House On Haunted Hill, The (UK)

I liked the movie, although I didn`t expect to. The film is really quite scary in parts and can get a little freaky.

The picture is dark and, overall pretty good. The creepy sound was also cool.

The special features are also very good, deleted scenes, trailers, commentary etc. All of which are of pretty high quality.

The movie itself, is not the best horror flick ever, but has enough to suggest that this is a solid DVD.

I didn`t really know much about The House On Haunted Hill when I watched it, other than it was a remake of Castle`s 1958 original. I had a feeling it was either going to be excellent or complete rubbish, and I was wrong on both counts.

The house is an ex mental aslyum, run by a sadistic scientist who perished along with all the inmates in a fire some years previously. A millionaire theme park owner rents it for his wife`s birthday party, and 5 guests are invited, each of which is promised a million dollars if they can survive a night in the house without getting murdered. That`s the basic plot, anyway; there are more twists and turns than a rally stage, and I don`t want to give too much away, because that would spoil the plot... such as it is.

Visually, the film is good. It`s mostly dark, as you would expect, and the quality of a DVD over VHS does get chance to shine. The anamorphic transfer is far from sharp, but I got the impression that was how it was meant to be to add a 50`s feel to the picture. A shame, really - films may have been fuzzy in the 50`s, but people`s vision wasn`t. The dark colours were nice and dark while holding the hue, which was nice to see, and there was plenty of red thrown around, obviously. Not much vibrancy to the colours, though, but again, this was probably deliberate. I especially like the gothic looking steel-grey Warner Brothers into!

Sonically, the film is pretty good. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is well used, with voices and moans coming out of the four corners of the room at appropriate moments. It should have helped the suspense, but it didn`t; maybe I`m desensitised to horror films, or maybe it was just that the visuals weren`t quite good enough to make the suspense believable. Again, nearly there, but not quite.

Some nice extra on this disk, which admittedly, I`ve only skimmed over. On top of the usual (nicely animated) menus and scene access, there`s a directors commentary, two documentaries, deleted scenes, some trailers, and a game, which I admit I haven`t played, but it`s different! Quite a reasonable set, and probably enough to make you buy the DVD over the (presumably cheaper) video if you had a choice.

I felt that overall, the film was a bit of a lost oppurtunity. There`s lots of gore, which is very well done from a shock-factor point of view. I just felt it couldn`t really make up it`s mind whether it was meant to be a 50`s B-movie skit, a tongue-in-cheek horror like Scream or Scary Movie, or a (semi-)serious horror film. There were plenty of oppurtunities for suspense, comedy, drama and shocks, but it never really managed to get there with anything it tried.
Certainly an enjoyable film, but not one I`d be bothered about seeing again.

Being a horror fan, I bought this disk for pennies, not knowing anything about the movie (or the original one from 1959).
Well, I must admit that I am not disappointed at all.
This turned out to be an eery, scary and very well done horror. The fact that I watched it in the middle of the night when all the lights were out, the volume turned up (and the neighbours probably having a fit) only helped to increase the horror.
The video transfer is very good. The visuals are very impressive and the dark scenes are rendered beautifully. There are no compression signs anywhere to be seen. I didn`t have a problem with the end sequence, not visually nor conceptually.
The DD 5.1 soundtrack is great. The surrounds and the sub are constantly used to give life to the house and yeah, it does sound as if the house is alive.
The menus are beautifully animated with sound.
The extras include a commentary by the director, an extensive behind the scenes look (split up into several featurettes), some explanations about the CG animation, 3 deleted scenes and some very nice DVD-ROM content.
Bottom line - horror fans, this is a modern horror for you. It basically has everything you want. Enjoy.