#GEOFFREY RUSH HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL MOVIE#

His Dark Castle partners included ultra-famous director Robert Zemeckis and writer Jared Bush, who is a big name at Disney these days, not to mention the co-director of Zootopia (2016).

#GEOFFREY RUSH HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL MOVIE#

The fact that, in 1999, Silver was acting producer for this, a movie so of this era that it kind of a joke, and The Matrix вЂ“ the movie that actually most defines the end of the 20th century вЂ“ is pretty incredible. Dark Castle is a subdivision of super-producer Joel SilverвЂ™s Silver Pictures, the company that brought you the Lethal Weapon franchise, the Die Hard series, and The Matrix trilogy. If it had been a completely unwatchable slog with zero entertainment or nostalgia value, House on Haunted Hill would still be an interesting footnote as the first production from Dark Castle Entertainment. Dick BeebeвЂ™s screenplay (which includes input from Mallone) is a decent reworking of Robb WhiteвЂ™s original script and has some really funny lines, but the convoluted, betrayal-laden plot is just a platform for hammy performances and even hammier visual flourishes. MalloneвЂ™s choices are so sincere that itвЂ™s practically impossible to be mad with him when does something silly, like undermining the pacing with a protracted, go-nowhere hallucination sequence, because these style-over-substance tangents and tableaus are exactly the appeal of the film. Its only visual consistency is its utter inconsistency. On top of this, every scene is cloaked in smoke, dust, and irrational light sources. Mallone preps us early with a credit sequence that blends stop motion animation with wildly unimpressive CG animation, then, just in case we didnвЂ™t get the hint, he scores the no-frills character intros with Marilyn MansonвЂ™s version of EurythmicsвЂ™ вЂњSweet Dreams (Are Made of This).вЂќ As a director, he implements ad nauseum a cornucopia of trendy cinematic techniques вЂ“ skippy frames, quick-cut inserts, speed-ramps, JacobвЂ™s Ladder-style shuddering effects, and an array of faux-multimedia tricks, achieved by switching from colour to black & white, blowing out the hue quality with computer-aided grading, or digitally faking film damage artifacts. Then IвЂ™d probably recall that it features one of the best casts mustered by any вЂ90s horror project. When I remember House on Haunted Hill, I remember a medium budget, 90-minute Nu Metal music video that just so happens to be based on a William Castle classic (for the record, this remake actually follows CastleвЂ™s movie pretty closely).

If youвЂ™re particularly young, or a pop culture outside, and youвЂ™ve found yourself wondering what it was like to consume media between the years 19, House on Haunted Hill is a master class of the eraвЂ™s best, worst, and most eye-rollingly excessive audio/visual tricks.

IвЂ™m not going to crawl out on a limb and claim that William MaloneвЂ™s remake of William CastleвЂ™s House on Haunted Hill (1959) was a secret masterpiece or even that it demands reconsideration, but it is the exemplar representation of a short and incredibly specific time frame in American filmmaking. And, while the best cult films gain followings for their unique qualities, there are plenty of initially derided movies that earn/deserve a second look, perhaps because of their archaic stylings. But, given a long enough passage of time, dated media can become cult media, because bygone gimmicks tend to fall under the banners of nostalgia and ironic enjoyment. ItвЂ™s filled to the brim with all of the stylistic gimmicks we learn to hate after theyвЂ™re shoved down our throats for months and years on end. Dated art & entertainment tends to exemplify everything bad about an era. When we talk about dated media, we tend to use the term in the negative sense.

Geoffrey rush house on haunted hill