House on Haunted Hill

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Kate

Having finally seen the original I thought it might be fun to check out the remake that I grew up with again. This was the first big film for Dark Castle Entertainment, the company that made a name for itself remaking old William Castle horror films. I think they're still around but they were much bigger business a decade ago.

So I haven't seen the film for probably as long, but it all came flooding back with that neat theme tune by Don Davis. And that glorious late 90's cast. I remember this being pretty freaky as a kid but it doesn't hold up so well today. This kind of style of horror editing, the people with blurred faces and mixture of different speeds, stop frame and cg in an old school flickery film aesthetic was new to me at the time, but is really over done now. Hell, even the opening titles of America Horror Story use it.

And of course, all this CG trickery still being relatively new, all the horror films of the time would enlist its wonders to create the big bad monster, which you get a good look at through the ending. This one has an interesting sort of photoshop montage look come to life, but like we've all since learnt, showing your monster this much just makes it less scary.

I watch this now and see a lot of cliche, visual effects by someone who is learning it from 90's photoshop and Geoffrey Rush hamming it up. Still, it's a bit of nostalgia. One of the first DVD's I ever rented and listened to the commentary for. I still remember parts of that and what I learnt from it at that early age. So great.