Editorials
25 Years Later: Why Geoffrey Rush’s Performance in ‘House on Haunted Hill’ Is an All-Timer
Twenty five years ago, on October 29, 1999, Dark Castle Entertainment launched with a remake of William Castle’s The House on Haunted Hill. Penned by Dick Beebe from Robb White’s original 1959 story and directed by William Malone, the 1999 remake relocated to a foreboding psychiatric hospital for its haunted setting. This time the ghosts were very real and very vengeful. At the center of it all, though, was a very inspired performance by Geoffrey Rush. One that deserves a space in horror’s hall of fame.
Rush played amusement park mogul Steven Price, the rich host to his wife’s birthday party that offers up $1,000,000 to anyone who can endure a night-long stay in the haunted hospital. This was the precise same role Vincent Price played in the 1959 original film, and the character was renamed in reference. The irony, though, is that Steven Price wasn’t initially meant to look like Vincent Price; the script originally just described him as an average businessman. Rush wasn’t into the bland description and approached Malone with a concept more befitting of an eccentric amusement park mogul; what if Steven Price looked like director John Waters?
Malone agreed Rush could try out the look, but when Rush transformed himself to look like Waters, he instead wound up looking somewhere closer to Vincent Price. It stuck. But the look is only a small half of Rush’s masterful approach to the character. The other, bigger half is his scene-stealing portrayal.
In his first scene, Steven Price is introduced as a fast-paced businessman with a sardonic wit. In the middle of a press interview for the opening of his latest gimmick-filled theme park ride, he takes a phone call. After hanging up, the journalist asks if it was business or pleasure. He answers with a wry smirk, “Neither; my wife.” He answers more questions about the new ride before ushering the journalist and her cameraman into an elevator that appears to head straight up to the adjacent roller coaster. With swagger, he brushes off their safety concerns but then clutches to the elevator wall screaming when it appears to break down and drop suddenly. Just when the elevator is about to crash into the ground and death seems imminent, the gimmick reveals itself. It was part of the show, and Price is the showman. One that derives clear pleasure from scaring the piss out of people.
That showman persona is important to the plot because he’s the essential catalyst for getting the group of people to the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute in the first place. That persona is also interesting on a character level, too. Price is a character used to exerting control, to being the one pulling all of the strings behind the scenes. When things start to go awry, he’s perplexed. The tables are turned and he’s the one experiencing fear for once. Watching Geoffrey Rush take Price from a controlled puppeteer to scared puppet is fascinating.
While the restless spirits are waging war on the human guests, there’s a smaller scaled but equally vicious war taking place between Steven and his wife Evelyn (Famke Janssen). It’s clear from the outset that the husband and wife duo have nothing but icy venom between them, and it escalates from traded barbs to flat out murder plots as the narrative progresses. The chemistry between Rush and Janssen as their characters opt for murder over a divorce is the most interesting dynamic in the entire movie.
Throughout, Rush toggles seamlessly from ruthless businessman to the sympathetic victim of an evil spouse that never loved him. By the third act, though, he’s firmly taken a turn toward the villainous again, with Evelyn pushing him to the brink of homicidal madness. Even then, there are glimmers of humanity. Steven Price is a perpetually fluid character that keeps you guessing. Evelyn is stone-cold from beginning to end, but Steven is so complex that your allegiance is consistently shifting. No other character in the film has as large or as complicated an emotional journey as Steven. Much of that is owed to Rush’s masterful performance.
Twenty five years later, House on Haunted Hill holds up well – even when that goofy CGI ghost cloud undermines it – thanks to elaborate set pieces, great scare moments, and gruesome deaths. Yet the biggest reason this remake endures the test of time is the captivating and lively portrayal of Steven Price by the always great Geoffrey Rush.
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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