From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thirteen Ghosts (also known as
Thir13en Ghosts or 13
Ghosts) is a 2001 horror-dramatic film directed by Steve
Beck. It is a remake of
the 1960 film of the same name by William Castle.
It follows the remake of another one
of Castle's films, House on Haunted Hill.
Plot
Ghost hunter Cyrus Kriticos (F. Murray Abraham) and his psychic assistant Dennis Rafkin
(Matthew
Lillard) lead a team on a mission to capture a spirit, called
the Juggernaut, in a junkyard. Several of the men are killed during
the ensuing fight, including Cyrus himself. However, the team is
able to catch the ghost.
Arthur Kriticos (Tony Shalhoub), a mathematician who is
also a widower, is informed by the estate lawyer of his uncle
Cyrus, Ben Moss (JR Bourne), that he has inherited a
mansion. Arthur and his financially insecure family plan to move
into this mansion with his two children, Kathy (Shannon
Elizabeth) and Bobby (Alec Roberts). Their babysitter/nanny
Maggie (Rah Digga)
accompanies the family.
Dennis Rafkin, disguised as a power company employee, meets the
family and Benjamin as they tour the mansion. The residence is made
almost entirely of glass. It contains Latin phrases etched on
floors and movable glass walls, along with priceless artifacts.
Arthur and his family are eager about inheriting this new home, and
while Arthur is discussing financial matters with the attorney,
Kathy and Bobby venture off on their own to explore the mansion.
After seeing several ghosts in the basement, Dennis frantically
runs upstairs to warn Arthur about the home he is about to own.
Moss assures Arthur that Dennis is crazy and should be ignored.
Dennis tells Arthur that there are twelve spirits imprisoned in the
house, held captive by the spells written throughout the
residence.
Ben Moss is seen sneaking off to collect a valise of money which
was intended to be payment. However, upon taking the money, he
activates a mechanism set up by Cyrus that seals the entrance and
releases the ghosts, one by one. Consequently, Moss encounters one
of them, the Angry Princess, and backs up into an open doorway,
which snaps shut and slices him in half. Later the existence of
ghosts is proven to the skeptical Arthur, when he witnesses an
attack on his daughter by the ghost known as the Jackal.
Bobby, the younger of the two children, disappears after getting
separated from Maggie and he wanders into the basement. There he
encounters several spirits, including the Torso and the Bound
Woman. Arthur manages to find Kathy, and the two battle the Jackal.
Kalina Oretzia (Embeth Davidtz), a spirit liberator,
helps Arthur free Kathy from the Jackal's grip, only to be lost
again a few moments later. After this, Arthur's objective is clear
-- to find his children and leave this house as soon as possible.
This becomes problematic for two reasons: only those equipped with
special glasses are able to see the ghosts; and the walls continue
to shift, making navigation difficult.
Arthur and Kalina then meet up with Dennis and Maggie and set
off for the library. Dennis falls behind, though, hindered by one
of his psychic visions. He comes to just in time to see the Jackal
attack Arthur. Dennis is able to toss one of Kalina's flares at the
Jackal, knocking the ghost off Arthur who is wounded.
In the library, Kalina explains that this is not a house - it is
a complex machine built by Cyrus, known as the "Ocularis Infernum"
(Eye of Hell.) Created by the Devil and powered by the dead, once
completed, this demonic device would allow its user to see into the
future. To Arthur's horror, he discovers one of the ghosts powering
this machine is the spirit of his dead wife, Jean. Kalina goes on
to tell Arthur that his children are in grave danger, and the only
way to ensure their successful return is to offer his soul in
exchange. If Arthur takes his place as the 13th ghost, his
sacrifice of pure love would combat all of the evil contained
within the machine, thus shutting it down.
Cyrus is revealed to be alive, having faked his death in order
to lure Arthur to the house; Kalina turns out to be his secret
partner and lover, and knocks Maggie unconscious. Cyrus has
orchestrated the previous events, including the abduction of Kathy
and Bobby, so that Arthur will become the 13th ghost not to stop
the machine, as Kalina had claimed, but to trigger it. Cyrus then
turns on Kalina and crushes her between two glass walls, claiming
"greatness requires sacrifice."
Arthur and Dennis make another attempt to save Kathy and Bobby
with the help of a detached pane of glass. Facing the Hammer,
Dennis pushes Arthur into a corner where he is then protected by
the glass, sacrificing his own life in the process. After combating
the Hammer, Dennis finds himself cornered by the angry spirit and
the newly released Juggernaut; he is brutally beaten and is killed
when the Juggernaut breaks him in half.
Trapped behind the glass, Arthur is visited by Jean's ghost.
