Let's Talk About My FAVOURITE Horror Guilty Pleasure

[Music] thirteen ghosts was just another victim to the modest supernatural kriyas that overtook a rough decade of our remix and cheaply produced direct-to-video ripoffs that typically cashed in on the slasher genre granted this was a troubling trend that continued into the new millennium but while Japan produced classics like dark water and The Grudge in the cm/year Western filmmakers were still trying to get inventive with their ghost story such as the other session nine dead and that movie about an evil Tooth Fairy I didn't say they were all good and thirteen ghosts was just one of several remix up 1956 these supernatural horror movies that nobody asked for the original 1960 film written by Rob White who screenplay for house on Haunted Hill was adopted into a remake two years prior to 13 ghosts was only known for its gimmick and nothing else it was directed and produced by William Castle who always sought to make his movies on interactive experience which if the interest is there I'll cover it in a separate video in the case of 13 ghosts since it was a story about spirits who could only be seen by wearing a special pair of glasses during screenings for the film audiences were given red and blue cellophane 3d glasses so that they could see the ghosts projected onto the screen if they felt brave enough today the film is like watching a corny episode of scooby-doo which come to think of it also had an 80s incarnation called the 13 ghosts of scooby-doo and Matthew Lillard would eventually appear in both the remake of 13 ghosts and became synonymous with shaggy the year after so there's a crazy internet conspiracy in there somewhere but before we talk about the positives let's address the negatives [Music] look we could sit and fire back and forth about how nonsensical the plot is but this film takes it a step further to being borderline unwatchable at times because I have never seen editing fueled by this much cocaine and I add on my own videos talk about an over bloated mass of choppy incoherent sequences which somehow in the process of being as flashy and hyper stylized as possible managed to be so incredibly lifeless at the same time it's the kind of editing that thinks quick cutting is a perfect substitute for genuine jump scares that aren't earned due to a lack of any actual tension what makes this movie in any way scary are the grotesque creature designs and I understand the film is trying to show us how intense and unforgiving these ghosts are but me lad calm yourself at least show us what's going on before we have a chance to be scared there are films that hide their villains as much as possible for ominous and mysterious effect but this is not that kind of movie as the title suggests it's a showcase of horrific ghost encounters and the encounters we get are absent the subtlety or build-up to make them as engaging as they should be although I suppose there's some dramatic escalation and hi each ghost is released over time but any resemblance of surprise is lost when you literally catwalk your lawyer through a gallery of ghosts leaving nothing to your imagination [Music] they wait for you to stick your face right up against the glass at best it's absurd under worst it's honestly just kind of boring when you're ghosts possess more personality than your actual characters there's clearly something wrong here I suppose you could pull the whole well the ghosts are the stars of the show which no Sherlock but that doesn't help sitting through vapid character interactions any more bearable I use the ghosts with your uncle Cyrus okay so like broadly speaking for premise about a family who inherit a house from their estranged ghost-hunting uncle only to discover the heist is actually a prison for these ghosts and it's revealed one of the ghosts is the Mian character's recently deceased wife and the entire thing was a trap set by said uncle to capture another spirit through sacrifice the lack of meaningful character development makes any scene not involving ghosts or Shaggy a bit of a chore to sit through I mean how can you up a premise like that no some of you will say uh but listen dickhead what if this was a salvage job by the editors to see of a troubled production well have you seen Steve Beck's other film in October of the following year back released go ship which I assume given that genre narrative on stylistic similarities could arguably exist in the same universe because sure why not the story was about a salvage crew lured to a cruise liner haunted by evil spirits with the twist being that they're not evil and instead are trying to warn the crew that it's a trap set by an evil ghost to steal their souls granted the way I described it sounds stupid but go ship also had the perfect conditions for a compelling horror movie yet was also devoid of emotion or at least had this inept understanding of emotion resulting in the right setting plus the creepy concept acquitting to unengaging and rather obnoxious execution to put'em more bluntly back is the problem here he's undoubtedly surrounded by a talented production team but he clearly doesn't have the vision to make a decent horror movie and it's no surprise he never made another feature film after these two so can we get someone good to remake them like can we get Jim's wine after he's done with that fish man movie that would be grits right know that we have that out of the way let's talk about how great it is okay so grant is a bit hyperbolic but here's why I love talking about this movie the environmental and creature designs are horror movie perfection that's a strong opinion I know but getting the makeup effects guy and concept design guy responsible for some of the most notable properties in media always yields wonderful results simply put the ugly execution completely squanders what I sincerely believe are phenomenal opportunities to telly modernised interpretation of the generic haunted house story the concept behind the house is that it's actually a machine that imprisons the ghosts using containment spells and as cliched as it is to say it fundamentally becomes a character itself in fact there are actually more mean character fatalities as a result of the constantly shifting walls as opposed to the spirits at one point I thought the movie was being clever by using the irony that the house was more dangerous than the ghosts because after the lawyers death I was more concerned about someone losing a limb something I do think is intentional however is the persistent sense of disorientation caused by the moving labyrinth yes it feels like the characters are wandering dying the same three corridors due to budget constraints but the repetition becomes gradually claustrophobic and we are given no idea how close the characters are in relation to the ghosts or the accent the film clearly likes to linger on the house given the major technical accomplishment off it but the ghosts despite their passionate level of detail deserve far better treatment considering highly editing limits their screen time in a negative way the thing is they're like