Well, I really loved the original. I know that this can’t live up to that one visually, but it is always good to know your horror roots.
We have the Zorba family made up of Buck (son), Medea (daughter), Hilda (wife), and Cyrus (dad), who inherits a house from his dead uncle. There’s a lawyer who helps them with this, Benjamin Rush. Then of course the maid, Elaine Zacharides, who is played by, Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West.
So basically, there are 13 Ghosts, and the maid knows about stuff. Ben presumably killed the uncle and was trying to find the money. he schemed Buck to help him find it, but in the end, the ghosts ended up taking Ben. The family kept the money and the maid tells Buck that the ghosts will come back at some point.
People genuinely, truly believe that this is better than the original? That’s really a thing. I am struggling to understand how this would prove better in any conceivable way aside from nostalgia. The remake is vastly superior, is actually a horror, nowhere near as hokey as this. Like, 2 separate movies, which is fine, but don’t try to convince me that this one is better in any sense of the word. That’s just plain foolish. The acting was adequate, but the ghosts were absolutely abysmal. Yes, I am aware that they were limited, so this was the best they could do then, and I appreciate it, but meh. The best part of the whole film was the maid. Everything else was take it or leave it territory. It’s not a bad film, but it’s certainly not something I would ever want to re-watch, in all honesty.
Rating – 4.0 when taking into consideration the time period that it was made, but it doesn’t hold up nowadays all that well. Before you want to bad mouth me, I am a huge fan of the original Twilight Zone, so I am a fan of the time frame, just not the film.
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