Movie Scene
At the Movies: '13 Ghosts'

By Sheila Norman-Culp
Associated Press

Directed by Steve Beck and released by Warner Bros., "13 Ghosts" is rated R for gore, untimely deaths and some nudity. Running time: 90 minutes.

After one of the flat-out stupidest opening sequences in years, this remake of the 1960 William Castle horror film settles down into its true rhythm: a sprint from diabolical ghosts amid buckets of blood.

The plot, if you can call it that: A bad man (played by F. Murray Abraham) traps the souls of the unhappy dead to power his time/space machine — aptly named "The Eye of Hell" — so he can harness all the evil vibes in the universe. Of course, he needs the soul of a good man to really make it all work, so he tricks a nephew (Tony Shalhoub) and the nephew's two children into his Venus' flytrap of a house, and the race is on to save the world.

It does not give away too much of the ending to point out that the world is still here.

The one aspect of "13 Ghosts" that's truly memorable — and even worth the wade through the gore — is the glass house of horror itself. An open, shimmering design that evokes Frank Lloyd Wright, it's decorated with furniture that could have come from Leonardo Da Vinci's study. Old World meets New World. Glass walls are covered with handwritten Latin letters set among steel frames that snap shut like a prison. And there's a twirling time machine built with the most elegant geometry of interlocking wheels and levers.

To see such a light, open structure methodically snap into a chilling maze is a must for any architectural fan.

With silly dialogue — "There's no place like home," "If we get out of here alive I have got to get a pay raise," and the ever popular "I don't think we should split up" — "13 Ghosts" never forgets to mine the comic from the tragic.

"We are in the middle of a machine designed by the devil and powered by the dead," one ghosthunter (Embeth Davitz) declares solemnly.

It's hard not to laugh out loud.

Some of the actors have had more success in horror spoofs than in this straight-up gorefest, including Shannon Elizabeth, who co-starred in last year's "Scary Movie," and Matthew Lillard, who played a key role in the original "Scream" in 1996.

Elizabeth looks too old to play the family's teen-age daughter — she's 28 — but filmmakers probably thought they needed a sexy, curvaceous woman for their heavily teen-age male audience.

If your Halloween is not complete without the most shocking special effects a movie makeup staff can deliver, then "13 Ghosts" is waiting for you.