Stephen King's House of Doom
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Stephen King's House of Doom |
| Original title | Stephen King's Rose Red |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2002 |
| length | 245 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Craig R. Baxley |
| script | Stephen King |
| production |
Thomas H. Brodek Mark Carliner Bruce Dunn Stephen King Robert F. Philips |
| music | Gary Chang |
| camera | David Connell |
| cut | Sonny Baskin |
| occupation | |
| |
Stephen King's Rose Red is a three-part American miniseries directed by Craig R. Baxley from 2002. The complex screenplay was written by Stephen King .
action
prehistory
In 1906 the billionaire and oil magnate John Rimbauer had a gigantic mansion built near Seattle for his wife Ellen , which was intended as a wedding present. Ellen is delighted and baptizes the future mansion “Rose Red”. John leaves the organization and implementation of the construction project to his business partners George Meador and Douglas Posey. The Rimbauers themselves travel to Africa , where Ellen falls seriously ill. A young local woman named Sukeena nurses her back to health.
In the meantime, strange "accidents" occur during the construction of Rose Red: First, foreman Harry Corbin shoots one of his workers for no apparent reason. Another worker suffocates on an apple, a third is literally beheaded by a shattered pane of glass and a fourth falls from the roof gable.
When the Rimbauers return to Rose Red, the incident is hidden from them. Ellen took Sukeena with her because the two women became friends. Sukeena stands by Ellen when John repeatedly has wild affairs with other women. At this time, Ellen is repeatedly haunted by the strange "fever". In 1909 Ellen gave birth to little Adam, in 1911 she gave birth to April. The girl is born with a withered arm. The recurring fever attacks mean that Ellen has become a covetous target for a certain "Mme Stravinsky", an alleged medium who is in truth a fraudulent known and wanted by the police. Her name is actually Cora Fry. After all, Sukeena is suspicious. But at the last seance , Mrs. Fry makes a true prophecy that says that Ellen must never stop growing and expanding Rose Red. For that she would live forever and never fall ill again.
Ellen acts as she is told and in fact she will never again be struck by any ailments. Instead, the house seems to "fall ill", because from now on the incidents in Rose Red pile up:
- The esteemed film and theater diva Deanna Petrie was the first to disappear at a gala party in 1916. She was last seen in the lounge , where she admired a huge globe.
- A little later, a domestic worker is injured and found in shock on the back of a pick-up truck.
- In 1917 John's business partner Douglas Posey hanged himself in front of the little Rimbauer children. He wanted revenge for John for removing him from the contract.
- In the same year, little April disappears while playing in the kitchen. Sukeena had taken her eyes off her for just twenty seconds. The local police suspect Sukeena of the murder but, despite interrogation and torture, cannot prove that she was involved in April's disappearance and let Sukeena go.
- George Meador died in 1919 when he was drunk walking through the winter garden and was attacked by a swarm of bees. Anaphylactic shock is found to be the cause of death .
- In 1926, John Rimbauer fell out of the window of the south tower. Although the doctor certifies "suicide" as the cause of death, rumors are circulating in town that John either went mad and accidentally fell out of the window, or committed suicide because of his many love affairs.
- In 1928 Sukeena disappears. She was last seen in the property's conservatory.
- And in 1950 Ellen Rimbauer disappears without a trace. When questioned later, a domestic worker swears she saw Ellen walking towards the mirror library. Ellen is said to have been almost blind at the time.
With the "death" of Ellen Rimbauer, the company that had continued to run her ends. The only survivor of the Rimbauer family, Adam, keeps the house and has the property taken care of by the staff. At the time, employees claim they kept hearing the noises of handicrafts even though no artisans had been appointed. In the late 1970s, Rose Red served as a show object for tourists due to its architectural curiosities . This ends after an elderly lady named Liza Albert disappears during one such tour in 1972 and the police only find her torn and blood-encrusted handbag.
In the 1990s, a team of scientists ventured into the property to investigate the alleged haunted apparitions. They think they hear something like echoing screams, but the tape recordings are quite unspectacular and one comes to the conclusion that the noises must come from the underground water and drainage pipes, which are ancient and have never been replaced. Rose Red, however, is falling into disrepair as nobody dares to enter the property anymore.
