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Several people have asked me why Tim Burton’s long-awaited next film Sleepy Hollow didn’t capitalize on its macabre theme by hitting theaters at Halloween. That question, unlike, say, “Why doesn’t Tim Burton do a movie featuring nude scenes of his buxom girlfriend Lisa Marie?” is easy to answer: because the studio didn’t want it mixed up with typical seasonal schlock Bats and this gory remake of the neat 1958 William Castle/Vincent Price thriller, House on Haunted Hill.
Geoffrey Rush -- speaking of out-of-place dramatic talents -- plays Steven Price, a rich, eccentric thrill-ride designer who may be named after Vincent but sounds more like James Woods. He invites five guests to spend a night in a humongous, supposedly haunted art deco structure sticking out of the Hollywood hills like an upended Buckminster Fuller streamlined locomotive. Wouldn’t you know it, the place has a gruesome history; we learn in the prologue it was formerly an asylum run by a demented vivisectionist until the inmates overran the place and started a fire that killed everybody except five staffers -- heh heh. Each guest will earn $1 million simply for surviving until morning.
Of course, Price has set up all kinds of high-tech thrills and kindly provided guns, in hope that a couple of them in particular will get offed: his indiscriminately promiscuous wife (Famke Jannsen) and her current paramour (Peter Gallagher). But from the outset -- beginning with the mailing of the invitations -- it’s apparent the house has its own bloody agenda.
House is directed, coincidentally, by a guy who did episodes of the “Freddy’s Nightmares” TV series, as well as “Tales From the Crypt.” So maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that we’re treated to every single basement cliche imaginable, albeit with the latest runaway digital FX twist -- kind of Rob Zombie Does Disneyworld. There’s little logic to the story or the characters’ behavior, heads roll like bowling balls, monotonous inarticulate profanity abounds, and not a shred of the original’s cleverness, which even at the end left you wondering what really happened, has survived. Chris Kattan has a couple diverting moments as the fatalistic caretaker -- “Oh. That’s okay. The House got ‘em.” -- but not enough to make this two-bit rollercoaster ride worth standing in line for. Forgive me for saying this once again, but as with last summer’s similar remake of The Haunting, you’d be a lot better off to rent the original. D
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