creepypastas before creepypastas and I'm not exaggerating when I say that they should be getting far greater appreciation than half the that the internet says is scary while other movies give you just one creature this movie gives you a dozen off them and while I'm obviously not going to go through each of them if you own the DVD or just search for it on youtube you'll notice that there's a special feature that dives into a brief backstory for each ghost and it just adds an even more frightening and tragic element to them yeah some of them are technically harmless and some are only given the vague illusion of threat but if we're picking favorites the juggernaut will always continue to unnerve me he's the first ghost we see in the film and he's the last to be released but there's a bizarre believability to him after all he was literally just an abnormally tall strong junkyard serial killer who took 50 rounds of Hamel to take down apparently out of all of them he's not the most narrative Lee interesting but you know that scene from mine hunter when Holden meets at Kemper it's that feeling of discomfort that crawls under my skin in a profound way that really stays with me especially when it kicks the at a Matthew Lillard later on none of these backstories are brought up in the film of course but like I said in my Dawn of the Dead video their narrative Lee stronger than what the movie presents so it's just weird to me that this material isn't worked into the film in some capacity there is a certain level of visual interpretation but if we're talking about the lore that this film establishes it's surprisingly detailed yet completely falls into the background so you have this ancient book called the Arcanum written by the astronomer Basilius while demonically possessed designed to capture and summon ghosts on details how to take control of the ocularist infernum which is an eye in hell that lets the user see the past future and those who are blessed or Damned and then there's the Necronomicon ex mortis which the wrong movie it even has its own language and symbolism so out of all the nonsense running about throwing passive-aggressive at each other this is the you choose to ignore I have never in all my years watching horror movie seen a greater missed opportunity all this information is either fragment that impartially throughout the movie or only find into special features but dare I said there is one element that makes this film just a little bit more special and if you haven't worked it I buy no it's Matthew Lillard for the record Lillard is my favorite actor and I was fortunate enough to meet him at the ademir Fringe Festival a few years back and naturally he couldn't understand my accent in this film Lillard doesn't just chew the scenery he absolutely devours it and every time he's on screen he grabs your attention with just high theatrical he is in my opinion Lillard is my favorite part of scream and it's largely due to how committed he is to the fun of it he can definitely pull off a subdued performance when appropriate but when you've got a concept like this he brings all the energy excitement done general competition made and that's not to describe how much additional caricature the lawyer and nany bring to balance out Lillard a distinctive performance shall we say I genuinely believe the film wants him to be the main protagonist because there seems to be a conflict over how much he pushes tonisha lose character out of the way who sidenote is supposed to be the emotional center piece of the film given his wife dies and the tragic house fire and he's haunted by the events as if to insinuate guilt but he's just a super dull character and that's a shame for shaloo given the following year he'd go on to win a Golden Globes psych and Emmy for his performance in Monk but along with F Murray Abraham you can tell he's phoning it in for a paycheck anyway back to Lillard to be killed I guarantee nothing so this character Dennis is a intellectually inconsistent sure the words intellect on consistency don't really have a place in this movie but I digress the film plays him off as sympathetic yet he shows himself to be a monstrous prick most of the time in fact there's zero logic as to why he's in the house or why he chose to wear a blazer under a jumpsuit but the extremity of both question shows you that you shouldn't read too much into it early in the film he's established to be a deeply troubled and tormented psychic who clearly hits the par he's been given as it's psychologically broken him and I will say it actually begins to justify the editing he's prone to seizures and migraines so the jarring provocative cuts make sense contextually to his character but to say the film is from his perspective is totally false which is a shame because I felt his suffering I think that's why there's an odd sense of relief in his death because as a spirit he seems relaxed composed and at peace that said I hate that it blatantly gives away the fact that he's going to die but because it's such an intoxicating performance it's the most indirect sense of dread I've ever experienced in a film so fair play to its mistakes so in conclusion just go watch the backstory video I love the whole idea behind this supernatural world and I think it goes without saying that there's definitely something intriguing buried underneath an unremarkable series of Chea sequences I made this video purely with the intent of highlighting this lost beauty that's otherwise overshadowed by plot holes shallow characters and dialogue and filmmaking that feels like scraping a knife and fork against a plate I respect that there is some level of conviction to a serious premise here and it just pains me to think of what it could have been under the rien of a different director family Kathy Bobby Oh go for this nanny I've had it this was not in the job description I quit everyone as always thank you so much for watching let me know your favorite horror guilty-pleasure in the comments below because it hey and might it might make me do a video on that as well who knows my patrons have voted for the next few videos so if you want to vote for other content you even want to get hourly access I don't even get the occasional bonus video please do consider supporting me over on patreon and if you'd like me talking a lot of shenanigans and talking nonsense follow me on Twitter and yeah until next time stay see if I know I forgot to say it last week yeah see you all very soon bye [Music]

Channel: Ryan Hollinger

Views: 616,825

Rating: 4.9266815 out of 5

Keywords: 13 ghosts, thirteen, ghosts, funny, scary, matthew lillard, best, worst, ryan hollinger, review, nostalgia, scooby doo, 1960, remake, house, haunted, making, featurette, hammer, jackal, history, explained, analysis, theory, editing, dennis, Juggernaut, william castle, documentary, video, essay, yms, nerdwriter, retrospective, easter eggs, what, why, who, how, lawyer, psychic, tony, scene, basement, ending, opening, music, ship, happened, glasses

Id: kC_NMQWn3HE

Length: 14min 49sec (889 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 16 2018