A follow-up to William Castle’s 1959 House on Haunted Hill via a found-footage is not a terrible idea. Just when it’s executed so wretchedly as in the hands of writer/director Dustin Ferguson, who often excretes enough movies annually to number in the teens. Considering one of the credited producers is “Cheap AF Videos,” at least the subprime-mortgaged House lays all its cards on the table. 

Set in 1978, this same-named sequel takes the guise of a live broadcast on Oct. 31 from WPIX-TV. At the titular abode, a reporter (Terrifier 3’s Daniel Roebuck) and a psychic (Jennifer Moriarty, Ferguson’s needless Spider Baby remake) investigate the supposedly spooky mansion. They encounter such fear inducers as a horny couple in a closet, a man in a gorilla mask hiding in another closet, and a science-class skeleton dropping from the stairwell. 

Every couple of minutes, these on-the-scene antics cut back to an in-studio interviewer (Brinke Stevens, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama 2) and her guests, one of whom is played by Vincent Price’s daughter, Victoria. Then WPIX cuts to fake commercials for local shops and services. 

Although it opens with a six-minute highlight reel of the ’59 original, Ferguson’s House on Haunted Hill doesn’t rip off Castle’s classic as much as it does Chris LaMartina’s WNUF Halloween Special. Although WNUF takes great pains to look the part to better sell the parody, Ferguson makes no such effort. You wouldn’t know the time frame was the ’70s if not for being told via supers. No iota of attempted legitimacy shows up; the flick even repeats its batch of ads — not for comedic effect (absent), but because Ferguson lacks ideas. When you’re shooting a new batch of video clickbait every Wednesday — Cocaine Cougar, 5G Zombies, Angry Asian Murder Hornets — who has time for second drafts?

This is the laziest, lousiest excuse for a motion picture since your little nephew stole your phone while you weren’t looking and recorded himself sticking out his tongue. Ferguson pushes and pushes and pushes this thing to an interminable 64 minutes. The closing credits might be the slowest I’ve seen ever, no exaggeration, as it takes one line 70 frickin’ seconds to make the valiant rise from the screen’s bottom to top.

I watched this Hill of beans on Fawesome, blessedly free because it’s heavily ad-supported. The ill-named streaming service’s numerous breaks of seven consecutive ads — real, largely shilling Progressive — were more entertaining. 

House on Haunted Hill ’24 is “dedicated in living memory” to Messrs. Price and Castle, whom I’d like to think deflected the gesture from above with, “No, thanks. We’re good.” —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

In its seven-word title, Uncle Sleazo’s Toxic and Terrifying TV Hour promises a lot. It even overdelivers on that last word by running an extra 28 minutes. Still, it comes up short in the one word that counts most for a horror film: “terrifying.” It’s anything but that.

Now, what the title doesn’t signal is that portions of the pic are funny — better, even intentionally so. We’ll get there shortly.

Lucky Cerruti’s anthology comes positioned as a horror-hosted show à la Elvira. Armed with equally awful puns in “boils and ghouls” mold, the eponymous Uncle Sleazo (first-timer Jordan Hornstein, outfitted to be one foot too close to a schoolyard) intros three “movies.” These include a tiring werewolf tale in black and white, a one-note psychic romance and a sci-fi-tinged slice of body horror that, while slow, at least closes with a terrific gross-out visual.

All three segments share a core problem: They’re neither scary nor suspenseful; frankly, each exhibits weak plotting and dreadful pacing despite minimal running time. Serving as something of a saving grace, however, are the commercial breaks in between. This is where the jokes come in, from a cartoon about a Basket Case-esque vestigial twin to a musical with a talking, singing puke puppet.

Whether these inspired bits toss you a fake trailer for the movie Clown Cop or an ad for Dahmer’s Apartment Playset, the influence of Chris LaMartina’s WNUF Halloween Special on Cerruti (2020’s Freak) is apparent. I could go for a full feature of them. Now, whether these smatterings of humor belong sandwiched between stories we’re asked to accept at straight-face value depends on your tolerance for tonal whiplash.

To diminish their weaknesses, the three stories could stand to be more zippily paced, even if it brought Uncle Sleazo’s closer to that titular Hour. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.