Bulk
The main part takes place in 2001. The young Joyce Reardon is a lecturer in parapsychology at Beaumont University in Seattle . She is particularly fascinated by Rose Red's past and would like to conduct an experiment in the property to prove that there are psychic phenomena .
In order to advance her project, she charms the only surviving heir of the Rimbauers, Steven. He is actually not at all enthusiastic about Rose Red and would like to have the manor house demolished. However, Joyce can persuade him to take part in the experiment. The experiment envisages bringing five media- savvy people to Rose Red in order to - if it should actually be haunted - to lure the phenomena out of reserve. These mediums are: the automatic writer Cathy Kramer, the psychometrician Pam Asbury, the post-cognitively inclined Emery Waterman, the telepath Nick Hardaway and the precognitively capable Victor Kadinsky. The highlight among the chosen ones is the telekinetically gifted, autistic adolescent Annie Wheaton, who is only allowed to go to Rose Red with her older sister Rachel.
At the same time, Joyce has massive problems with her superior, the arrogant university director Dr. Karl Miller. He thinks Joyce's work is a complete waste of time and money and wants to fire Joyce as soon as possible. To do this, however, he needs a reason for resignation, and the obscure university journalist Kevin Bollinger is supposed to get him that. The first attempt fails, so Dr. Miller tells Kevin to also go to Rose Red and continue spying on Joyce and her team. There, Kevin is lured into the house by Sukeena and carried off by something invisible.
A little later, Joyce and her team members arrive in Rose Red. Joyce leads the team through the house, where you meet the first appearances in Rose Red: the ghost of April Rimbauer and an illusionary wall. Then you can relax in the lounge. It will soon be night and the team members will go to their rooms. Shortly thereafter, Cathy is frightened by an apparition, her duvet seems to be moving. Pam begins to sleepwalk and drowns in the garden pond. Meanwhile, Annie is woken up by April's ghost, but when Rachel gets up, the ghost is gone. Emery has nightmares about the decomposing body of Kevin Bollinger.
The next day, the team discovered that Rose Red continued to change and was keen to kill the visitors. Viktor is lured into the garden by a ghostly apparition of Pam and so frightened that he has a heart attack. Emery refuses to help him because he thinks Viktor is a ghost. Viktor dies, Nick cannot intervene in time either. The other team members don't even manage to open windows and doors. And to make matters worse, neither cell phones nor telephones work, calling for help is impossible. However, when Annie passes out, the windows reopen and the team concludes that the house is manipulating Annie by tapping into her telekinetic powers and then using them against the team.
Meanwhile, Emery's mother, Mrs. Waterman, is getting hysterical herself because Emery won't call her despite promising her to. She gets into her car and drives to Rose Red. There she meets Dr. Karl Miller. This in turn wants to pick up Kevin after listening to a message on the answering machine that Kevin was found dead. Mrs. Waterman slams on the brakes when someone walks in front of her car and Dr. Miller rams her vehicle. Mrs. Waterman runs into the overgrown garden because she thinks she recognized Emery. Dr. Miller, in turn, goes after her to find out her insurance number. Both get lost and Mrs. Waterman is surprised by Kevin's ghost, incapacitated and dragged into the house. Meanwhile, Dr. Miller first lured deeper into the garden by Sukeena and killed there by Kevin. When Annie regains consciousness and all doors and windows close again, Emery loses four of his fingers when the door slams.
The situation comes to a head when Cathy goes into the kitchen and is attacked there by the now insane Mrs. Waterman. Fortunately, Nick rushes to help and both of them can overwhelm the woman. They leave her tied up, whereupon Sukeena appears and pulls Mrs. Waterman into the wine cellar. Meanwhile, Nick is attacked by Ellen Rimbauer's ghost. Cathy gets lost in her panic and gets into the south tower of the house. There she discovers a life-size portrait of John and Ellen. When looking at the painting, Cathy falls into a trance and with her finger she writes the words "John Rimbauer no suicide - Ellen Sukeena kill John" in the dust. Cathy now realizes what actually happened:
Sixty years ago, Ellen caught John harassing Sukeena. The two women angrily pushed John from the south tower. They vowed to take revenge on all men who dared come to Rose Red. Women whom they choose as victims should become their accomplices. Then Sukeena turned herself, Ellen, and April into the undead who would henceforth wait for victims in Rose Red. Cathy now climbs the stairs to the top of the tower. Meanwhile, Steven and Rachel look for Cathy and also get into the south tower. There they just see how the undead April wants to pounce on Cathy, which Steven can prevent in time. The three of them return to the lounge, where there is a violent confrontation between the team members. Emery grabs a poker and tries to kill Annie, but a knight armor controlled by Annie via telekinesis attacks Emery with a halberd . Attacks on both sides fail.
