Five Movie Mansions You Don’t Want to Mess With
Jonathan Barkan
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Sponsored by RLJE and Monster Party
The setting of a horror movie plays a very large role in determining whether or not the audience is going to buy into the scares. There’s a reason why so many entries in the genre take place at a creepy cabin in the middle of the woods, at a summer camp, in a hospital/asylum, or in any of the other various location tropes that we’ve come to know and love over the years. It’s because they immediately set a tone where we understand the associated inherent risks. In a forest, you can trip and fall. In an asylum, you can get locked into a room against your will. These are the concerns that a horror film’s setting can impart upon viewers, which is why it’s so important to put your characters in a place where audiences fear for their lives.
One such setting is a creepy mansion. At first glance, what terrors can it offer? After all, it’s just an oversized house! Sure, it’s got bedrooms that you count in double digits and certainly more than 1.5 bathrooms but quantity doesn’t necessarily necessitate quality. But once you dig into the possibilities associated with a mansion versus a house, you realize that the amount of terrors increases exponentially. What becomes an easy-to-remember floor plan quickly becomes a maze. Hallways are longer and have more doors on either side, making for even more places where a killer can hide. The basement, always a creepy setting, becomes larger and more treacherous. Even the grounds outside take on a more sinister feel as help is all the farther away.
In RLJE’s Monster Party, “Three thieves plan a daring heist posing as waiters at a fancy Malibu mansion dinner party in hopes of paying off an urgent debt. When their plan goes horribly wrong, the trio realizes the dinner guests are not as innocent as they seem and their simple cash grab becomes a violent and desperate battle to get out of the house alive.”
Written and directed by Chris von Hoffmann, Monster Party stars Julian McMahon, Robin Tunney, Sam Strike, Erin Moriarty, Lance Reddick, Brandon Michael Hall, Diego Boneta, and Virginia Gardner.
The film hits limited theaters and VOD platforms today, so we wanted to help celebrate the release by highlighting some of our favorite horror movie mansions that you certainly wouldn’t want to mess with!
Winchester
Based on the actual Winchester Mansion, this place is, quite literally, a maze of epic proportions. Meant to hold the ghosts of all those killed by Winchester weapons, this location is reportedly one of the most haunted buildings on the planet. If that doesn’t dissuade you from wanting to see it, you can always book a tour.
House on Haunted Hill
If Steven Price’s deadly tricks don’t get ya, the darkness that infects the very heart and soul of this mansion certainly will! What makes this particular mansion so interesting is that we barely get to see its opulence. Rather, the main focus of the film is the creepy and atmospheric basement, which is packed to the brim with sadistic medical equipment, all meant to help “rehabilitate” the patients of the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane. Still, what can beat that wonderful oceanside view?
The Haunting
What better place to study sleep disorders than a creepy mansion, right Liam Neeson? You absolutely moron…
When a mansion has the ability to reconfigure itself so as to disorient and, yes, attack its inhabitants, you know that you’re in for a very unpleasant ride. So let’s agree that once there’s even the slightest inkling of something feeling a little “off”, we’ll all get the hell out of there…posthaste.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Taking a break from houses that will kill you (well, at least kinda), the biggest issue with Dr. Frankenfurter’s mansion isn’t the risk of death, it’s the near-certainty that you’re not going to get a good night’s rest! Seriously, keep it down out there! Or at least Time Warp me back to about 11 pm so I can get a solid eight hours of sleep!
Thirteen Ghosts
Alright, alright, let’s get back to people being in peril, shall we? And what better place to go than the disorienting, maddening, ever-shifting house from 2001’s Thirteen Ghosts? Not only is the house able to slice people in half but its ghostly inhabitants are certainly not happy to have new tenants. Plus, who wants to have to suffer ghosts performing a massive, loud ritual? Rah Digga certainly doesn’t, which is why she quit.
Got any other horror mansions we should avoid? Let us know in the comments!
Categorized:News
