Sometimes the remake is better... I'll try not to spoil too much but there are a few spoilers here!
So! I was bored today and checked out the Fearnet On Demand thing my cable has and found a film called 13 ghosts. 'Oh, cool!' I thought, 'That thing with Monk and that dude who played Shaggy in Scoopy Doo?' So I clicked on it and realized a little too late that the year said 1960.
Great. Well I shrugged and just let it play. I didn't know that the 2001 film was a remake so I was curious as to how the origonal was.
I don't know if it was how my expectations were lowered when I saw that the film was in black and white, the uninteresting characters and acting, or the ify story, but this thing had me falling asleep!
It is the story of a family that is down on their luck and getting their belongings reposessed. Just when things are at their worst a stroke of luck comes in an inheritance from a mysterious uncle. They gain his house and immedietly move in. Soon they realize that the uncle was a collector of ghosts and there are currently 13 residing in the house. A few creepy things happen, like the kitchen being messed up by the ghost of a cook and a few other things floating on their own. A journal is also found and in it records of all the ghosts are written. The last page, on which is written Ghost 13 is left blank, though.
Another story line is that of the uncle fortune, hidden somewhere in the house and a seedy lawyer who is looking for it. The lawyer elists the help of the family's young boy and soon the boy finds the money hidden underneath the stairs. So of course the next logical step is to kill the kid!
This really comes from left field as the lawyer seemed nice and almost like he was going to start dating the older daughter. Then he finds a ton of cash and BOOM, let's kill a kid! The ghosts save the kid, the family finds the money and it doesn't seem like the ghosts are a bother any more.
Okay, like I said, I was falling asleep during this film. The only thing that kept me awake was a nifty ploy they had. The beginning of the film starts with the producer explaining about a viewer they have. "If you believe in ghosts, view through the red part, but if you don't view through the blue." At times the screen would go blue and apparently the audience was given these viewers on the way into the theater. Since not many people have 3D glasses in a coat pocket like I did the film I viewed showed the ghosts in red on the blue background. Since I had glasses handy I was able to see more detial by viewing through the red half. Viewing through the blue showed only faint figures of the ghosts. In the film the uncle made glasses in which you can see ghosts and whenever these were used, the audience was told to use their viewers.
That's about it. There were a few suspenseful moments, but they come early and despite my hopes, the rest of the movie is basically hoping the red and blue thing is either creepy or interesting enough to keep audiences engaged. Also, they never explain the whole mystery behind the thirteenth ghost. Why was there no entry for it in the journal? Who was it? Why was it left blank? The uncle even had an entry for the 12th ghost and it was HIM! My advice? Skip it....Unless you need a nap.
Now, the 2001 remake stars Tony Schalhoub as the father and pretty much follows the same story: Down and out family loses everything in a fire, even the wife/mother perishes in the inferno. They find they inherit a house from their uncle Cyrus from his lawyer and, unlike the origonal, you just know this guy is an ass. There is a brief reference to the romance in the 1960 version between the daughter and lawyer in a smile the girl gives him, but now that I notice the reference it's just creepy as the lawyer is very much older than her. Ew.
So they go to the house and this is where I get into it. The set design in this film is AMAZING!! The house is mostly made of glass with writing on it we learn are containment spells for the ghosts Cyrus has collected. There is also a clockwork like look to it with gears and a central engine that is as big as a high school gym, spinning fast with gears, spikes and rings.
It is a very inventive home that moves, turning itself into a maze when the seedy lawyer removes a bag full of money from a trigger. This locks everyone in the house and begins releasing the ghosts one by one. The glasses were also kept in, but now there are many pairs and no gimmick for the audience. The ghosts aren't seen unless a character wears the glasses, then we can see them!
The ghosts are also very inventive. Each has their own story and this can be seen by their appearance, like a little boy dressed up as a cowboy with an arrow through his head. Looks like a game of cowboys and indians went awry!
So the family is in a house full of ghosts being released from their prisons one by one. Also the children disappear as well. Along for the ride is a mendium who helped Cyrus trap them all, and a woman who wants to free the souls, like PETA, but for dead things.