Then, all the ghosts disappear from the basement, responding to a
tape-recorded summons played by Cyrus. Kathy and Bobby have been
placed at the center of a set of whirling, razor-sharp rings.
Arthur and Cyrus have a violent confrontation, which is interrupted
by the sound of Maggie beginning to destroy the machine. Due to
this breakdown in equipment, the ghosts are released from their
trance. All the ghosts except Jean immediately grab Cyrus, and hurl
him into the spinning rings. Dennis' ghost then appears, telling
Arthur to go to his kids. Waiting for a break in the razor rings,
Arthur jumps to save his children, making the leap without dying.
The house's glass walls shatter, releasing the spirits from
captivity. A peaceful-looking Jean lingers briefly to say goodbye
to her family, then departs with the others.
The film ends with a battered Maggie walking through the
wreckage, yelling out to Arthur and the kids that she did not agree
to this when she came to work for them, and that she was
quitting.
The
Ghosts
The twelve ghosts that make up the fictional "Black Zodiac" each
have their own unique back stories. Although these stories were not
described in the film, on the DVD, the production and make-up teams
explain their guidelines. Cyrus narrates each ghost's back
story.
- The First Born Son - The First Born Son is the ghost of Billy
Michaels, a boy who was a fan of cowboy films. One day, a neighbor
found a real steel arrow in his parents' closet. He challenged
Billy to a duel, with Billy using a toy gun. However, his plaything
was no match for the arrow, and he died when the neighbor shot it
through the back of his head. In death, Billy is in his cowboy suit
and holding a tomahawk, with the arrow still protruding from his
head. His ghost whispers "I want to play".
- The Torso - The Torso is the ghost of a gambler called Jimmy
"The Gambler" Gambino. He spent most of his days on the track,
making bets and brainwashed into winning. One day, he made a deal
with a rich business man, and so sealed his fate. When he bet
heavily on a boxing match and lost, he tried to renege his bet and
slip out of town. The mob and the winning boxer, to whom he owed
money, caught up with Gambino and cut him into several pieces,
wrapping them in cellophane and dumping the corpse into the ocean.
His ghost is just his torso, trying to walk around on its hands,
while his head lies nearby screaming within the cellophane.
- The Bound Woman -The Bound Woman was a cheerleader named Susan
LeGrow, who was born privileged and had a penchant for seducing men
and tossing them away. This left a long trail of broken hearts.
When her boyfriend found her cheating he strangled her and killed
the other boy. He buried her body at the 50-yard line of the local
football field. The boyfriend was convicted and sentenced to death;
before his execution, he was quoted as saying, "The bitch broke my
heart, so I broke her neck." Her ghost is in her prom dress,
hanging suspended by the strangling implements with her arms tied
behind her back.
- The Withered Lover - The Withered Lover is Jean Kriticos,
Arthur's wife. She was burned severely saving her family from a
devastating house fire and later died of her wounds in the
hospital. Her ghost initially appears in a hospital gown, hooked up
to an IV pole and showing severe burns on her face. Unlike the
other ghosts, she is not a vengeful spirit, electing to help her
family rather than show malevolence. At the end of the movie, she
appears fully healed and in her normal clothing.
- The Torn Prince - The Torn Prince is the ghost of Royce
Clayton, born in 1940 who was a gifted baseball star in high
school, albeit with attitude issues and a superiority complex. In
1957 he was challenged by a greaser named Johnny to a drag race,
but was killed as his car spun out of control and flipped over; the
cause of the accident was a cut brake line. He was buried in a plot
of earth that overlooked the baseball diamond. His ghost carries a
baseball bat, and in the background in his cube his wrecked car can
be seen. Half of his body is torn to shreds from when he was
dragged under the car.
- The Angry Princess - The Angry Princess is Dana Newman, who did
not believe in her own natural beauty. Abusive boyfriends fueled
her low self-esteem, which led to much unneeded plastic surgery for
imagined defects. Eventually she got a job working for a plastic
surgeon, getting paid in treatments rather than cash. Alone at the
clinic one night, she tried to perform surgery on herself, but
wound up blinding herself in one eye and permanently mutilating
herself beyond saving. She committed suicide in the bathtub by
slashing her body repeatedly with a butcher knife. When she was
found, people noted that she was as beautiful in death as she had
been in life. Her ghost is naked, still carrying the knife she
killed herself with and showing all the wounds, and the inside
walls of her cube are splattered with her blood. In her bathroom
scene, the phrase "I'm sorry" is visible on the floor in blood;
subtitles also reveal that the blurred, hissing speech that
announces her arrival is her whispering "I'm sorry." This was
written on her suicide note. When her cube opens, she advances
toward Ben Moss, who backs up into an open doorway to get away from
her and is killed when it snaps shut on him.
