Evelyn demands that her husband rent the still-standing Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane - a monolithic art deco edifice atop a spooky oceanside hill - so she can throw a birthday party there. Among the fascinated viewers: Evelyn Price (Famke Janssen), Stephen’s shamelessly decadent (and flagrantly unfaithful) trophy wife.
In a clever segue, some of the grisly footage is aired more than six decades later on a true-crime TV series. Riot sequence climaxes with the mad doctor and his nurses getting a taste of their own medicine while a home-movie camera records the horror. Vannacutt (Jeffrey Combs) and his associates were especially fond of operating on patients without using an anesthetic.
Remake begins on a genuinely unsettling note, as the inmates of a Depression-era insane asylum launch a bloody rebellion against the sadistic staffers who have long tormented them. Even more than the name change, Geoffrey Rush’s slyly allusive performance comes off as a wink-wink homage to the original pic’s star. In this version, the suavely sardonic host - known as Frederick Loren back when he was played by Vincent Price - is Stephen Price, the multimillionaire owner-designer of frightfully exciting amusement parks. Screenwriter Dick Beebe recycles a few key plot elements from Robb White’s 1958 scenario, but greatly expands upon the guests-in-a-haunted-house premise.