Ghost Ship/Thirteen Ghosts

Starring:Tony Shalhoub, Embeth Davidtz, Matthew Lillard, Shannon Elizabeth, Alec Roberts, JR Bourne, Rah Digga, F. Murray Abraham, Matthew Harrison (III), Jacob Rupp, Mike Crestejo, Aubrey Culp, Charles Andre (II), Mikhael Speidel, Daniel Wesley, Laura Mennell, Kathryn Anderson, Craig Olejnik, Shawna Loyer, Xantha Radley
Director: Steve Beck
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
While it offers nothing new for horror buffs, Ghost Ship relocates its haunted house clichés to an eerily effective setting. The Italian luxury liner Antonia Graza, its fate a mystery for 40 years, has suddenly reappeared in the chilly Bering Sea. Lured by a seemingly harmless proposition, Gabriel Byrne and Julianna Margulies lead a salvage crew (including Ron Eldard, Margulies's offscreen partner and fellow ER alumnus) to claim the wreck. But a grisly prologue--in which we witness the horrific fate of the ship's crew and passengers--makes it clear that bad things are going to happen. And they do... with the predictability of tomorrow's sunrise. The supporting cast is routinely dispatched, but their fates are determined amid outstanding art direction, slick cinematography, and judicious digital trickery, all primed to maximize the doom-laden atmosphere. Director Steve Beck (who remade 13 Ghosts a year earlier) won't win any awards for ingenuity, but Ghost Ship offers a few good chills for a dark and stormy night. --Jeff Shannon

Description

Horror. Suspense. Thrills. From the company launched by Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler HOUSE OF WAX First the whacks, then the wax. Road-tripping collegians step into a backwater town's eerie tourist trap. Chad Michael Murray, Jared Padalecki and Paris Hilton. GOTHIKA A Dark Castle original! At Woodward Penitentiary for Women, someone - or something - is very twisted. And very deadly. Halle Berry, Penelope Cruz and Robert Downey Jr. GHOST SHIP Salvagers trained for anything imaginable face the unimaginable - an adrift cruise ship hexed by a seafaring collector of souls. Julianna Margulies, Gabriel Byrne and Isaiah Washington. THIRTEEN GHOSTS Is their dream home a living nightmare? A family moves into a spectacular home they inherited... but there may be no way out. Tony Shalhoub, Embeth Davidtz and Matthew Lillard. HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL One night in the house, one million bucks, no questions asked. The offer is easy to accept. Just try to survive long enough to collect! Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen and Taye Diggs.

Customer Reviews:

Dark and dismal.......2006-11-12

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.

Average customer rating:

Love Boat (NOT!) with a B-Ghost Story

Ghost Ship/Thirteen Ghosts
Starring: Tony Shalhoub , Embeth Davidtz , Matthew Lillard , Shannon Elizabeth , and Alec Roberts
Director: Steve Beck
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Horror | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Genres | DVD | Video

( G ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
ASIN: B0007VY49K
Release Date: 2005-05-10

Amazon.com

While it offers nothing new for horror buffs, Ghost Ship relocates its haunted house clichés to an eerily effective setting. The Italian luxury liner Antonia Graza, its fate a mystery for 40 years, has suddenly reappeared in the chilly Bering Sea. Lured by a seemingly harmless proposition, Gabriel Byrne and Julianna Margulies lead a salvage crew (including Ron Eldard, Margulies's offscreen partner and fellow ER alumnus) to claim the wreck. But a grisly prologue--in which we witness the horrific fate of the ship's crew and passengers--makes it clear that bad things are going to happen. And they do... with the predictability of tomorrow's sunrise. The supporting cast is routinely dispatched, but their fates are determined amid outstanding art direction, slick cinematography, and judicious digital trickery, all primed to maximize the doom-laden atmosphere. Director Steve Beck (who remade 13 Ghosts a year earlier) won't win any awards for ingenuity, but Ghost Ship offers a few good chills for a dark and stormy night. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews:

Love Boat (NOT!) with a B-Ghost Story.......2006-04-07

This two pack contains a couple of watchable horror movies. Neither is great, but both have their moments.

