Editorials
Ranking All of the Dark Castle Entertainment Horror Films!
Dark Castle Entertainment was one of the biggest providers of horror in the early 2000s. Originally conceived as a company that would only produce remakes of William Castle films (their first two films were House on Haunted Hill and Thir13en Ghosts), it went on to produce original material (beginning with 2002’s Ghost Ship). They have since moved on to non-horror films, but since Bloody Disgusting is a horror website we decided to rank all 13 of their horror films! None of Dark Castle’s films (save for one or two) could actually be considered “good,” so it’s a lot like picking the least rotten apple out of the batch, but at the very least their films provide some solid B-movie entertainment. Which one is your favorite?
13. The Apparition (2012)
Woof. The Apparition earns its 3% Rotten Tomatoes score. It consists primarily of watching Ashley Greene and Sebastian Stan walk around their house…doing nothing. At a scant 82 minutes, the film is still far too long (and boring). It feels like a short film that was stretched out to feature length. The mostly talented cast of Greene, Stan, Tom Felton and Julliana Guill are completely wasted. The Apparition is a very bad movie. Don’t watch it.
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12. The Factory (2013)
A serial killer is kidnapping women in Buffalo and the cop on his trail (John Cusack) is brought into the mix when his daughter (Mae Whitman) is among the kidnapped. The Factory actually has a pretty cool premise, but is marred by a laughable script, a Nicolas Cage-like performance from John Cusack and a twist you can see coming a mile away. The fact that it was filmed in 2008 but released in 2013 should tell you all you need to know about this turkey.
11. Whiteout (2009)
The problem with Whiteout, the Kate Beckinsale film adapted from the graphic novel of the same name, is that it’s boring. Beckinsale is charming as ever but even she can’t save this film from being a slog. Even though it is not a creature feature (it’s actually a slasher), comparisons to John Carpenter’s The Thing are inevitable. Whiteout pales in comparison to Carpenter’s masterpiece. It’s slow, dumb and poorly shot (once the snow comes in you can never tell who’s who). Skip it.
10. Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007)
Return to House on Haunted Hill was Dark Castle Entertainment’s attempt to launch a franchise. It’s an admirable failure, but the movie is pretty bad. The one thing it has going for it is its creative and gory kills. You’ve got face removals, dismemberments, head smashings and immolations. Too bad everything else about the film feels so cheap. Amanda Righetti (the Friday the 13th remake) fills in for Ali Larter as Ariel Wolfe (Larter’s character is murdered off-screen) and must return to Hill House to locate a demonic idol (a MacGuffin if there ever was one) that is revealed to have caused all of the evil occurrences in the house. Return to House on Haunted Hill has it all: bad acting, bad directing, bad script (the post-credits stinger rips off the ending of Jumanji…I wish I were kidding)and bad CGI. Just watch the first one.
9. The Reaping (2007)
Believe it or not, Stephen Hopkins’s (A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child) The Reaping isn’t terrible. It’s just painfully generic and, at the end of the day, extremely forgettable. Hilary Swank stars as a former Christian missionary who has devoted her life to disproving religious phenomena. When she travels to Louisiana after reports of Biblical plagues are made, she quickly learns that there is some truth to the town’s claims. Once again, an interesting premise is bungled by a predictable and cheesy script, though the plague set pieces are nifty. The twist ending and cliffhanger are ridiculous, but at least the movie is entertaining.
8. Ghost Ship (2002)
Ghost Ship will forever be known as the horror movie with a phenomenal opening sequence and a terrible everything else. A pre-The Good Wife Julianna Margulies leads an impressive cast (Gabriel Byrne, Isaiah Washington, Emily Browning, Desmond Harrington) in a film with impressive special effects but, as seems to be the case with many of Dark Castle’s films, a poor script. It’s hard to suspend disbelief when the characters in the film are as stupid as the characters in Ghost Ship, but if you’re looking for an entertaining B-movie, you can do far worse than Ghost Ship.
7. Thir13en Ghosts (2001)
A lot of people really hate this movie, and I can’t say I blame them. This movie was a big part of my pre-teen years though so I have an affinity for it. Dark Castle’s second film boasts an impressive set design (that glass house!), slick makeup effects (those 13 ghosts!), and some great kills (that lawyer split!), but it’s a little too goofy for its own good and sports the frenetic editing style that would later come to define the Saw franchise. Matthew Lillard and Tony Shalhoub are competing for who can chew the most scenery and Rah Digga’s nanny character seems to belong in a different movie altogether. That being said, Thir13en Ghosts is a ton of fun, and embraces the schlock horror that defined many of William Castle’s films. The DVD has a special feature that allows you to see the backstory of each ghost. It’s pretty cool!
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
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