By Ted Baldwin

     The Haunting (of Hill House) remake, originally based on the classic novel by Shirley Jackson, is a DreamWorks (Spielberg) concoction. It wastes every opportunity to go somewhere or cause real damage, never living up to the expectations of "over-the-top scare fest", as advertised.

Like End Of Days, it seems to pull it punches.

     The effects are well done but now routine, and for the most part it is believable that they could be the work of the Doctor that brought everyone together. This is the thesis of several characters in the film, and works against real feelings of terror in the audience. I mean, if it is a real ghoul, the price goes up. If it is a human, the aspect of terror is not as high - especially if it is just a psych experiment.

     Only one person dies horribly at the hands of the House Master, which is not nearly enough for a good time. The rest is tease and remembrances of ghosts past. And never forget- a little creepy, creaky woodwork goes a long way.

     The mansion is really fabulous though, and it has the right feel. It is, unfortunately the only thing done right. But it takes you to the end of the movie to realize you have not seen much else.

     Liam Neeson is a bust as the psychologist, and they never go anywhere with the bisexual experimentee, or the others for that matter. Just like in that previous sentence, bisexualism was thrown in for shock value and never delivered upon. They really know how to build to an anti-climax.

     In the tease and bait category, HOHH does give us a throwback to those classic horror films of the forties. Suggest but never show. Hint at with mysterious facial expressions but in the end, crap out. In modern parlance, screw the audience. Like the people who paid to see the wild man in Twain's Huck Finn story, they got an old fat guy dressed up in feathers goofing around on stage - Don't tell 'em you got cheated - Tell 'em how great it was so they will get cheated too. It is the only way to save face!

     Wasted opportunities everywhere, and the idea that a child molester spirit is the haunt, and that the ghosts of all the little children he murdered inhabit the house, and that all of these little ghosts are "friendly" - it is a recipe for snoozeville.

     And it is the ending, where the final battle takes place, that makes the film so lame. It needed, and could have benefited from, an ending where something unusual takes place, maybe not so conveniently wrapped up with so little loss of life. The price of admission to this house was not high enough.

     At the end, one question remained. Where the hell did the people with the cell phone go, and why did we never see them again?

     On the other hand The House on Haunted Hill, a Robert Zemeckis/Joel Silver remake of that glorious 1958 Vincent Price/William Castle estate, is exactly what a horror film should be.

     It is a rollercoaster of evil, played out amidst the trappings of an old insane asylum - inhabited by the evil plasma of an entire madhouse burned to death at the hands of a serial killer dressed in doctor drag. And the audience is clued in immediately that our host is not the ghost.

     Here the house is very evil, people get killed in the most gruesome ways, and you never know quite what to expect. I think my favorite character ending is when the bloody trail of a missing reporter leads across the floor and up the wall, disappearing where the concrete wall meets the concrete ceiling in a thin, tight little seam. Never seen that before. (I guess there is a lot I have not seen, but you'll have to wait for my memoirs to know what, exactly...)

     In this rendition, Geoffrey Rush plays the Price character, literally, and he is so smarmy, so oily, so side-show, low-rent, trailer-trash, trash talking, egomaniacally elevated that you think you will scream just from seeing him. Rush pulls out all the stops. Which reminds me, the organ music in this film is terrific.

     Mercilessly promoting and manipulating, "Price" brings the group together for a night in the Haunted Asylum - for a million each - before he launches his next promotion. The only trouble is that the guest list has been amended to include relatives of the people responsible for the original massacre fifty years ago. You get the idea.

     There is nothing to be gained by way of social virtue from this film - it is not making any statements like "how terrible child-abusing-and-murdering old dead white guy capitalist factory owners are". (Gee I did not know that. Shame on us for not hating old white guys. Thank you The Haunting (of Hill House) for helping me have a conscience. {If you did not get my sarcasm, go back and re-read that in a flat tone.})

     Thankfully, beyond the detriments of unbridled avarice, The House on Haunted Hill doesn't tell us a damned thing, except maybe stay out of creepy insane asylums with strangers, or even people you think you know.

     More than its progenitor, which was itself deliciously scary, HOHH (gee, that's funny-creepy... House on Haunted Hill has the same acronym as Haunting of Hill House)---OK, House on Haunted Hill, delivers even more - a smorgasbord (that's "Buffet" for you Southerners, and "All You Can Eat" for Texans) of evil doings, evil doers, and evil dues. (You know, like paying dues. Figure it out.)

     And all of this sleaze, this carnival of low-rent two-bit penny ante players, this cornucopia of creeps, adds up to one thing - Horror Classic.

     The Haunting website is overcommercialized, with annoying ads that bracket the site, and a small screen delivery for the Flash file that is hard to read and not much fun, and there are few pages in the non-flash site.

     Give it some effort! These websites are representing your film all across the globe every minute of the day!!!

     Sigh. They need some imaginifyin'.

     The House on Haunted Hill website is terrific, with sound effects, campy pics, and eyes that follow your mouse up, down, all around.

Looking at these two films together does nothing but point out the flaws and inadequacies of The Haunting (of Hill House), which tried to be moralistic and teach us not to be bad old capitalists. Thanks for caring! But The House on Haunted Hill does not care about us. It only wants us dead. Which, as my mom would say, makes for a better buggy ride.