Thir13een Ghosts (2001, F Murray Abraham, Matthew Lillard) – Classic Film Review 1144

Director Steve Beck’s 2001 release is more trashy horror hokum from the Dark Castle production company, again featuring plenty of madcap characters. Neal Stevens and Richard D’Ovidio’s screenplay is based on Robb White’s story for William Castle’s 1960 chiller.

Rich collector Cyrus Kriticos (F Murray Abraham) is killed, leaving his bizarre collection of antiquities and weird haunted glass-built house to his nephew Arthur (Tony Shalhoub) and family. Very bad things promptly happen to them when they are chased by the 13 ghosts and can find no way out. Beck’s film is a pretty risible movie with no real scares and a bunch of far-too-good, real actors more or less totally at sea. Only Matthew Lillard (as Abraham’s helper Dennis) has the right camp attitude to the piece, and he’s good, entertaining value.

It’s short and flashy, but not nearly short and flashy enough. It does look good and it is handsomely produced. In the original, Castle’s gimmick is ‘Illusion-O’: with the aid of pieces of blue and red plastic, the audience could choose whether they wanted to see the various supernatural forms or not. This time it’s the actors not the audience who put on the plastic spectacles to see the various supernatural forms, which is a useless idea.

Embeth Davidtz, Shannon Elizabeth and Rah Digga also star.

It was shot entirely around the Vancouver area in British Columbia, Canada.

It follows the 1999 remake of another one of Castle’s films, House on Haunted Hill (1958).

http://derekwinnert.com/house-on-haunted-hill-1999-geoffrey-rush-classic-film-review-1089/

(C) Derek Winnert Classic Film Review 1144

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