He’s so enthusiastic, so maniacal, watching him prance around the relatively spectacular sets is honestly kind of wonderful. Still, Malone and Beebe do dial up a number of decent laughs, most of them courtesy of an energetic Rush who appears to be having an absolute blast doing his best Vincent Price meets William Castle impersonation.

More importantly, it hasn’t aged particularly well in the almost 20 years since its original release, the horror elements too forced, haphazard and inconsequential for any of what ends up transpiring to feel like it matters one little bit. Directed by William Malone and with a massive reworking of Robb White’s original story written by screenwriter Dick Beebe ( Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2), this well-cast affair still proves to be something of a moderate disappointment. Things get even stranger when the house closes itself off entirely to the outside world, trapping them all inside, the current owner Pritchett ( Chris Kattan) adamant that none of them are going to see the morning alive as the ghosts residing within this institution are going to pull out all the stops to make sure each of them meets a violently bloody demise.Ī remake of the 1959 William Castle classic starring the one and only Vincent Price, 1999’s House on Haunted Hill is a jokey, gore-drenched remake courtesy of veteran filmmakers and producers Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver and was the first effort from a re-launched Dark Castle Entertainment that was created to make relatively low budget genre fare just like this.

But when a collection of strangers arrive ( Taye Diggs, Peter Gallagher, Ali Larter and Bridgette Wilson) arrive instead of the original invitees, Stephen believes Evelyn is attempting to get the better of him, while she in turn believes he’s the one attempting to make her look like a fool. When his estranged wife Evelyn ( Famke Janssen) insists they have her annual birthday party at the recently restored, supposedly haunted former mental institution that was the scene of an unimaginable tragedy where all but six people met violent, horrifying deaths, amusement park impresario Stephen Price ( Geoffrey Rush), a noted practical joker who enjoys nothing more than a good scare, thinks this is a great idea and begins planning for the party to end all parties.

House on haunted hill 1999 cast