The woman has a spell book that holds plans for a device that can see into the future, powered by the dead. The house is that machine, built by Cyrus.
It is explained that the Cyrus needed these specific ghosts to power the machine, like the Torso, which looks like a mob hit. Also, he needed one called the Withered Lover, who happens to be the dead mother. There is also the thirteenth ghost. A ghost made with an act of pure love. The father is supposed to die for his children, making him the thirteenth ghost. He is told that his sacrifice will short circut the system and stop the machine.
The remake took a basic story and built on it. It added an amazing set design in the house, turned the simple illutions from the origonal into some pretty creepy creatures, each unique and scary look. Is it a good movie? Well, maybe, but it isn't that scary. It's more of an adventure than horror.
The acting is better the set and costume design are VERY well done and I love watching this film all the time.
The 1960 version? A really good sleep aid!
Well, I think you missed something, in the end of the film, we see that Ben is the 13th ghost in the 1960 version, so the thing is, that we learn that Ben met Plato Zorba by the time the ghosts had already eaten his face off, and by that time, it can be assumed that the 4th ghost informed Plato about the "13 curse" (like he did with Cyrus)so he knew the reason the ghosts attacked him was because they needed 2 more to be set free, all because of damn Zorba decided to trap them, and thus condemned them. So, perhaps as a Ghost, or possesing someone after his death, he wrote a last entry saying how he became the so feared 12th ghost, and that, some time before, when he found out about the 13 curse, he wrote 2 more blank entries for future 12 & 13 ghosts, not knowing he and Ben would be them respectively, so that is what I understood about the 13 ghost mistery you say its unsolved, but then onto the specifics:
ReplyDeleteI prefer the old ghosts better mainly because they weren't that horrific, which isn't neccessarly a good thing, but I find the new ones too blood-driven, even those like the Jackal (who barely has any signs of death in him) who supposedly died in a fire at the asylum, whilst the original had a head (2 in fact) and a headless man, besides the flaming skeleton, one of my favorite because of how he is. I difer with them having uinque looks, I find them to look pretty much the same, well, not the same, coloration is varied, but the bound woman/angry princess, are very similar, as well as The pilgrimess/jackal, and the pale skin, its this version's counterpart of transparency and floating from the original, but even though another 2 pairs of ghosts look the same (Clutching hands-screaming woman/floating head-Executioner and head), they have creative looks, for example, the burning skeleton, or the Emilio-Wife-Lover trio, for the first 2 only had part of their clothes visible, and the last one, which didn't have legs below the knee, yet still floated, like the head or disembodied arms of the executioner, whilst the new ones were just like human corpses come to life, or simply invisible people instead of incorporeal, which admitedly, is a little childlish, but I found it better than the opaque ones. Then it is that the first one is money-driven, slow rythm, treachery, buisness, lawyer, while the remake is ghost-driven, hell, demons, possesion, ancient stuff, sacrifice, destiny, zodiac, which I don't like, because Cyrus Kriticos is bad because HELL because SATAN and fate and sacrifice, and besides, he and his lover killed her legitimate boyfriend, so only more clichés about how evil he is, like the final treachery commited against her, while in the original, we had a believely greedy man, who only killed for money, and only wanted to scare the family out of his way, not even trying to harm the daughter when dressed as Zorba, and the reason he killed the kid was, because even if he stealed the money, Buck would suspect and possibly tell his family, he wasn't evil because of Basileus, or Ocularis Infernum, and also because the ghosts all had to be evil (Black Zodiac and stuff) notable exceptions being Billy and The withered Lover, the first one only becoming evil after death, but all the rest, religiously SINFUL, a theme almost untouched in the original, so it was easier to feel sorry because of what Plato/Cyrus did to them, and they weren't that vengeful in the first one, despite eating Zorba's face off, they didn't seem to resent him after death, so the not-so-obviously evil treachery of Ben made him a better villain (in my opinion) than Cyrus Kriticos could be.