With Halloween fast approaching, rabid horror hounds are on the hunt for movies that will truly chill them to the bone. The classic spooky flick House on Haunted Hillhas been a go-to for decades, and its remake was a truly freaky update on the old-school scares. Combined, the two movies produced a host of hair-raising scenes that are still shocking today. 1t114t

With surprise masterpieces like Everything Everywhere All at Once gaining huge audiences just through word of mouth, it's interesting to look back and study all the ways that movies and their creators can bring people to the theater. One such method is to include a gimmick meant to enhance your viewing experience and make your trip to the theater worthwhile.

Return to House on Haunted Hill may not be the most famous horror sequel, but its video release does boast Blu-Ray's most ambitious extra feature. 1999's House on Haunted Hill, itself a remake of the 1959 William Castle horror film starring most iconic horror movie actor Vincent Price, was far from Dark Castle Entertainment's biggest hit, although it was their first release. It did decently at the box office, opening at #1 in the U.S, but as usual for Dark Castle's output, was a critical punching bag.

Vincent Price helped shepherd myriad low-budget horror movies in the 1950s and 1960s, becoming an icon of horror camp and the over-the-top spooky sensibility that helped provide a visual vocabulary to his era. Chief among his projects is the delightfully campy mystery of the supernatural film House on Haunted Hill.

Perhaps the most iconic horror actor of all time, Vincent Price is a legendary name, well-known for his work in the black and white film era and starring in classic favorites like House on Haunted Hill and The Fly. He also frequently starred in film adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe’s work, including classic favorites like Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven, Masque of the Red Death, Spirits of the Dead, and An Evening with Edgar Allen Poe in which Price reads aloud four of Poe’s stories accompanied by music.

Known primarily for his campy B-movie thrillers released during Hollywood’s Golden Age, William Castle is one of the era’s most recognizable directors. Beginning his movie career in the 1940s, Castle quickly developed a reputation for pumping out surprisingly good B-movies quickly and on a modest budget, establishing himself as an incredibly prolific filmmaker.

While Geoffrey Rush's appearance in the House On Haunted Hill remake comes across as an homage to Vincent Price, that was something of a happy accident. William Castle is a horror icon who directed several classic b-movies, in addition to producing 1968's Rosemary's Baby. Castle was known for his showmanship and using gimmicks during screenings of his films, such as The Tingler featuring seats that were rigged to vibrate when the titular monster "escaped" into movie theaters screening it, with the jolts istered giving the impression it was moving through the audience.

Dark Castle Entertainment is a production company formed in 1999 by Joel Silver (The Matrix), Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump), and Gilbert Adler (Tales From the Crypt) to focus on horror films. The name pays tribute to classic horror director William Castle and it was his films that the company’s creators wanted to revisit. However, after remaking House on Haunted Hill and Thirteen Ghosts, the company expanded to producing original films including a few outside of the horror genre.

Halloween is almost here! Can you smell it in the air?