Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #191740 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-02-20
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Box set, Closed-captioned, Colour, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 5

Customer Reviews

An average but entertaining boxset
1) House on Haunted Hill - Billionaire theme-park mogul Steven Price (Geoffrey Rush) believes he is fulfilling the twisted wishes of his spoiled wife Evelyn (Famke Janssen) when he arranges for her birthday party to be held at the abandoned Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane. The Institute was once the site of the most horrifying medical experiments in history, conducted by the late - and deranged -- Dr. Vannacutt. As the guests converge for the evening, Price realizes that, curiously, the five strangers are neither Evelyn's original invitees nor his own. He is unable to figure out who these people are, or how they received the invitations he intended for others. The guests themselves are equally mystified as to why they might have been included. In a spirit of mutual distrust, Steven and Evelyn Price greet their guests, each suspecting the other's motives and holding the other responsible for the strangers joining them. The actual reason this quintet has been convened will not become clear until much later. Nevertheless, Price proceeds with the festivities, announcing that anyone who manages to spend an entire night in the house will win a substantial financial prize of five million dollars. He has secretly rigged the house with insidious devices designed to scare the guests out of staying, but his tricks soon become meaningless, as the mansion begins to generate terror on its own. The house's lockdown mechanism mysteriously comes alive, trapping everyone inside and leaving them scrambling desperately to find a way out. Just as Watson Pritchett, the descendant of the building's original owners, had ominously predicted, the house begins to animate with the evil that breathes through the building. Before their night of terror is over, the desperate inhabitants will unlock the secrets of the house or suffer the wrath of the demonic evil that haunts the walls of the former insane asylum.

House on Haunted Hill is a fairly decent remake of the old Vincent Price film, not taking itself too seriously and also provides enough scares and jumps to make this a top-quality and entertaining horror. The most notable and scary thing about this film is the background noise - watch this with headphones on and the lights off...I dare you! 4/5

2) Thir13en Ghosts - Arthur (Tony Shalhoub) and his two children, Kathy and Bobby, inherit his Uncle Cyrus's estate: a glass house that serves as a prison to 12 ghosts. When the family, accompanied by Bobby's Nanny and an attorney, enter the house they find themselves trapped inside an evil machine "designed by the devil and powered by the dead" to open the Eye of Hell. Aided by Dennis, a ghost hunter, and his rival Kalina, a ghost rights activist out to set the ghosts free, the group must do what they can to get out of the house alive.

A completely ridiculous but enjoyable horror flick with some crazy ghosts film providing a hell of a lot of scares and can also be very gory in places. 3/5

3) Ghost Ship - After discovering a passenger ship missing since 1962 floating adrift on the Bering Sea, salvagers claim the vessel as their own. Once they begin towing the ghost ship towards harbor, a series of bizarre ocurrences happen and the group becomes trapped inside the ship, which they soon learn is inhabited by a demonic creature.

After an absolutely incredible, rememberable and sickening opening scene, it loses a bit of it's momentum throughout the rest of the film. Not the best film in this collection but still an enjoyable one all the same. 3/5

4) Gothika - Dr. Miranda Grey (Halle Berry) is a psychiatrist working at a mental hospital. On her way home from work one day, she narrowly misses hitting a girl in the middle of the road. The next thing Miranda knows, several days have passed, she is a patient in the very hospital she once worked for, and stands accused of murdering her husband. Miranda fights to convince her former co-workers of her sanity and her innocence while she struggles to regain her lost memories.

Probably the worst film in this boxset as it's not very scary and does get quite boring and dull after the first half an hour or so. The film also takes itself a little too seriously, unlike the rest of the Dark Castle films. However there is a fairly decent performance from Berry and Penelope Cruz comes across as a truely creepy and disturbed character. 2/5

5) House of Wax - A group of friends are on their way to an important American football game, while along the way, they decide to camp in some woods. The next day Wade's car experiences car troubles with a broken fan belt. Carly and Wade decide to go to the nearest town to get a new fan belt while the rest of the group attempts to go to the game. When an unbelievably slow traffic jam stops Paige, Dalton, Blake, and Nick, they decide to go back to get Wade and Carly. One by one, the entire group ends up falling prey to two murderous brothers, the creators of the town's local 'House of Wax'. They must escape before they become the House of Wax's main exhibit.

Yet another remake given a modern-day touch-up, this film is without a doubt the best in the collection, if for Paris Hilton's character's famous death scene alone. There's plenty of laughs and scares as well as a surprisingly decent script and plot. 4/5

Overall a fairly average but entertaining boxset with some of the better horrors from the past few years. Just switch your brain off, sit down, enjoy and let the blood spill.