Rush, as usual, is endlessly entertaining as Stephen Price (OK, OK, we get it), a demented theme park owner and noted prankster whose latest stunt - holding a morbid birthday party for his wife, Evelyn (Famke Janssen), inside a reportedly haunted insane asylum - goes completely off the rails when it turns out the joint is just as haunted as its reputation suggests.

Whereas The Haunting offers up a possibly sleepwalking Liam Neeson(s), House On Haunted Hill allows Geoffrey Rush to answer the question: 'What would happen if James Woods dressed up as Vincent Price for Halloween?'Ī lot of the love I have for Malone's film revolves around the casting. Whereas the cast of The Haunting plays it deadly straight, the assembled performers in House On Haunted Hillseem to know exactly what kind of cornball schlock they're actually starring in (and have fun with it!). Whereas de Bont's film goes for a modernized update on the classic haunted house tale, Malone's twists the formula in a number of weird (and often very creepy) ways.

But as a card-carrying member of the House On Haunted Hill Defense League***, the confusion has always rankled me: beyond the surface similarities and the titles, the two films really couldn't be any more dissimilar. Beyond the obvious similarity in the films' titles, both movies share a number of basic story beats (a group of strangers are brought together in a haunted residence and find themselves ruthlessly attacked by evil CGI renderings until only two are left alive) so many, in fact, that audiences at the time had a bit of a hard time keeping track of which was which (the presence of Owen Wilson seemed to be most people's preferred method of distinction).Īll things considered, I suppose that's only fair. Malone's House On Haunted Hill arrived in October of 1999, just three months after Jan de Bont's truly indefensible The Haunting** hit theaters. Selecting which films we were going to defend wasn't easy - each member of the BAD staff seemed to have a number of titles they wanted to stick up for - but after much deliberation, I've settled on William Malone's House On Haunted Hill.

So far, BAD's Plead Your Case Week has seen Evan going to bat for ' Tyler Perry's unsung masterpiece,' Meredith espousing the merits of ' the cheesiest dance movie' of all time and Britt delivering an (admittedly very convincing) argument in favor of Josie And The Pussycats.

House on haunted hill trailer