- The Pilgrimess - The Pilgrimess is the ghost of Isabella Smith,
an Englishwoman who traveled across the Atlantic and settled in New
England during colonial times. She was an outsider to the town she
moved into, and this isolated her from the other townsfolk. She was
found guilty of witchcraft after livestock began to die
mysteriously; when she emerged from a burning barn completely
unharmed, she was sentenced to the stocks (pillory) with no food or
drink until she died. As a ghost, she is still locked into her
stocks.
- The Great Child and
- The Dire Mother - The Dire Mother is the ghost of Margaret
Shelburne, who was an attraction in a carnival due to her being
only three feet tall. She was raped by the "Tall Man," another
carnival freak. Her son, Harold (the Great Child), was born as a
result of that rape; he eventually weighed over 300 pounds (136
kg). Harold, spoiled, was raised as his mother's protector and kept
a child-like mindset, to the point that he wore diapers his entire
life. One day some of the carnival employees decided to play a
little practical joke on Harold, and kidnapped his mother. Enraged,
he set out to look for her, but when he caught up with the
culprits, he found that his mother had accidentally suffocated to
death in the bag that she was kept in. Harold killed the kidnappers
with an ax, keeping their remains and displaying them for paying
customers. Later, when the owner of the carnival found out what
Harold had done, he ordered a mob of people to tear Harold apart.
Their ghosts are always together, and Harold still wields the ax
and wears a bib stained with food that his mother has spoon-fed to
him. An alternate version of the story is told in the DVD
commentary. It was said that their deaths were caused by the Great
Child rolling over on the Dire Mother while asleep, thus
suffocating her, then him starving to death.
- The Hammer - The Hammer is the ghost of an African-American
blacksmith, George Markley, who lived in a small town in the 1890s.
He was wrongfully accused of stealing by a white man from his town,
and when threatened with exile, refused to leave town. A gang led
by his accuser hanged his wife and children and burned their
bodies; in revenge, George used his sledgehammer to beat the
culprits to death. He was then subjected to a cruel form of
frontier justice by the townsfolk, being chained to a tree and
executed by having railroad spikes driven into his body with his
own sledgehammer. As a final touch,they cut off his hand and
attached the sledgehammer - handle and all - to the hand that was
cut off. His ghost is seen with the railroad spikes protruding from
his body and a sledgehammer for a left hand.
- The Jackal - The Jackal is the ghost of Ryan Kuhn, who was born
in 1887 to a prostitute. Ryan had an insatiable lust for women,
rape, and murdering prostitutes. Wanting to be cured, he committed
himself to Borehamwood Asylum, but after attacking a nurse, he was
put in a straitjacket and thrown in a padded room. After years of
this imprisonment he went completely insane, scratching at the
walls so violently that his fingernails were torn completely off.
The doctors kept him permanently bound in his straitjacket, tying
it tighter when he acted out, causing his limbs to contort
horribly. Still fighting to free himself, Ryan gnawed through the
jacket until the doctors finally locked his head in a metal cage
and sealed him away in the dark basement cell. There, he grew to
hate any kind of human contact, screaming madly and cowering
whenever approached. When a fire broke out in the asylum, everyone
but Ryan escaped. He chose to stay behind and face the fire. As a
ghost, his arms are free from his jacket, and the bars of his cage
are ripped outwards.
- The Juggernaut - The Juggernaut is the ghost of a serial killer
named Horace "Breaker" Mahoney. Standing seven feet tall, he was of
such grotesque height and appearance that everyone ostracized him
as a child. His mother abandoned him at birth, so his father raised
him - putting him to work in the junkyard crushing old cars. After
his father died, Horace was left on his own, and soon went mad. He
would pick up female hitchhikers and drive them back to his
junkyard, then tear them apart with his bare hands and feed them to
his dogs. One day he picked up an undercover female police officer,
who called for backup, for a SWAT team to surround the junkyard.
Since close combat was impossible, the police instead struck the
yard, and arrested the giant. However, Horace broke free from the
cuffs, and three officers lost their lives. Quickly, five SWAT
officers, took out their guns and brought Horace down in a hail of
bullets. When he finally went down, they shot an extra round into
him, just to be safe. His ghost still shows bullet holes all over
his clothing, and the round that finished him.
Cast
Reception and box office
In the US, the film opened ranking 2nd, making $15,165,355. It
spent 10 weeks in the US box office, eventually making $41,867,960
domestically, and $68,467,960 worldwide.
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