Thir13en Ghosts
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| Thir13en Ghosts | |
|---|---|
 Promotional poster |
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| Directed by | Steve Beck |
| Produced by | Dan Cracchiolo Steve Richards |
| Written by | Robb White Neal Marshall Stevens |
| Starring | Tony Shalhoub Embeth Davidtz Matthew Lillard Shannon Elizabeth F. Murray Abraham |
| Distributed by | - USA - Warner Bros. - non-USA - Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | October 23, 2001 |
| Running time | 91 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $20,000,000 (estimated) |
| Official website | |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Thir13en Ghosts (also known simply as Thirteen Ghosts or 13 Ghosts) is a 2001 horror film directed by Steve Beck. It is a remake of the 1960 film 13 Ghosts by William Castle. It follows the remake of another one of Castle's films, House on Haunted Hill.
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[edit] Plot
Following a house fire which claimed his wife, math teacher Arthur Kriticos (Tony Shalhoub), his two children Kathy (Shannon Elizabeth) and Bobby (Alec Roberts), and babysitter/nanny Maggie (Rah Digga) are struggling to make ends meet. In a stroke of luck he inherits his uncle Cyrus's (F. Murray Abraham) mansion. The interior of the mansion was designed with movable glass walls inscribed in Latin. Despite the strangeness, the family is excited, until Dennis Rafkin (Matthew Lillard), a neurotic psychic who used to work for Cyrus, reveals that Arthur's uncle was a ghost hunter and had imprisoned twelve spirits within the house. Arthur doesn't believe him until he witnesses a ghost attack his daughter, after the lawyer Ben Moss (JR Bourne), who accompanied them, triggers the mechanism which seals the house and releases the ghosts one at a time. Moss is killed when, after being confronted by one of the ghosts, he is sliced in half by an automated doorway. Arthur and Dennis, armed with special glasses that enable them to see the ghosts, attempt to rescue his two children, who have both mysteriously disappeared.
Kalina Oretzia (Embeth Davidtz) is a spirit releaser who claims to have entered the house through an opening when it shifted. She saves Arthur and his daughter from a ghost and explains Cyrus' plot behind the ghosts and the house. She explains that the house is in fact a machine, built for the sole purpose of opening the "Ocularis Infernum", a demonic device that allows its user to see into the future. It requires the twelve ghosts to do so, and there is a thirteenth "failsafe" ghost that could stop the process. She also explains that one of the ghosts, known as the Withered Lover, is Arthur's wife, who was killed by a fire.
Cyrus is revealed to be alive, having faked his death in order to lure Arthur to the house, and Kalina also turns out to be his secret partner and lover. Cyrus intends for Arthur to attempt to save his family by sacrificing himself and thus becoming the thirteenth ghost, but instead of stopping the machine, Cyrus intends this to bring his plan to fruition. Cyrus then kills Kalina by crushing her between two walls, and when Arthur is about to sacrifice himself, Maggie breaks part of the machine's inner workings, and the ghosts (except for the Withered Lover, Arthur's wife) turn on Cyrus, throwing him into a razor sharp gyro, slicing him apart. Arthur then is able to save his children, and all the ghosts leave, as the house is now open following an explosion (that shattered all the glass in the house), except for Arthur's wife, who stays to say goodbye to her family.
Tagline: Terror has multiplied/Misery Loves Company
[edit] The ghosts
The twelve ghosts which make up the Black Zodiac all have their own unique back story. Although these stories were not described in the film, on the DVD the production and make-up teams explain their guidelines. All the ghosts were contained in glass prisons, and were caught with the aid of the psychic Rafkin, who could locate them, and on the behalf of Cyrus.
1. The First Born Son (played by Michael Speidel)
The First Born Son is the ghost of Billy Michaels, a boy who had a thing for cowboy films. He never obeyed his parents about the cowboy films. One day, a neighbor found a real steel arrow in his parents' closet. He challenged Billy to a duel, with Billy using a toy gun. However his toy gun was no match for the Arrow which the neighbor used to kill Billy by shooting it to the back of his head. In death, Billy is in his cowboy suit with an arrow impaled in his head. If you look at him closely, you would see Billy holding an axe.
2. The Torso (played by Daniel Wesley)
The Torso is the ghost of a gambler called Jimmy "The Gambler" Gambino. Losing everything in a boxing match to Larry "The Finger" Vatello, he tried to welch on his bet and escape. The mob & Larry, who he owed money to, caught up with Gambino and cut him into several pieces, wrapping them in cellophane and dumping the corpse into the ocean. His ghost is just his torso, trying to walk around on its hands, while his head lies nearby screaming within the cellophane.
3. The Bound Woman (played by Laura Mennel)
The Bound Woman was a cheerleader named Susan LeGrow, who was born into a rich family and had a penchant for seducing men and tossing them away. After cheating on her boyfriend preceding a high school prom, she was strangled by him, and later found buried on the football field on the 50 yard line. After being arrested, the boyfriend was quoted as saying, "The bitch broke my heart, so I broke her neck." Her ghost is in her prom dress, hanging suspended by the strangling impliments.
4. The Withered Lover (played by Kathryn Anderson)
The Withered Lover is Jean Kriticos, the wife of Arthur. She tried to save her children in the house fire that changed her family's lives, and though successful, she was burned severely. She was hospitalised, and died in the hospital from her wounds. Her ghost is still in a hospital gown, carting an IV and showing fire wounds on her face. Unlike the other ghosts, she is not a vengeful spirit, electing to help her family rather than show malevolence.
