Monday, October 14, 2013

31 Days of Horror 4: Originals vs. Remakes DAY 14



House on Haunted Hill (1959) vs. House on Haunted Hill (1999)
Original
Vincent Price has one of his best roles as millionaire Frederick Loren, who invites five guests out to a genuine haunted house, offering them each $10,000 if they spend the night. Mr. Loren's wife (Carol Ohmart) comes along and wants to kill Frederick during the course of the evening. Severed heads, a skeleton, an acid vat, ghostly screams and a noose that creeps around on its own and strangles unsuspecting victims are just some of the treats in a film that has been spooking delighted audiences on late-night TV for decades.
By far one of the best haunted house movies ever made. Yeah, it might be a little corny and silly, but it's still great.
Remake
The 1999 film doesn’t even seem to try to be as entertaining as the original.
Where do I even begin with the problems here? There is no story to get invested in, there are no characters and no scares.
Once again, we have a remake that thinks that using extensive amounts of gore is the way to scare its audience.
The other disappointment here is that the cast was decent. You had Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen and Peter Gallagher. I like all those actors and they just didn’t have the script to really turn out anything decent.
So, which is better?
Not even a contest, the original wins.

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