Stars: F. Murray Abraham, Shannon Elizabeth, Embeth Davidtz, Matthew Lillard, Tony Shalhoub, Alec Roberts, Kathryn Anderson, J.R. Bourne, Rah Digga

Director: Steve Beck

Summary: When a family inherits a house from their eccentric uncle, they get much more than they bargained for. They become trapped in their new home by a powerful force that is determined to kill anyone that gets in it's way...

THIRTEEN GHOSTS, Steve Beck's feature debut, is the second recent remake (following THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL) of a film by 1950s and 60s camp horror king, William Castle. Arthur Kriticos (Tony Shalhoub) is a financially strapped widower struggling to raise two children, Kathy (Shannon Elizabeth) and Bobby (Alec Roberts), after losing his wife in a house fire. A stroke of apparent luck arrives when Arthur learns he has inherited a mansion from his mysterious Uncle Cyrus (F. Murray Abraham). Ecstatic, Arthur whisks the kids and nanny, Maggie (Rah Digga) off to their new home, a bizarre glass and steel structure with strange Latin inscriptions carved on the walls. The family is thrilled, until a psychic and former employee of Cyrus', Rafkin (Matthew Lillard), reveals that Arthur's departed uncle was a power hungry ghost collector who captured twelve spirits in the house. Arthur is skeptical. But when his children disappear, and Rafkin gives him a pair of special glasses that allow him to view the house's gruesome inhabitants, he believes. In Beck's special effects-laden gore-fest, the two men race against time to find the children as the house's strange internal mechanism begins sealing off the exits and freeing the angry ghosts.

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A by-the-numbers haunted house movie, albeit one with some neat twists, a couple of good performances and impressive design work, Thirteen Ghostsis a remake of the 1960 original by exploitation superstar William Castle. When ghost-hunter Cyrus (F Murray Abraham) dies his quietly decent widower nephew Arthur (Tony Shaloub) inherits his house. With almost infinite predictability, he, his teenage daughter (Shannon Elizabeth) and young son, as well as a rival ghost-hunter and Cyrus' untrustworthy tame psychic (Mathew Lillard), are trapped in the house, which is a glass labyrinth of sliding panels and shifting staircases. As the woman ghost-hunter Kalina helpfully explains, the house is "a machine designed by the devil and powered by the dead"--specifically by 12 ghosts, most of them murderously malevolent.

Shaloub and Lillard manage to make us care about this farrago and Abraham lends his few scenes his usual malignant authority, but the real star is the inventively designed house itself and the outrageous horror-comic makeup of the ghosts. This is a knowingly trashy film enjoyable on its own level.

On the DVD:Thirteen Ghostscomes with a short textual explanation of who Castle was and why he should get this sort of homage, a self-congratulatory making-of documentary and filmographies for cast and crew, as well as odd short featurettes explaining the imagined back-story for each of the ghosts. The disc has Dolby sound and is presented in a 1.85:1 widescreen ratio.--Roz Kaveney

Aspect Ratio:	1.85 Wide Screen, 16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Directors Commentary, 12 Featurettes, The Making Of Featurette, Filmographies, Trailer
Subtitles:	Dutch, English, Hindi, Italian
Year:	2001
Release Date:	September 5, 2006
Runtime:	87 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	C 8237169
Keywords:	General, Ghosts, Thirteen, Horror, Occult, Sci, Fi, Thir13en
Genre:	Horror/Occult