"What do you mean it's a haunted house"

Paul Sims

In all honesty the film isn't too bad if you're into this sort of thing. You've just got to leave your brain outside the cinema before going in.

Scary Movie or Charlie's Angels.

The crude toilet humour was more miss than hit, but it's saving grace was some of the clever nods to some of Hollywood's blockbusters and especially a few obscure horror movies.

Now I like my horror movies and thought the recent Canadian release Ginger Snaps was brilliant. Genuine shocks mixed in with a wicked sense of black humour.

"Uuuugggggggghhhhhhhh ... that's disgusting"

When Nigel Bell reviewed Scary Movie he pointed out that the film was parodying films that were already themselves a parody of a genre. Films such as Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer.

The main parodies for this film are the recent remakes of The Haunting and The House On Haunted Hill, although along the way the Wayans brothers poke fun at The Exorcist, Titanic, and Charlie's Angels too.

Some noticeable performances go to Chris Elliott as a kind of Riff Raff (from Rocky Horror Picture Show) type butler called Hanson, with a severely deformed left hand which all the characters recoil from every time he produces it to shake.

"Let me give you a hand"

The on going 'hand' joke culminates over dinner. As Hanson is serving up the food, he manages to put his fingers and thumb in everyone's food.

Tim Curry as The Professor seems more to be going through the motions and I feel he's really better than this.

David Cross as the wheelchair bound Dwight has the best two scenes of the whole movie. When looking around the house for his comrades with Theo (played by a sexy Kathleen Robertson) he says "You look round down here, I'll take a look upstairs". With that he launches himself from his wheelchair at the stairs and starts struggling, hauling himself up (unsuccessfully I might add).

"You stay here, I'll check upstairs".

Later on in the film when he is pushed out of a window by a rather upset poltergeist he is left hanging there facing certain doom shouting for help. Suddenly help comes in the form of Hanson the butler. We hear his southern drawl saying "Here, take my hand", as, yes you guessed it, he reaches down with his deformed hand making Dwight recoil and fall off the ledge he's holding on to.

If you didn't like the first film then I don't think you're going to like this, so ...

But if like me you 'guiltily' enjoy a bit of banal humour then go for it.