It's Halloween weekend, and you've probably landed on this article because you're looking for some fun horror movies to watch. Instead of falling back on the classics to watch Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger terrorize the screen, I've got a recommendation for a fun '90s movie that has fallen through the cracks.
In fact, the horror title I'm going to guide you to was critically panned when it premiered in 1999. Well, I'm here to tell you that the critics are wrong.
The latter half of that decade was a particularly interesting time for horror. Wes Craven's Scream helped inspire a resurgence of teen slasher movies, which dominated the box office in the 1990s. The genre became oversaturated, which is what made this particular film stand out even more. It's a horror movie that disrupted the status quo and paid tribute to the schlocky B-movies of the past -- four decades in the past, if we're keeping track.
House on Haunted Hill is the film I'm talking about. I think it's required Halloween viewing and, lucky for you, the movie is streaming free on Tubi right now.
A loose remake of a horror classic, it's a campy outlier that leans heavily into the style of the late '90s, while retaining the 1950s vibe of its predecessor. It features a pretty solid cast, a wicked sense of humor and offers a delightful respite for audiences who were looking for something other than a group of college kids running from a masked killer.
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House on Haunted Hill is the 1999 remake of William Castle's 1959 B-movie classic, which starred Vincent Price and Carol Ohmart. The gist in both is pretty much the same, centering on a wealthy (and peculiar) married couple who invite five guests to play a daring game: Survive the night, and each person takes home a cash prize. As you may suspect, things don't end up that cut and dry.
Geoffrey Rush and Famke Janssen star as Steven Price, a theme park mogul, and his wife, Evelyn Stockard-Price. The original movie found the couple inviting folks to their would-be haunted mansion to take on the dare; this movie ups the ante and puts them all in an abandoned asylum with a sinister past.
Genre fave Jeffrey Combs appears sporadically throughout the movie as the evil Dr. Vannacutt, the leader of the once thriving Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane. According to legend, the patients rioted against the staff in the 1930s, leaving a tainted (potentially haunted) energy permeating within the building's walls.
Jeffrey Combs stars in House on Haunted Hill. Dark Castle Entertainment
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