We’re in the home stretch of our Camp marathon as we attend the prestigious birthday party of one Evelyn Stockard-Price (Kween Famke Janssen). Over the last several weeks you’ve heard us delve into Lindsay Lohan’s tumultuous experience filming I Know Who Killed Me, explore the gonzo twists in Netflix’s The Perfection and analyze the sociopolitical commentary in Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs. Now it’s time for some Dark Castle-y goodness with 1999’s House on Haunted Hill!

In House on Haunted Hill, a group of strangers are invited to a party and offered $1 million each if they survive the night. The only catch is that the party takes place at the titular “house” (aka the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane), which is actually haunted!

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Episode 44 – House on Haunted Hill (1999)

As the boys near the end of their eight-week camp marathon, they make return trip to the halls of Dark Castle Entertainment (see previous episode on Orphan) to check into the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane. That’s right, they’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of William Malone’s remake of House on Haunted Hill!

Join them as they discuss a remake that’s better than it has any right to be (even if it doesn’t seem to know what a “house” is), praise the glorious diva perfection that is Famke Janssen and marvel at Ali Larter’s ability to connect wires and turn on lights!

Oh! They need some help settling a debate: what would one call the fate that befalls Schechter (Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Max Perlich) in the film?

This Week’s Game: Recast House on Haunted Hill with 2019 actors.

Cross out House on Haunted Hill!

Coming up tomorrow: We’re celebrating Halloween with the ultimate rock opera (no, not that one). That’s right! It’s Brian De Palma‘s Phantom of the Paradise!

– Joe & Trace

P.S. Be sure to check out all of our online articles right here, including our FINAL Horror Queers article, which is on Basic Instinct 2 (2006) of all things.

P.P.S. As an added bonus, if you subscribe to our Patreon you can listen to our full-length bonus episodes on In The Tall Grass and Zombieland: Double Tap.

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Stamm is set to direct They for Dark Castle, written by Bryan Bertino (The Strangers)!

“I’m hopefully directing next a movie called They, written by Bryan Bertino and produced by Dark Castle. We’re casting right now,” Stamm told the site. “Bryan Bertino is the guy who wrote and directed The Strangers, and he has a talent for writing set pieces that are really fresh, interesting, and unpredictable. It’s so hard to do something original and fresh in the home invasion space, because there are only so many ways to scare someone.”

He divulged a bit more info, “It’s home invasion… all set on an oil derrick in the Texan desert. Basically, it’s about a group of oil workers hours away from civilization that are being confronted with an attack of a certain kind out in the desert. So it is kind of a home invasion movie, but it turns that concept on its head, and it’s not a close-quarters home invasion, but more of you see [on] the horizon what is coming. It’s very cool. It’s very smart. It kind of follows a little bit rhythmically the same pattern that The Strangers does.”

Bertino co-wrote with Mike Scannell. Unbroken Pictures will produce alongside Dark Castle.

Head over to Daily Dead to read the site’s full interview with Stamm.

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Let’s get the obligatory Paris Hilton section out of the way first. I am not particularly for or against her so I won’t bash her or her acting, but casting her in House of Wax was definitely a publicity stunt. Her reality series The Simple Life (as well as her actual social life) was at the peak of its popularity, so it apparently looked like the smartest thing to do. Whether you agree or not is irrelevant, but really, she’s not bad in the movie. She does exactly what she is asked to do for the role of Paige (and her character isn’t even that annoying!). The best way to describe her casting is trendy, and everyone immediately hopped on the hate bandwagon. It’s depressing that House of Wax will forever be remembered as “that one where Paris Hilton gets a pole thrown through her face,” because it’s much more than that.

I think part of the reason I love this movie so much (and yes, I do love it) is simply because of nostalgia. The trailer was one of those that I would watch repeatedly (I just love that montage choir music at the end) and I gathered a bunch of friends to go see it in a theater the Friday it opened after school let out (I was a sophomore in high school at the time). It’s a strong trailer, to be sure. and it almost made my list of favorite horror movie trailers:

Looking back on some of the 2005 reviews for the film, the consensus seemed to be that it was too long, the first 40 or so minutes were too slow, the characters were dumb, the acting was poor, and the film was too vile/sadistic/violent. Most of the horror films coming out at the time were far more violent than House of Wax (Hostel would be released just eight months later), so those criticisms don’t make a lot of sense. I could just be desensitized, though. What say you on this subject?

From an effects and gore standpoint, House of Wax doesn’t disappoint. There aren’t many kills in the film, but each one of them stand out. While Hilton’s death gets the most discussion when the film is brought up, it’s the below scene that is one of the best set pieces in House of Wax (though not the best, which I’ll get to in a second):

It’s apparent that the film has a good sense of humor about itself, which is something that many critics at the time didn’t detect. This is why the characters making dumb decisions (one review even pointed out that they split up a record four times during the film) isn’t particularly bothersome. The film comes across like an extended (and violent) episode of Scooby-Doo, and viewing the film as such makes it much more entertaining to watch. Whether or not that was intentional, we’ll never know (director Jaume Collet-Serra also directed the 2009 film Orphan, so make of that what you will). The “bad acting” ties into that too, though I think that Elisha Cuthbert and Chad Michael Murray do a perfectly fine job playing estranged siblings.

House of Wax is long for a horror film. At 113 minutes, it wears out it’s welcome a little bit. The criticism that the first 40 minutes are slow is valid, and it could have done with about 10-15 minutes cut from the first act. The intention was probably to allow the audience to spend more time with the characters, but other than Cuthbert’s and Murray’s characters (with the possible exception of Jared Padalecki), they’re all pretty one-dimensional. Again, if you go into it with the Scooby-Doo mindset, that’s not a bad thing! But at nearly 2 hours, the film could have used a better editor.

My final point (and one that most critics agree on) is that the climax of the film is a beast. Some of the CGI is spotty (the shot of the exterior of the house warping has always looked laughably bad to me), but it’s a showstopper of a set piece if I ever saw one. I would argue that it’s the main reason to see the film, but as I’ve stated already, I think the whole thing is a blast.

What are your thoughts on House of Wax? Do you agree with me that it’s a fun, goofy Scooby-Doo-style romp? Or do you think it’s lazy filmmaking at its worst? Let me know in the comments below!

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