WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? The 1958 original was a black and white thriller starring Vincent Price, and relied on a more cerebral aspect, a kind of "there could be something in the basement with that vat of acid, but is it a ghost or a human murderer" approach. We don't know exactly what to make of this modern revamp; the cast is varied and frankly quite a bit strange (Geoffrey Rush and Chris Kattan in the same movie? What's with that?), and the plot itself will no doubt be a bit different in this modern age of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Word has it that this film is less of a splatterfest than those teen slasher flicks, though whether it will manage to pull off simple entertainment value remains to be seen.

THE CAST

GEOFFREY RUSH: You may remember him as the strangely endearing theater owner, Mr. Henslowe, from Shakespeare in Love. A very skilled, fairly classical actor, he's also had roles in such memorable flicks as Elizabeth, Oscar and Lucinda, Les Misérable, and Shine. He takes up Vincent Price's character Frederick Loren for The House on Haunted Hill.

FAMKE JANSSEN: You may remember her as creepy administrator Miss Burke in The Faculty. She also appeared as Trillian in the less-than-successful Deep Rising, and played Dorothea in Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions. She'll fill the role of Annabelle Loren, played in the original film by Carol Ohmart.

JEFFREY COMBS: You may remember him as the stark raving loony Special Agent Milton Dammers from The Frighteners, or Brooks from I Know What You Did Last Summer. He's also had parts in such genre films as Necronomicon, Time Tracers, Fortress, The Guyver, Robot Jox... the list goes on, quite impressively really. But despite the fact that he seems to have done a whole hell of a lot of work, you're not really likely to recognize him in much of it unless you're paying real close attention.

TAYE DIGGS: You may remember him as the young, hunky object of Stella's affection in How Stella Got Her Groove Back. He's also appeared in Go, Mary Jane's Last Dance, and on the soap opera Guiding Light.

CHRIS KATTAN: You may remember him as a regular castmember of Saturday Night Live; he also did a film with one of his SNL coworkers called A Night At The Roxbury. He's sort of the odd man out in this film, coming from a purely comedy background.

PETER GALLAGHER: You may remember him as The Coma Guy in from the Bullock/Pullman film While You Were Sleeping. He has a variety of films to his name, including The Gillian On Her 37th Birthday, The Hudsucker Proxy, Malice, The Player, and Sex, Lies, and Videotape.

ALI LARTER: You may remember her as Darcy in Varsity Blues; she's also appearing as Clear Rivers in the upcoming film Flight 180. She's also appeared in the television series Just Shoot Me, Dawson's Creek, and Chicago Hope.

ELIZABETH HURLEY: You may remember her as the partner and paramour of the International Man of Mystery in Austin Powers. She's also been in EDtv, Permanent Midnight, and Dangerous Ground.

BRIDGETTE WILSON: You may remember her as video-game ass-kicker Sonja in the first Mortal Kombat film. She also played mean-spirited sister Elsa in I Know What You Did Last Summer, and appeared in The Last Action Hero and Billy Madison.

JAMES MARSTERS: You may remember him as cool vampire Spike from the WB series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where he played season two's lead bad guy and will return as a regular for season four. He's also guest-starred in Millennium and Northern Exposure.

THE CREW

WILLIAM MALONE: A fairly well-known genre director for his work on Tales from the Crypt and Freddy's Nightmares, Malone also has writing or story credits on several films, and even acting credits for The Incredible Hulk Returns and Scared to Death.

DICK BEEBE: Beebe's credits cover mostly TV movies, but he did write 1995's Sandra Bullock film The Net. He also created the 1996 television series The Lazarus Man.

OTHER

The House On Haunted Hill is the first production from the new house Dark Castle, formed by Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis. It's being produced by Gilbert Adler, Dan Cracchiolo, Steve Richards, Joel Silver, and Robert Zemeckis.

THE PREMISE: In the original, an eccentric millionaire (Vincent Price) invites five people to stay overnight in his haunted house. Their reward for surviving is $10,000 each. This remake holds to the same theme, though modern times have upped the reward to $1 million, and while the original didn't have any actual ghosts in it, there's no telling which parts of that original plot the new movie will stick to.

GOSSIP and USELESS FACTS:

• There's been a lot of confusion with this film and another called The Haunting of Hill House... the latter film has been renamed to The Haunting, and Haunted Hill's release date was pushed back to October.

Red Moon - The House on Haunted Hill