House on Haunted Hill

House on Haunted Hill   

                                  By

                              Dick Beebe

                               Story by

                      Dick Beebe & William Malone

                    Adapted from the screenplay by

                              Robb White

                                    Blue Revisions: 13 Jan 1999
                                    Production Draft: 2 December 1998

     NOTE: THE HARD COPY OF THIS SCRIPTS CONTAINED SCENE NUMBERS.
     THEY HAVE BEEN REMOVED FOR THIS SOFT COPY.

     FADE IN:

     BLACK SCREEN

     And in the darkness, a TICKING sound is heard. Soft and
     steady -- soothing -- and then a BANG!

                                                       SMASH UP ON:

     INT. HOSPITAL - BASEMENT NURSE'S STATION - NIGHT

     A HAND punching a CARD into the huge, ticking TIME CLOCK on
     the wall: 7:00 a.m.

     PULL BACK TO REVEAL - A bleary-eyed MALE NURSE beginning
     his day. Alone inside a small wood and glass cubicle, he
     rips off yesterday's day-at-a-time calendar page, revealing
     today's date: October 11, 1931.

     Goes to the Victrola inside the cubicle. Cranks the turntable
     up to speed. Puts the huge needle down on a spinning 78: we
     hear the song crackling through the empty halls of the
     hospital -- depression-era Muzak: Horace Heidt & His Musical
     Knight's "Keep Your Sunny Side Up"

     The Nurse sharpens the last of a half-dozen pencils to needle-
     points, sits down at his desk, and begins the tedium of
     jotting entries into a tall stack of Patient Records.

     Beat. And then he hears a soft, almost paw-like tapping on
     the glass. He looks up: a PATIENT with a heavily bandaged
     head is standing there, his eyes as dull and lifeless as
     marbles.

     The Nurse waves the Patient away. Goes back to his work.
     Beat. And then the tapping is heard again. The Nurse snaps
     his head up, about to bark at the man -- but the words stop
     dead on his tongue:

     Standing on the other side of the glass are now two dozen
     patients. Likewise bandaged, staring silent and dead-eyed at
     him.

     Unnerved, the Nurse's finger slowly stretches towards a
     buzzer-button just below the desk-top. It never makes it.
     Because --

     A HAND - lashes into frame and grabs the Nurse's fingers. The
     Nurse looks up.

     In addition to the mass of Patients outside the cubicle,
     there are now six of them inside it, surrounding him. The
     Nurse's eyes shoot to the still-locked doors of the cubicle,
     and he utters one confused word --

                           MALE NURSE
                 -- how -- ?

      -- and then someone rams all six of his needle-sharp pencils
     eraser-deep into his throat.

     The Nurse gurgles and staggers -- falls back against the
     Victrola, hitting the turntable crank as he goes down,
     causing it to start spinning like a pinwheel.

     "Keep Your Sunny Side Up" now blares through the halls triple-
     time, sounding like a thousand manic chipmunks. And to the
     beat of that tune, the Patients smash the CONTROL PANEL
     inside the cubicle until it shorts-out and explodes! Which
     pops open

     INT. PATIENT CELLS -

     - and sends dozens more wild, raving Humans rampaging through
     the hospital, while EVERY ELECTRIC LIGHT in the place strobes
     maniacally, and ORDERLIES & OTHER NURSES are chased down like
     rabbits by Patients and beaten to pulp, and

     INT. "THERAPY" ROOMS -

     - filled with devices that look straight out of the Spanish
     Inquisition are trashed to toothpicks, and some of the STAFF
     are forced into devices and tortured as PATIENT RECORDS are
     spindled and ignited -- flaming torches used to set
     everything in the place ablaze, and A WOLFPACK OF PATIENTS
     kamikaze down-

     INT. CORRIDOR - CONTINUOUS

      -- fling open a set of double doors marked "Cerebral
     Hygiene," shouting: "Vannacutt!" And we see --

     INT. CEREBRAL HYGIENE ROOM - CONTINUOUS

      -- two people in surgical scrubs: the moustached Doctor
     named VANNACUTT and a FEMALE NURSE wielding a 16mm camera. As
     the two whip around, startled by the shouts, we see the
     object of their ministrations: A PATIENT on a gurney being
     filmed as his internal organs are slowly and methodically
     extracted -- while still alive.

     And then all hell breaks loose as the WOLF PACK descends:

     DR. VANNACUTT manages to yank down a LEVER on the wall
     labeled "Lockdown" before he's swallowed by the Mob;

     From somewhere in the house, we hear heavy gear, cables and
     doors loudly shutting down the house.

