrilled either. This said, there's nothing too terribly wrong with the movie...there's just not much too terribly right either.

I'll give it a rating of 2.5 strange display cases out of 5.