"Ghost Ship"

This movie starts almost like an episode of "Love Boat." The music is light and nearly romantic as you zoom into the ship Antonia Graza cruising the high seas with well-dressed crew and passengers. However, no sooner do you zoom onto the ship with dancing passengers than a really bad thing happens, and there is blood and horrible death.

We fast forward 40 years and meet a salvage ship crewed by a variety of nearly stereotypical characters. After a brief introduction showing how dedicated the crew members are, the salvage ship heads out to sea. During a storm the salvage ship runs into, literally, the Antonia Graza. Naturally the crew members see a huge salvage opportunity and the money to be made from that opportunity. Thus the plot of the movie is reasonably simple: return the Graza to running condition and take her to port to be able to make a fortune. Of course, a variety of eerie events occur that let you know that the Graza is not just a derelict ship waiting to be salvaged.

As the movie progresses, the wonderfully spooky atmosphere enhances what would otherwise be a run-of-the-mill ghost story. There are predictable portions of the movie, always an annoyance in any movie, but fortunately there are nearly as many unpredictable scenes. Perhaps the most interesting part of the movie is the last 15 or 20 minutes, when the fate of the ship and crew 40 years earlier is revealed in great and gory detail. Furthermore, I was not expecting what happened at the very end of the movie.

This movie is not likely to win any awards. However, the sets, the cinematography and portions of the plot made this movie worthy of a bowl of popcorn and a future re-watch. There are probably no points in the movie where I jumped or my heart leapt, but I was intrigued by the periodic hints of what happened to the ship 40 years earlier, and what the ship was doing during the time from 40 years ago to today. I recommend this movie for a dark and stormy night with the wind howling and rain pouring.

"Thirteen Ghosts"

Ah yes, the ever-popular B-movie. This movie is exactly that, and as with all B-movies, there will be those who like it, those who don't, and those who thought it was okay but were generally bored.

The plot has a couple of unique twists, the house is great, and I saw a death that I had not previously seen in a movie. If the twists, the house or the death fail to hold your interest or intrigue you, then you will quickly lose interest and either became bored, or you will not like the movie at all.

The story is relatively simple, and some parts of it parallel other horror movies. A ghost-hunting relative (in this case, an uncle) dies (there's a twist here), leaving a huge mansion and a lot of money to a relatively poor relative. The poor relative moves his family along with assorted hangers-on and intruders into the relative's house. The deceased relative had ulterior motives for wanting his heir to move into the house (which I won't talk about - there have to be some surprises), and miscellaneous acts of gory violence ensue.

I understood early on that the ghosts appearing and disappearing even when wearing the special glasses was an ability that the ghosts had, but they had to appear to cause physical events. However, the popping in and out, which was initially interesting, became annoying. Some of the early manifestations had some level of scare factor. The best scenes involve a bath tub and the basement; afterward the affect was diluted as you became numb to ghosts popping in and out.

The concept that the ghosts in the basement were there to power a portal to hell was interesting, along with the technique the uncle used to unleash the ghosts and direct them to their appropriate locations.

There was a lot of acting horsepower in this movie, including Tony Shalhoub, Shannon Elizabeth, F. Murray Abraham, Matthew Dillard, and Embeth Davidtz (who also starred in "Matilda", if you can believe that). In general the acting was decent, though I struggled a couple of times with Tony Shalhoub's struggle to accept Matthew Dillard's insistence that supernatural events were occurring in the house; it felt a bit artificial. Even with all that horsepower, the real star of the movie was the house, a conglomeration of glass, antiques, Latin inscriptions, and, of course, ghosts. There were several problems with the house scenes. First, the scenes of the central engine were shown time after time, and ultimately began to feel like filler since it didn't really advance the plot. Second, you never really knew where you were in the house other than in general terms, so while the house was big, the immensity was conveyed only when looking from the outside. Third, just how did Embeth Davidtz get into the house after it appeared to close up? Her answer seemed more than a stretch, perhaps something the director made up while having a martini.

This movie had a lot of potential. The basic concept was solid, and the acting horsepower unusual for a B horror movie. However, while there were flashes of excellence, overall the movie delivered only part of the goods. Those flashes of excellence pushed the movie into a 3-star rating, thus making it watchable. Forgive the parts of the movie where it drags or has plot implausibilities.

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