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Sure, it may not have you sitting on the edge of your seat from start to finish, but there are some damned effective and chilling scenes to be found here. House on Haunted Hill is not one of those films. Sure, there are the obvious exceptions to this statement, but the vast majority of them simply don't do much for me in that regard thanks to the stricter censors of the era and the way that it didn't take nearly as much to get a reaction out of those audiences. However, even when it comes to most of the classic titles, I've come to accept the fact that most of them simply aren't very scary or horrifying.
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#House on haunted hill remake movie
I enjoy older films almost as much as I enjoy modern films due to the way that most of the better titles favored substance over style (necessary due to budget and effects limitations of the time) as well as the fact that you actually had to have talent to star in a movie back then instead of simply having a pretty face or be willing to flash a little skin. This is one of the things that I believe probably wouldn't go over very well in today's market (as evidenced by the stark contrast of how this angle was handled in the remake), but here, it's done perfectly and is much more effective thanks to the ambiguity involved. However, there are also scenes which can not be explained away quite so simply, a fact which leads to the audience having to decide for themselves whether or not there's actually something to this whole haunted house bit. Therefore, some of the scares are easily explained away and actually revealed to the audience - yes, this trick was pulled by so-and-so in an attempt to frighten so-and-so for whatever reason. You see, we soon learn that some of the people in the house have ulterior motives for being there that have nothing to do with ghosts or money, and this leads to some of the people playing tricks on one another in an attempt to scare them out of their wits. One thing that I particularly enjoyed about this original version was the way that they never came right out and said whether or not the house was actually haunted. Yes, the remake changed a lot of things in regards to the storyline, and although I can sort of see why (today's audiences probably wouldn't go for the twists and scares found in the original version), it's mind-boggling to me as to why they didn't simply slap a new title on the remake and let it stand on its own. You know about the house being haunted and you know about the cash reward for staying there, and you also.
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If you've seen the remake, you already know some of the details. Trent (Alan Marshal), and Ruth (Julie Mitchum) - take him up on the offer with dollar signs in their eyes, but when strange things start happening, they start to reconsider their decisions. The guests - Nora (Carolyn Craig), Lance (Richard Long), Watson (Elisha Cook Jr.), Dr. Why were these strangers invited to come party with this eccentric millionaire and his trophy wife? That's a question that will be answered later in the film, but the more important question is, why did they accept the invitation if they don't even know the guy? Well, that's a simple one: Frederick claims that the house is haunted, and he's agreed to pay ten thousand dollars to anyone who will stay in there overnight with him and his wife. The storyline for this one revolves around the Loren couple - Frederick (Vincent Price) and Annabelle (Carol Ohmart) - and the haunted house in which they're hosting a party for five strangers.
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There's a reason that one of these scenes ranked #37 on Bravo's "100 Scariest Movie Moments" presentation, but that's certainly not to say that that was the only bright spot of the film. House on Haunted Hill is one such film, and watching it again today for the first time in years has brought back a flood of memories of being a young kid, catching this on some late night movie marathon, and being immensely creeped out by some of the scenes found within. There are some movies that simply shouldn't be remade, especially if the filmmakers of said remake decide to toss out all of the elements that made the original so memorable in the first place.