THE HAUNTED MANSION

US, 2003, 87 minutes, Colour.
Eddie Murphy, Terence Stamp, Nathanial Parker, Marsha Thomason, Jennifer Tilley, Wallace Shawn, Dina Waters, Marc John Jefferies, Aree Davis.
Directed by Rob Minkoff.

This is a movie equivalent of going through the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyworld. It has recreated the mansion with extraordinary attention to detail so that we share the scares that the Evers family experience as they get caught up in the goings on.

Eddie Murphy and Marsha Thomason are real estate agents with a flair for their job. They get an offer they should have refused and find themselves and their two children in a decaying mansion inhabited by ghosts. Chief ghost is a very British butler played with tongue rolling relish by Terence Stamp. It is his plot to substitute Mrs Evers for the bride of the master of the house both of whom, disappointed in love, killed themselves. Also in the house are some helpful servants and the head of a woman in a crystal bowl who has all sorts of advice like going into the mausoleum and opening a coffin to find a mysterious key.

The film is brief so most of it is taken up with scary happenings in the house, rather like a ghost train ride on a multi-million dollar scale. A mixture of laughs and scares with Eddie Murphy becoming a Disneyesque screen father.

1. The popularity of Eddie Murphy in this kind of family entertainment? A family story? In a Disney ride?

2. The popularity of the Disney ride, Disneyland style? The frights, the costumes and décor, the story?

3. The focus on Jim and his work, his sales patter selling the house? His phone calls? The restaurant, people asking him to sell their homes? Successful business? His wife and her success? The decision to take a break, her being upset with him, going on the weekend with the children? The sketch of his wife Sara, the children, Michael and Megan?

4. Finding the mansion, the prologue and the people in the 19th century dancing, the air of mystery, the young man going to the gate and the face appearing from the house? The audience prepared for a haunted mansion? The gates locked, the gates mysteriously opening, the family going in, knocking on the door and being welcomed?

5. The house itself, the rooms, the space, the antiquity? The library, the face in the bowl? The mausoleum, the crypt, the coffins? The water and the buried skeletons? The ballroom? The exteriors? The musical score and its eeriness?

6. The special effects, the walls, the skeletons, the zombies, the head in the bowl? The eerie house, the characters dissolving in light or dust? Audience enjoyment of the scares, the characters, the mystery?

7. Gracey and his hanging himself, Elizabeth, his fiancee, allegedly killing herself? The butler Ramsley and his control of the household? Edward Gracey and his waiting for his wife to return? Ramsley engineering the phone call for the Evers family to come? The taking of Sara, her resembling Elizabeth? Her being groomed for the wedding? Her husband and children searching for her? Her being overcome by Ramsley, dressing in the gown, going through the ritual of the wedding, Ramsley presiding? Drinking from the cup with the poison? Her collapse, the release of Elizabeth and her being reunited with Edward? Light and Sara's recovery and the happy reconciliation with her family?

8. Edward, aristocrat, his life in the house, marrying Elizabeth, her death, the letter and its being concealed, Ramsley poisoning her, not wanting anything to change? His hanging himself, his anger against Ramsley?

9. Ramsley, Terence Stamp's appearance and vocal style, sinister? Leading Jim on, confronting him? The revelation of the truth, his control, the ceremony, his disappearing and falling into Hell?

10. Jim and the children, the face in the bowl, the retainer and the maid, their helping Jim to find the key, the continued puzzles, the quest? Dropping the key in the water, Megan diving to find it? Continuing through the house, the children locked in the trunk, Jim and his being expelled from the house? The face telling him to continue, driving the car into the mansion and confronting the villains and rescuing his wife? Liberating his children?

11. The happy ending, the gift of the house, their future assured?

12. The characters in the film sharing the same kind of experience as visitors to Disneyland going through the haunted mansion, the audience sharing this experience?