QUICK TAKE: Horror: Hoping to receive one million dollars each if they manage to succeed, several strangers attempt to spend the night with a quarreling husband and wife in a long-closed, but reportedly haunted psychiatric institute. 'House on Haunted Hill' is rated R (under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian).(1999) (Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen) (R) With: Geoffrey Rush (Stephen Price), Famke Janssen (Evelyn), Taye Diggs (Eddie), Ali Larter (Sara), Bridgette Wilson (Melissa Marr), Peter Gallagher (Blackburn), Chris Kattan (Pritchett) and Peter Graves (himself). Zemeckis, Joel Silver and Gilbert Adler released by Warner Brothers. But the real ordeal is reserved for the audience.Дirected by William Malone written by Dick Beebe, based on a story by Robb White director of photography, Rick Bota edited by Anthony Adler music by Don Davis production designer, David F. The Prices and their guests are in for a long night. It seems that the premises are not at rest. Vanacutt was performing surgery without benefit of anesthesia, the inmates got loose, fire raged out of control and death ran rampant.Д¬ut to the present, when the wealthy, nasty, mischievous theme-park magnate Steven Price, played behind a mustache by Rush in a role tailor-made for James Woods at his malevolent best, arranges to hold the birthday partyДЇor his not-very-beloved wife (Famke Janssen) in the old place.Д«ut the guests, invited to compete for a total of $5 million if they survive till daybreak, turn out to be a surprise, all somehow related to the old institute or to each other.

Of the Third Reich,' were home to the Vanacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane.Д«ut one night, when the evil Dr. The new version harks back to 1931, when the towering cliffside, seaside premises, helpfully described in the film's publicity as having been designed 'in the monolithic style of Albert Speer, the infamous architect Wastes the talents of actors like Geoffrey Rush and Peter Gallagher in hollow roles and relies heavily on its sets and special effects to do the work that should have been accomplished by its director and writer.

And it is still junk.ДЄll the special effects in the world cannot compensate for an inability to generate tension, establish and sustain pace or create any character whose survival is worth rooting for.Дirected by William Malone from a screenplay by Dick Beebe and bearing such well-established names as Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver among its producers, 'House on Haunted Hill' is dead on arrival. 'House on Haunted Hill' was pronounced junk in these pages in 1959. York on March 12, 1959, the reward for foolhardy courage in 1999 should come to only $57,113.47, the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis calculated Friday.Д«ut some things have not become devalued over the years - words like junk, for example.

Even allowing for inflation of roughly 570 percent in the 40 years since the original opened in New

In the new version, the ante has been raised to $1 million apiece, which is why Greenspan may choose to become involved. 'House on Haunted Hill' is a sorry reincarnation of the 1950s William Castle horror film in which an eccentric millionaire, played by Vincent Price, offered five strangers $10,000 each to stay the night in a spooky Sharpened pencil in hand, make his way to the nearest theater showing 'House on Haunted Hill' and strike fearlessly until the film's feeble pulse beats no more.

The New York Times on the Web: Current FilmДЇ the ever vigilant Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, is truly determined to snuff out inflation aborning, then he can do no better than to take.

'House on Haunted Hill': Some Parties Are Worse Than Others

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