Twenty five years ago, on October 29, 1999, Dark Castle Entertainment launched with a remake of William Castle’s The House on Haunted Hill. Penned by Dick Beebe from Robb White’s original 1959 story and directed by William Malone, the 1999 remake relocated to a foreboding psychiatric hospital for its haunted setting. This time the ghosts were very real and very vengeful. At the center of it all, though, was a very inspired performance by Geoffrey Rush. One that deserves a space in horror’s hall of fame.
Rush played amusement park mogul Steven Price, the rich host to his wife’s birthday party that offers up $1,000,000 to anyone who can endure a night-long stay in the haunted hospital. This was the precise same role Vincent Price played in the 1959 original film, and the character was renamed in reference. The irony, though, is that Steven Price wasn’t initially meant to look like Vincent Price; the script originally just described him as an average businessman. Rush wasn’t into the bland description and approached Malone with a concept more befitting of an eccentric amusement park mogul; what if Steven Price looked like director John Waters?
Malone agreed Rush could try out the look, but when Rush transformed himself to look like Waters, he instead wound up looking somewhere closer to Vincent Price. It stuck. But the look is only a small half of Rush’s masterful approach to the character. The other, bigger half is his scene-stealing portrayal.
In his first scene, Steven Price is introduced as a fast-paced businessman with a sardonic wit. In the middle of a press interview for the opening of his latest gimmick-filled theme park ride, he takes a phone call. After hanging up, the journalist asks if it was business or pleasure. He answers with a wry smirk, “Neither; my wife.” He answers more questions about the new ride before ushering the journalist and her cameraman into an elevator that appears to head straight up to the adjacent roller coaster. With swagger, he brushes off their safety concerns but then clutches to the elevator wall screaming when it appears to break down and drop suddenly. Just when the elevator is about to crash into the ground and death seems imminent, the gimmick reveals itself. It was part of the show, and Price is the showman. One that derives clear pleasure from scaring the piss out of people.
That showman persona is important to the plot because he’s the essential catalyst for getting the group of people to the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute in the first place. That persona is also interesting on a character level, too. Price is a character used to exerting control, to being the one pulling all of the strings behind the scenes. When things start to go awry, he’s perplexed. The tables are turned and he’s the one experiencing fear for once. Watching Geoffrey Rush take Price from a controlled puppeteer to scared puppet is fascinating.
While the restless spirits are waging war on the human guests, there’s a smaller scaled but equally vicious war taking place between Steven and his wife Evelyn (Famke Janssen). It’s clear from the outset that the husband and wife duo have nothing but icy venom between them, and it escalates from traded barbs to flat out murder plots as the narrative progresses. The chemistry between Rush and Janssen as their characters opt for murder over a divorce is the most interesting dynamic in the entire movie.
Throughout, Rush toggles seamlessly from ruthless businessman to the sympathetic victim of an evil spouse that never loved him. By the third act, though, he’s firmly taken a turn toward the villainous again, with Evelyn pushing him to the brink of homicidal madness. Even then, there are glimmers of humanity. Steven Price is a perpetually fluid character that keeps you guessing. Evelyn is stone-cold from beginning to end, but Steven is so complex that your allegiance is consistently shifting. No other character in the film has as large or as complicated an emotional journey as Steven. Much of that is owed to Rush’s masterful performance.
Twenty five years later, House on Haunted Hill holds up well – even when that goofy CGI ghost cloud undermines it – thanks to elaborate set pieces, great scare moments, and gruesome deaths. Yet the biggest reason this remake endures the test of time is the captivating and lively portrayal of Steven Price by the always great Geoffrey Rush.
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