5. The Torn Prince (played by Craig Olejnik)
The Torn Prince is the ghost of Royce Clayton, who was a gifted baseball star, albeit with attitude issues and a superiority complex. He challenged a greaser to a drag race and was killed when he lost control and crashed. His ghost carries a baseball bat, and half of his body is torn up by glass wounds.
6. The Angry Princess (played by Shawna Loyer)
The Angry Princess is Dana Newman, who despite being naturally beautiful, constantly believed she was ugly. This mentality was further fueled by a string of abusive boyfriends. Her money was constantly spent at a cosmetic surgery clinic, accepting numerous cosmetic surgeries on herself for various ailments and malformations that only she could see. It even got to the point where she had her own private plastic surgeon on call 24/7. One night, in an attempt to fix some unseen blemish, she attempted plastic surgery on herself. She failed horribly, blinding herself in one eye and permanently mutilating herself beyond saving. In despair, she crawled into a bath and sliced herself all over her body with a butcher knife until she bled to death. When she was found, they said that she was as beautiful in death as she was in life. Her ghost still has the butcher knife she killed herself with.
In the scene when she appears in the bathroom, the phrase "I'm sorry" is visible on the floor in blood; subtitles also reveal that the blurred, hissing speech that announces her arrival is her whispering "I'm sorry." This was written on her suicide note.
7. The Pilgrimess (played by Xantha Radley)
The Pilgrimess is the ghost of Isabella Smith, an English woman who traveled across the Atlantic and settled in New England. She was a separatist, and this isolated her from the other townsfolk. She was found guilty of witchcraft, and sentenced to the stocks (pillory) with no food or drink until she died. As a ghost, she is still locked into her stocks.
8. & 9. The Great Child and The Dire Mother (played by C. Ernst Harth and Laurie Soper)
The Dire Mother is the ghost of Margaret Shelburne, who was an attraction in a carnival due to her being only three feet tall. She was raped by the "Tall Man," another carnival freak, and bore a child, Harold, who eventually weighed over 300 pounds (136 kg).
Harold was spoiled by his mother, keeping his childlike brain as he grew older. She raised him to be her protector and to exact revenge on the other members of the carnival who kidnapped her as a joke. When he caught up with the culprits he found that his mother had accidentally suffocated to death in the bag that she was kept in. Harold, in a rage, took an axe and killed all the circus freaks, who murdered her. Later, when the owner of the carnival found out what Harold had done he ordered a mob of people to tear Harold apart. Their ghosts are always together, and Harold still wields the axe.
An alternate version of the story is told in the DVD commentary. It was said that his death was caused by him choking on some food. Upon his death he fell on his mother and she couldn't lift him off of her, and that's what caused her suffocation. This would explain why he has food all over his bib in ghost form, but it would not give credence to his wielding of an axe.
10. The Hammer (played by Herbert Duncanson)
The Hammer is the ghost of a blacksmith, George Markley, who lived in a small town in the 1890s. He was threatened to be driven out of town after wrongfully being accused of stealing by a man named Nathan. Knowing he was innocent, he refused to leave and stayed in town. One day, George's wife and kids were on their way home from the market when Nathan and some of his friends attacked and brutally murdered them. Enraged, George tracked down the people responsible for killing his wife and kids and hammered them to death. The other townsfolk captured him, and they drove railroad spikes into his body until he died. They also cut off his hand, replacing it with the head of his sledgehammer, which remains with his ghost and makes him very dangerous.
11. The Jackal (played by Shayne Wyler)
The Jackal is Ryan Kuhn, a self-admitted mental patient during the early 20th century with a penchant for attacking women. The doctors at the hospital did little to treat his mental condition and simply locked him in a padded room. After years of imprisonment, he went completely insane and scratched at the walls so violently that his fingernails were ripped completely off. The doctors permanently put him in a straitjacket, and when he chewed the straightjacket and escaped, the doctors had a metal cage locked around his head. After years of this, he grew deformed and reviled human contact. He was the only victim of a fire that broke out in the asylum; he chose to stay behind and meet, what he believed, to be his deserved fate. As a ghost, his arms are free from his jacket, and there is a hole chewed in the front of his cage, showing that he may have escaped his bindings again sometime before the fire.
12. The Juggernaut (played by John DeSantis)
The Juggernaut was a serial killer named Horace "Breaker" Mahoney. Standing at seven feet tall, he towed broken-down motorists to his junkyard where he murdered them, tearing them apart with his bare hands and feeding them to his dogs. Being impossible to take on in close combat, his pursuers opted for the safer method, and brought him down in a hail of bullets from all sorts of guns. When he finally went down, they shot him through the forehead, just to be safe. His ghost still shows bullet holes all over his clothing, and the wound that finished him.
[edit] Cast
For the cast of the individual ghosts, see above
- Tony Shalhoub — Arthur Kriticos
- Embeth Davidtz — Kalina Oretzia
- Matthew Lillard — Dennis Rafkin
- Shannon Elizabeth — Kathy Kriticos
- Alec Roberts — Robert 'Bobby' Kriticos
- JR Bourne — Benjamin Moss
- Rah Digga — Maggie Bess
- F. Murray Abraham — Cyrus Kriticos
- Matthew Harrison — Damon
- Jacob Rupp — Cyrus' Assistant
