Review of House on Haunted Hill (1999) by Justin N — 09 Feb 2018

SPOILERS!!!!

Pritchard was hilarious because he was such weak willed character, yet oddly the strongest.

He never wanted to be there but he never gave up trying to save everyone despite his constant ramblings (some drunken) of "we are all going to die any way" "the house will kill us all" "WHY IS NO ONE LISTENING TO ME?!!!" "Yeah sure I'll lead you to the dark basement to try and find a way out - but it's pointless because the house will kill us you know etc" lol.

I found him the most interesting character of all ??????

It's ironic that he was used by the Price couple to secure a place for this party (of certain damnation for distant relations) and yet he managed to save a life even in death.

Adding the asylum onto the original movies plot was genius for adding atmosphere, but it wasn't utilised as much as it could have been.

Dr Vannicut being resurrected in his "stop start" ghost form was unsettling as hell and the film needed more of that.

When TV gal Miss Marr awakens the house - the effect of seeing a surgery through her camera and it not being there when she lowered her camera was great. Then they slowly turn and look at her through the camera - creepy goldmine!

Then they get HER on the surgery table - but the horror of her death falls flat!

She dies offscreen and we of course only have broken camera footage that a genius in the group somehow recovers so we are treated to an arm flopping on a surgery table for a minute or so with a scream that's cut short - NOT scary.

Then we see Miss Marr disassembled as a display body in case casually bumped into by Price in a dramatic chase scene - proof that the arm flopping was pathetic at scare factor and the character meant nothing towards the film.

All in all too much time was wasted on the Price's lives and character padding (and then Blackburn dragged it out) so the movie didn't really have time for more ghosts and scares, although it did have it's moments.

This is just my opinion, doesn't mean I'm right.

And Marilyn Manson does a good cover of "Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics??