31 Days of Halloween 2018

House on Haunted Hill (1999) The remake of the original Vincent Price story of a rich man who invites a bunch of strangers to a birthday party for his wife. The couple really don't like each other and it is clear that either the husband or the wife would be pleased to see the other dead. The catch with the strangers is that each has has a chance to win a share of 5 million dollars but in order to do so they must stay the whole night.  Now in the original the dollar amount were smaller and it looked like Vincent Price was trying to kill his wife but it was the same story. Give the guests guns and the incentive to kill each other off and see what happens.  The was a bit of added backstory to this newer version. The building rented for the night is a really haunted house. A giant asylum in which a sinister Dr. Vannacutt (Jeffrey Combs) did horrible experiments on his mentally patients. When the patients rose up the doctor just prior to being torn apart managed to trigger the fail safe on the building shuttering it with steel shutters so no one could escape. The fire that was started inside burned the whole lot of them so now the place is haunted.
  Leading the cast this time as Stephen Price is Geoffrey Rush an amusement park mogul who relishes scaring people. He is really over the top wonderful in the lead. His young wife Evelyn (Framke Janssen) is tired of her marriage of convenience and would sooner see Price die that have to live with him. It makes you wonder how these two ever came to be together. The level of hatred is so palpable. The invitees to this party are Eddie (Taye Diggs), Blackburn (Peter Gallagher), Melissa (Brigette Wilson-Sampras), and Sara (Ali Larter) with the two remaining characters being the owner of the house Pritchett (Chris Kattan) and Price's scare technician Schecter (Max Perlich) When the house shuts itself down they are all trapped inside together, so instead of who will stay the night it becomes who will survive the night. The film could have done more with Schecter and the tricks he setup in the house but very quickly the film becomes more of a story about the evil of the house seeking out and killing. Pritchett is used as a expository feature through his complete insistence that they all need to find a way out of the house. Sort of annoying he is really just there to awkwardly add background about the house. The scares with the ghosts of  Dr. Vannacutt and his nurses are indeed well done and the film could have used more of that.
  The best part of the film is the back and forth between Rush and Janssen who play to the max their disdain for each other. The guest are sort of after thoughts. Each has just enough back story so you know who they are but I think most people will figure out who is going to live through this film long before we ever come close to a climax. I somewhere in the back of my mind thought I liked this movie, or have a memory of liking this film, but I don't. Scarier than the corny original but also sort of predictable it stands as a entry into the remake category that probably did not need one.

The Gate (1987)  This film certainly has a place in that it really is a gateway movie for younger people and the horror genre. It is the story of Glen (Stephen Dorff) and his sister Al (Christa Denton) who for the very first time are being left at home alone for the weekend. The parents are trusting their teenage daughter to be responsible and look after Glen who maybe is twelve. It is a film about Glen's anxiety about his older sister starting  to seek her friendships outside the house. Where they had once been very close launching rocket kits together, now she would rather go to the mall with her friends. When a tree falls in the backyard and a hole is opened in the earth beneath it. Glen finds a geode and he and his friend Terry (Louis Tripp) dig the hole looking for another. Little do they know that the hole is a gateway to the underworld and they have unleashed events that could doom all of mankind.  As creepy events begin to unfold they kids work together to try to close the gate before the apocalypse is upon them. I did not remember this film being so kid screamy but boy that really is what it is. There are some really good horror elements but the claymation little monsters are quite dated. This is at its heart about the relationship between Glen and Al, at first she is all into her friends  the Lee sisters, Linda (Jennifer Irwin) and Lori (Kelly Rowan) coming over to party. When the effects of the gate start making shit hit the fan though she is by her brother's side and spurns her older friends in favor of family. The way too happy ending may be what puts this film firmly into the family friendly category. Although the kids will have to explain to there parents how the house got destroyed, and giant demon from hell will probably not fly with them. I am watching this as prep for the next Stream Queens podcast which is under the http://zombiegrrlz.com umbrella, Rachel and Erin do a great job chatting up films you can get on streaming services.  I look forward to it.