House on Haunted Hill

House on Haunted Hill is the worst film of the year. As this wretched remake droned on, I felt pangs of sympathy for the director, William Malone, who must have been under the weather during production. Given the final result, anesthesia is what he should have been under.

The first House on Haunted Hill came out in 1959. Vincent Price played the evil madman who offered to pay five souls $10,000 each if they could survive the night in a haunted house. The new version features Geoffrey Rush (Shine) as Steven Price, an amusement park entrepreneur who’s a cross between Art Fern and Pee Wee Herman. He offers five people $1 million each to survive the night in a haunted house that looks like a leftover backdrop from Batman & Robin.

Let’s see, in 1959, a Milky Way candy bar cost a nickle. Today, the same treat goes for about half a buck. With that in mind, the $10,000 stipend should be around $100,000, not $1 million. Not to mention that the movie theater gives each paying customer a scratch-off card with a chance to win $100,000. Then along comes the movie, making us all two-time losers. That hurts.

The centerpiece of the movie is the haunted house. Back in 1931, it was known as the Vanacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane, run by the evil Dr. Vanacutt. Price holds a birthday party at the mansion for his wife (Famke Janssen) and makes the financial offer to the five guests. Included among them are Taye Diggs, Bridgette Wilson, Peter Gallagher, and Chris Kattan of "Saturday Night Live." Listening to all of them spew out profanities leads to the conclusion that culture has slipped a long way in the last 40 years.

Besides the campy performances, the special effects are incredibly cheesy. Dr. Vannacutt’s evil spirit resembles the exhaust smoke coming from a dump truck backfire. You’ll get more thrills and chills looking for a parking space at the theater than sitting through this clunker. The original movie was hardly memorable, but it ranks as a masterpiece when compared to the remake.