Cathy sits down with Annie and they both begin to say “Help us! - Open the doors! ”To write on paper. Then all the window panes burst and the doors jump off their hinges. Joyce refuses to admit that Annie goes against the house and tries to stab the girl with a screwdriver. Again, thanks to her talent, Annie survived. When Steven tries to calm Joyce down, she scratches him and babbles weird stuff. The team concludes that Joyce is obsessed with Rose Red (and probably always has been) and that her intention to conduct a parapsychology experiment was just a pretext. Joyce may have wanted superficially scientific evidence of the existence of paranormal phenomena, but in truth she wanted to wake Rose Red up and use the media to make it stronger. The team runs to the entrance portal, where it is harassed first by Mrs. Waterman's and then by Ellen's ghost. The team runs into the forecourt. Ellen pursues the team again and tries to leave the house, but luckily Annie lets the door slam before Ellen reaches the exit.
Annie now directs all her strength against Rose Red. She lets gigantic rocks fall down from the sky, which hit the house unchecked. Inside, Joyce is surrounded and killed by the ghosts of everyone who has died in Rose Red. Now she has what she always wanted: She is a permanent resident of Rose Red. Six months later, Steven, Rachel, Cathy, Annie and Emery meet one last time in the forecourt of Rose Red to commemorate their lost friends. Steven has now hired a construction company to demolish Rose Red.
background
History of origin
After Stephen King's serious car accident, House of Doom was one of his first projects. The film was originally planned by King and director Steven Spielberg as "the ultimate" horror film . But King soon realized that it would be more effective to turn the entire story into a mini-series rather than a movie, because that way he could go into the past of the house and the backgrounds of the main characters. So he turned to the ABC studios, which had previously filmed his novel Es . ABC agreed, and King began writing the script. He was inspired by the stories surrounding the Winchester house in San José .
Locations
The film was shot in the United States at Thornewood Castle , which is now a bed-and-breakfast hotel near Tacoma , Washington . With the help of the designer Craig Stearns, it was possible to build models of the interiors for the fictional "Rose Red" in the hangar of Magnuson Park, a former army base.
useful information
- Actor David Dukes , who played Professor Carl Miller in the film , died of a heart attack while filming.
- Stephen King makes a cameo as a pizza delivery man.
- The glass corridor in one of Rose Red's numerous rooms also appears in a short story by Stephen King.
Prequel
In 2003 a prequel was published under the name The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer , which is based on the novel of the same name . Dr. Joyce Reardon is the fictional editor of this book, but it has been announced that Ridley Pearson , bass guitarist on "Rock Bottom Remainder," is the author of this book. For the most part, the same crew as in "House of Damnation" was hired again, only the actors partially changed. Again directed by Craig R. Baxley , Stephen King produced.
criticism
“Leisurely rippling horror story from the pen of the horror specialist King, who merely remixes familiar clichés from his horror universe. A solidly staged original script whose story should only interest die-hard King fans. "
Film awards
Nominations
- 2002: Artios Award: Best casting for a TV miniseries
- 2002: Emmy Award : Best Production Design - Craig Stearns
- 2003: Saturn Award : Best Miniseries
- 2003: IHG (International Horror Guild) Award: Best Miniseries
- 2003: VES (Visual Effects Society) Award: Best Visual Effects in a Miniseries
Footnotes
- ^ House of Damnation, DVD, The Making-of
- ↑ Film Lexicon: Criticism on House of Damnation
Web links
- Rose Red in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Rose Red at Rotten Tomatoes (English)
- Side of the Winchester Mystery Houses (English)
- The Winchester Mystery Houses in Google Maps
- Side of the Thornewood Castles (English)
- The Thornewood Castles in Google Maps