Imagine this horror scenario. It’s a hot summers day, and your mouth is drier than an oven made from sand. There’s an ice cream truck roughly 35 metres away from where you are standing, and you have £1.50 in your pocket – just enough for a thirst-quenching ice lolly of some description. Maybe a cider flavoured one – or a strawberry split… Anyway, rather than go directly to the ice cream truck, you throw the money into the mouth of a passing border collie, press your nose against a tree, shout: “I am the god of hellfire – and I bring you fire!” strip to your underclothes, dance a dainty jig, run to the ice cream truck and lick the raspberry sauce bottle in a suggestive manner and then fart out a buttercup. Only then do you retrieve your money and return to the truck, only to find that you don’t really want an ice lolly after all.

***YER BASIC PLOT***
Meet Uncle Cyrus Kriticos (F Murray Abraham). Ol’ Cyrus seems to be tagging along with a jumped up bunch of ghost busters, rounded out by psychic wacko Dennis (Matthew “LOOK I DO FUNNY FACES” Lillard). These crazy cats are trying to capture a naughty ghost who likes to murderlise people in entertaining and gory fashion, which is achieved, not without cost. Most of the team – including Cyrus - are deaded, and for what? Dennis is curious to learn why Cyrus needed 13 ghosts. Especially as the current addition is only number 12...

So, with their hearts going ping! in joy and glee, the family (plus maid in tow for comic relief) wend their greedy way to the huge house. Once there, they meet an electrical worker who looks suspiciously like psychic Dennis… mainly because it is. But they don’t know that. Anyhoo, the gang end up inside the house, where their greedy little eyes bulge at the luxuriousness of their new abode. They don’t even wonder why the walls are all made of glass and have Latin writing all over them. Still, you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, eh? They discover some strange glasses, which when worn make the Latin writings go all shiny. Problem is, they also allow the wearer to see the naughty ghosts locked up in the basement. Down to the basement is where the lawyer must go to get his cash, but during his search for the moolah, he triggers a mechanism that starts to release the ghosts. As events rapidly shape themselves into a pear, Dennis and the family, plus “just happened to be there” ghost-liberator Kalina (Embeth Davidtz) must try not to get fiddled with by the nasty spirits. Not to mention discover who the 13th ghost could be…
* * * * *

***IF IT AIN’T BROKE…***
The reason old horror movies got away with so much is because they had limited SFX technology and imaginative plotting. This is a pretty good concept for a movie – the house is actually a machine “designed by the devil and powered by the dead”. The whole point of releasing the ghosts is so they can open an all-seeing eye that resides in hell, so the future can be seen through it. Like I say, a damn good concept, which is woefully explained in a hurried piece of exposition - and all too readily accepted by the folks trapped within this contraption. Rather than building tension through a decent score and subtlety, this seems to have been run through the Bruckheimer blender. At any point where a ghost is on the loose and pursuing the inheritors, the movie slams into jump-cut hell, with POINTLESS LOUD STABS OF SOUND and BIG FLASHING LIGHTS. The editing is as competent as an inebriated mule trying to steer a milk float – at times the movie decides to cut away from the action and drift around the halls of the house/machine for a minute or so, whilst reverse-sound voices echo around you. Why? I don’t even think the director knows.

***DIDN’T WE MEET BEFORE?***
Oh yeah, this is rife with all the sh*t you’ve seen before in these movies. The central machine of the house made me think “Event Horizon” – a far better gore-fest. The ghosts are – as Total Film says – a poor man’s Cenobites from “Hellraiser”. There’s a nifty line in dire gags – when the lawyer meets his end someone says “did the lawyer split?” This becomes funny – trust me. What doesn’t is the hackneyed dialogue, I Spy fans get ready to check these off your list:

***BORED NOW…***
If you enjoy movies with more holes in the plot than there are sugar fragments on a delicious donut, go for it. This is by no means as gut-wrenchingly awful as “The Convent” (Coolio helps fight demons who have blood that glows under UV lights that seem to be on all the time), but a trip to the cinema to take this in would be recommended under 2 circumstances. One – wear some dark glasses so you protect your eyes and your anonymity. Two – p*ssed as a f**ker with your friends at a midnight screening. Video will improve this because you can turn the sound down, fast forward the dull bits and watch the 4.78435 minutes worth of cool stuff and listen to the best line in the movie, when Tony Shaloub mis-hears Matt Lillard’s job description. You can also throw the video out the window into a passing bus and hope it careers off a cliff, thus destroying your memory of this turgid piece of averageness forever and creating a satisfying explosion. Or just don’t bother watching it, y’know, whatever’s easier for you.

***ADDENDUM***
I have since seen the original William Castle version of this flick, Sky were showing it and I tuned in halfay through. Now, seeing as Castle movies were reliant on in-theatre gimmickry to shock the audience (sometimes literally!), a legend flashed onto the screen occasionally that read "Use Viewer." The original came with special glasses to enable the audience to see the ghosties, you see? This was distracting, but I watched on. Sadly, it was even more dire than the remake, with stiff acting, a quite different plot and the old "teacup on a string" ghost effects. The atmosphere was as tense as a 90 year old man's phallus on christmas day. Avoid also. P$