Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55277 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-04-17
• Format: NTSC

Customer Reviews

Good value!
This is a great compilation for the modern horror b-movie fan. While none of these films are excellent, the fact that you get five decent horror flicks for the price of one new release is commendable. Dark Castle Entertainment is a company that specializes in making horror movies, oftentimes remakes of movies by the late director Frank Castle. I'll leave the reader to look up in-depth reviews for all the movies individually.

The best movie in here (in my opinion) is House On Haunted Hill. It features a great cast including Chris Kattan (Saturday Night Live), Famke Jensen (X-Men), and Geoffrey Rush (Pirates Of The Caribbean). Rush's character is most notable as it is an obvious nod to Vincent Price.

All five movies feature suspense, gore, and nudity, which are pretty much staples of the genre. A horror movie fan who likes a bit of cheese, some references to previous versions (of the Frank Castle originals), and some interesting efforts at modern horror will like this compilation.

I will admit that buying any of these films (EXCEPT House On Haunted Hill) individually never really interested me. Combining them all like this for a value price pushed me over the edge however. No ONE of these movies is worth this price, but all five of these is a steal.

Dark and dismal
t would be hard to find a collection of horror movies that is as completely worthless as the "Dark Castle Horror Collection." Every movie here is an atrocious compost heap of "boo" scares and verbal drivel, until the best thing you can do is switch on some Vincent Price movies. The best thing here is an impaled Paris Hilton.

Six nubile twentysomethings are en route to a basebell game when (surprise surprise) they break down. To make matters worse, their car is sabotaged by a mysterious figure in the woods. So a few manage to get into town... only to find that some sort of dementoid is running the "House of Wax," and they are going to be the next attraction.

"Gothika" is one of those blots on Halle Berry's resume: She plays a criminal psychologist at a women's prison, and to make things a bit more convenient, she's married to her boss. But her world takes a horrifying turn when she has a car accident, and wakes to find herself an inmate at the prison -- accused of murdering her hubby. And she's seeing ghosts to boot.

"Ghost Ship" makes trouble for a salvage crew, when they find an Italian ocean liner that has been wandering the seas since the 1960s. Something horrifying (and very bloody) happened there when the liner vanished, and when the salvage crew claims the boat, they are slowly picked off by supernatural forces. From the liner, of course.

"Thirteen Ghosts" haunt Cyrus Kriticos's house, which has been left to his grieving nephew Arthur (Tony Shalhoub) and his family. Of course, they decide to head inside -- only to discover that the tormented souls are very real. And worse, they're trapped in a house that is a "machine" to open the very gates of hell. Saw that coming.

"House on Haunted Hill" cinematically rapes the original cult classic. An oddball millionaire (Geoffrey Rush) invites several people to an old lunatic asylum, which is said to be haunted -- if they make it through the night, they will each receive a million dollars. But then the ghosts of the asylum start rising and killing the people there -- assuming that they don't kill each other first.

Horror movies are struggling at the moment, since moviemakers don't have the slightest idea how to creep people out. And so we end up with dreck like these miserable gorefests -- pile on the blood, guts and cheesy cliches, and hope that people actually care enough to watch to the end. It's hard to imagine that anyone would.

"Gothika" ends up being one of the few with an actual plot, albeit a ridiculous one. The other movies are just variations of the typical "locked in a haunted house" storyline, with the requisite mutilated bodies and CGI ghosts. None of them have much atmosphere at all, and the goofy-looking ghosts may inspire laughter instead of fear.

There are a few decent actors in these messes, such as Berry, Robert Downey Jr., and the ever-lovable Shalhoub. Unfortunately, most of the actors are forgettable and bland, and are only called on to shriek out incredibly silly lines ("The house doesn't care what's fair, who lives or dies. Know why? Cause it's a f**king HOUSE!"). "House of Wax" also has the dubious honor of having socialite Paris Hilton in it, though admittedly her death scene is kind of fun.

Poorly-written, badly-acted, and aimed straight down to the bottom, the "Dark Castle Horror Collection" is a perfect example of what NOT to watch on a spooky, stormy night.