House on Haunted Hill (1999) on Netflix
R19991h 33mHorrorMysteryThriller
An amusement park mogul, Stephen Price, throws a birthday party for his wife Evelyn in a former psychiatric hospital. Five strangers, each promised a million dollars to stay until morning.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb5.6/1064,497 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes31%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1931 the patients of the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute revolt against its staff, and a fire kills the head doctor, Richard B. Vannacutt, the inmates and all but five of the staff. Decades later the empty building is where Stephen Price, an amusement park mogul, stages a birthday party for his wife Evelyn. Five guests come: Eddie Baker, Melissa Marr, Donald Blackburn, Sara Wolfe and Pritchett, who owns the building. Price offers a million dollars to each who stays until morning.
Cast
- Dick Beebeas Male Nurse
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about House on Haunted Hill (1999)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The unethical psychiatry methods and experimental procedures featured in the film were not invented for the screen: they were loosely based on medical experiments conducted by the Nazis.
- The "Terror Incognita" roller coaster at Price's amusement park in the opening is really the Incredible Hulk Coaster at Universal's Islands of Adventure in Orlando; before securing it, the production had considered the Rampage coaster at VisionLand in Birmingham, Alabama.
- One monster in Price's underwater hallucination was a Dick Smith creation, an eyeless, noseless head with an enlarged mouth, made for Ghost Story in 1981 but never used; struck by it, William Malone was granted permission by Smith to use it here.
- The climactic morphing mass of ghosts, supervised by Robert Skotak, was mostly not computer-generated: footage and photographs shot by the crew were grafted together, human models were photographed along with twisted layers of fabric, wire and other materials, and Skotak estimated at least "a hundred different elements" went into the final design.
- Singer Marilyn Manson was at one point considered for the role of Dr. Vannacutt, the deranged head doctor of the hospital, before Jeffrey Combs was cast in the part.
- Robert Zemeckis proposed the remake to William Castle's daughter Terry, who had already considered shopping a remake herself, but her father had sold the rights to the film years earlier in order to pay for her college tuition.
- Sound editor Dane Davis, who had recently finished work on The Matrix, said House on Haunted Hill was among the first feature films to use a completely virtual mix, with brand-new software letting him keep every element in the computer and alter it right up until the film was locked into a final print.
- Dark Castle had intended to release each of its films with a gimmick like the ones William Castle used, and considered putting out Thirteen Ghosts in 3-D with special glasses, but those plans were scrapped and House on Haunted Hill remains the only one released with a special marketing gimmick.
