Trick or Trailers: Ghost Ship (2002)

Released on October 25th, 2002, Ghost Ship marked Dark Castle's final cruise into Halloween waters. After scoring big at Halloween with 1999's House on Haunted Hill and again in 2001 with Thirteen Ghosts, Ghost Ship was another attempt to make a box office killing in October. Even though it didn't perform quite as well as DC's previous films, it still did ok but for some reason, the Dark Castle logo was never seen on the big screen at Halloween again.

Like Thirteen Ghosts, this was directed by Steve Beck (who, according to IMDB, hasn't directed another feature since) and, like both House on Haunted Hill and Thirteen Ghosts, this was another halfway decent, halfway ehhhh not-so-decent supernatural shocker.

Dark Castle made some good pics after Ghost Ship (ones that I liked, at least), like the underrated House of Wax, the enjoyably daffy Gothika, and the cult favorite Orphan, but after Ghost Ship, regular DC distributor Warner Bros. relinquished that Halloween turf to the likes of Saw, instead going for dates in the spring or late fall/early winter.

Too bad, as DC's brand of semi-schlocky horror was ideally suited for Halloween viewing. Much more so to my eyes than the Saw series, which never struck me as "Halloween-ish" enough. Clearly the vast majority of the movie-going world didn't share that opinion, which is fine, but, you know, I just think Halloween is better suited to ghosts and ghouls than to slasher-style butchery.

Even though it's been awhile, I wish that Dark Castle would get another crack at Halloween. You know, I think they'd have a chance going head to head with the likes of the Paranormal Activity films but at this point, I think that particular ship has sailed for good.

Trick or Trailers: Thirteen Ghosts (2001)

From this trailer, it was clear that this would not be a ghost story crafted in the subtle, suggestive tradition of Henry James or Shirley Jackson. Instead, this Dark Castle production was more akin to being front row at a rowdy WWE Smackdown than it was to taking a hushed journey to Hill House.

Some fans may disagree but I believe this simply honors Castle's own unsnobbish, crowd-pleasing approach, which was all about putting on a show and grabbing the audience's attention by any means necessary. Anyone who'd go so far as to give the audience electrical shocks would likely not balk at whatever approach any remake of his material might take in order to pull people in.

Under the direction of Steve Beck, Thirteen Ghosts is not a perfect movie by any means but it's certainly fun and energetic and I have a lot of affection for it. Mostly I love the production design involving the house made out of glass. That in itself is enough to win me over. We've seen so many haunted houses over the years - some gothic, like Hill House, and some contemporary like the Freeling's suburban home in Poltergeist but never, ever had we seen anything like the one in Thirteen Ghosts.



On top of that, there's the look of the ghosts themselves. These aren't just wispy, ethereal CGI specters; these are real actors in elaborate prosthetic make-up that, with character names like "The Juggernant" and "The Hammer", deserved to have their own line of action figures - or at the very least, stickers and bubblegum cards.

Why these guys haven't been incorporated into one of the big horror attractions that open during the Halloween season, like Universal or Knotts Berry Farms, I don't know.



Created by KNB, the ghosts in this film are wonderfully garish and dripping with gore, looking like they came full-blown out of the pages of a horror comic. They all had their own backstories and mythologies and it's a shame that with all the thought put into developing this world that this film never spawned its own sequel.



Unlike Castle's own films, this didn't have any cool gimmicks to sell it, just some really good ghosts.

Here's the trailer for the Castle original:

Evil Loves To Party

It's only October 1st but that's not too soon to start celebrating Halloween, right? You know, as great as it is to welcome the arrival of October, it's a big wet blanket on my Halloween spirit to see that there's such a dearth of theatrical horror offerings this year.

The only wide release horror film is the Carrie remake and that looks like the most ho-hum movie ever. It might end up being ok but I can't muster any enthusiasm for it. The only bright spot to this October, horror-wise, is that Curse of Chucky comes to DVD on the 8th. I think it's really stupid on Universal's part that it's not coming to theaters but hey, I'll take new Chucky any way I can get it.

Anyhow, to counter the lack of new horror in theaters, I'm rolling out Dinner with Max Jenke's seasonal standby, Trick or Trailers in an expanded, super-sized, month-long blowout, focusing on films that were released in time for Halloween. Now, I haven't done jack here since June so the idea that I'd keep up with stuff for a whole month seems like a real longshot. Still, if I missed today, I would have had to scrap the whole month right off the bat so I'm putting the first step down and then we'll just see how it goes.

The first in our entirely random procession of trailers is for the House on Haunted Hill remake - a film released in prime Halloween territory on October 29th, 1999. Directed by William Malone, this was the kick-off to a run of William Castle remakes from the genre-orientated production house Dark Castle.



A far superior haunted house outing than the Steven Spielberg-produced, Jan DeBont-directed Haunting remake that had been released just a few months earlier, this movie made for a pleasant Halloween surprise. Aside from the too-cutesy finale where the surviving characters live thanks to the intervention of a good ghost, the HoHH redux was a pretty grisly affair - especially for the late '90s - and Geoffrey Rush did his best approximation of the supreme hamminess of Vincent Price.

I don't know why Dark Castle has tapered off in recent years. My favorite film of theirs was 2009's Orphan, which seemed to point towards a more high end-ish brand of genre fare from them - as did 2010's Splice - but their only theatrical releases this year were the much-delayed (but yet not too shabby) old-school action pic Bullet to the Head and the more-than-likely terrible Ethan Hawke thriller Getaway.

It's too bad they didn't have a horror film ready for this year - they would've had Halloween practically to themselves. Just like back in the day.