     The NURSE is clubbed to the floor with her own camera. And
     amidst all the vengeful shouts and wails, a curious thing
     happens:

     As one of the Patients picks up the Nurse's blood-spattered
     camera and puts it to his eye, the image on screen abruptly

                                                      SMASHES TO:

     INT. CEREBRAL HYGIENE ROOM - CONTINUED - GRAINY BLACK & WHITE

      -- and dead silence -- and we find ourselves watching old
     soundless 16mm footage of what happened next: a blur of
     scalpels and saws as the Patients viciously vivisect
     Vannacutt and Nurse, who've been crammed together on that
     same gurney. The B&W CAMERA PUSHES IN TIGHT on Vannacutt's
     screaming maw -- and suddenly we hear SOUND AGAIN --

      -- but, for some reason, it's not a human cry, but the
     CROWING OF A ROOSTER -- and when we PULL BACK OUT we see that
     what we're now watching is the Crowing Rooster and four
     blazing camera lenses that was the logo of the old PATHE
     NEWSREEL. The stentorian VOICE OF PATHE booms OVER:

                           VOICE OF PATHE
                October 11, 1931: Los Angeles!

     Dithering, Bernard Herrmann-like strings swell up.

                                                       CUT TO (B&W)

     A PATHE NEWS HEADLINE CARD: "HOSPITAL OF HORROR!"

                                                       CUT TO (B&W)

     EXT. THE HOUSE - NIGHT - NEWSREEL FOOTAGE

     A WHIPLASH PAN from the ocean to a GRANITE BUILDING high atop
     the Pacific Palisades. Smoke and flames shoot from every
     window and door as Firemen look on helplessly.

                           VOICE OF PATHE
                A conflagration of Biblical
                proportions incinerates nearly
                everything and every one inside
                what was once Tinsel Town's most
                celebrated psychiatric facility:
                The Vannacutt Neuropathic
                Institute. But the secret this
                inferno burned free was far more
                frlghtening than any picture that
                Hollywood could ever produce!

                                                      CUT TO (B&W):

     EXT. THE HOUSE - MORNING - NEWSREEL FOOTAGE

     L.A. Sheriff's and Coroner's Investigators poking through the
     Institute....

     INT. THE HOUSE - VARIOUS ROOMS - MORNING - NEWSREEL FOOTAGE

     QUICK CUTS OF GRUESOME IMAGES:

      -- BODIES manacled to walls; rows of SKULLS riddled with
     drill-holes; a huge VAT filled with blood

                           VOICE OF PATHE
                 -- a Sanitarium of Slaughter supervised
                by a surgeon gone mad --

                                                       CUT TO (B&W)

     ECU -- a formal PHOTOGRAPH of the man himself, mustache
     waxed, eyes intense as a mesmerist's, seeming to stare a hole
     right through us --

                           VOICE OF PATHE
                 -- Richard Benjamin Vannacutt --

     and --

     INT. LIMBO SET -

      -- suddenly, stepping right through VANNACUTT'S FACE and
     strolling solemnly towards us in bright video-taped color is:

     CHRISTOPHER LEE. He addresses the CAMERA:

                           CHRISTOPHER LEE
                 -- murdered by his own patients before
                every one of them perished in the
                blaze. Ironically, the only humans
                to escape the conflagration --

      -- behind him, we see SILENT NEWSREEL FOOTAGE of five
     people.

     EXT. THE HOUSE - MORNING (CHYRON INERT)

      -- three ORDERLIES, two NURSES -- clothes and faces sooty
     and singed, each coughing up a storm as they're treated at
     the scene --

                           CHRISTOPHER LEE
                 -- were five of Vannacutt's equally
                sadistic Staff, all of whom, until the
                day they died, insisting that they were
                only following "Doctor's Orders."

     BACK TO SCENE

     The SCREEN behind him goes black.

                           CHRISTOPHER LEE
                But our story doesn't end there. For,
                some years later, the gutted interior
                of the Institute was refurbished as a
                private residence. It has yet to be
                inhabited. Many say because the spirits
                of the vile Vannacutt and his Victims
                still walk the long corridors inside
                this place now known, simply, as: "The
                House On Haunted Hill."

     A sudden SMASH of shrill, discordant HORNS scares us out of
     our skin -- and behind Mr. Lee, an IMAGE is seen again:

     EXT. THE HOUSE - NIGHT (TO BE SHOT AS PART OF A LATER SCENE)

     ...high atop a bluff, swaddled in shadows cast by a full moon
     that seems to have one of Vannacutt's eyes piercing down on
     it.

                           WOMAN'S VOICE (O.S.)
                Charming.

     INT. ROLLS ROYCE LIMOUSINE - TRAVELING - DAY

     CAMERA PULLS BACK FROM A SMALL WALNUT SHROUDED TELEVISION
     SET... revealing a savagely beautiful young woman, EVELYN
     STOCKARD-PRICE, sitting like the queen of fucking-England in
     the back of her limousine. She's been watching all this on
     the 12" TV set inside the limousine, a look of perverse
     amusement on her face.