What actually happens
A birthday party with a $1 million cover charge
In 1931, the Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane is run by Dr. Vannacutt, a cruel psychiatrist who experiments on his patients. The patients revolt, a fire starts, and it kills Vannacutt, every inmate, and every staff member except five. The story jumps to 1999, where Evelyn Stockard-Price's marriage to Stephen Price is falling apart. Price owns amusement parks and is known for elaborate pranks. Evelyn insists on a birthday party at the abandoned hospital, so Price stages it there. Part of the building has been converted into living space. Five guests turn up: baseball player Eddie Baker, former TV personality Melissa Marr, doctor Donald Blackburn, Sara Wolfe, who is posing as her former boss, and Pritchett, who owns the building. Neither Price nor Evelyn knows these people. Price goes ahead with the theme anyway and offers each guest $1 million for staying until morning. Anyone who runs or dies loses the money to the rest.
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The security system and a tank of blood
The security system trips and locks everyone inside. Price and Evelyn each blame the other. Sara, Eddie and Pritchett search the basement for a control panel. Sara gets separated from Eddie, and a double that looks like him nearly pulls her into a tank of blood. Melissa vanishes, leaving a trail of blood and a camcorder that shows her apparent murder. Price goes to find his assistant Schechter, who is running the party's stunts, and finds him horribly mutilated. On a surveillance monitor he then sees what looks like Dr. Vannacutt holding a bloody saw.
A zoetrope with strong opinions
Evelyn seems to die in front of everyone, strapped to an electroshock table. Price pulls out a gun and demands to know who killed his wife, and the guests turn on him and lock him in the Saturation Chamber, an old zoetrope Vannacutt used on schizophrenic patients. Blackburn volunteers to guard it. Once the others have gone, he switches the chamber on and leaves Price at the mercy of the moving images. In Vannacutt's old office, Sara and Eddie notice a staff portrait and work out that the Prices and the invited guests, except Blackburn, descend from the five staff who survived the fire in 1931. Sara concludes that the spirits hacked Price's computer and changed the guest list.
Everyone's plan stops working at once
Blackburn and Evelyn turn out to be lovers who faked her death to frame Price, hoping a guest would kill him in self-defense. Worried that the guests are not angry enough yet, Evelyn kills Blackburn and frees Price. Sara, Eddie and Pritchett discover that Evelyn's body has vanished. They go back to the chamber and find Blackburn's decapitated body. Down in the basement, Sara shoots Price. Evelyn arrives to gloat over him, but Price, who is wearing a bulletproof vest and playing dead, attacks her. During the fight Evelyn goes through a rotting door, which lets out an evil, shapeless mass made of the house's spirits. This is the scene people dread, and it happens late in the film. The shape-shifting mass consumes Evelyn and adds her spirit to itself. Price then finds Melissa's dismembered body.
The ending, explained
The entity chases Price up the staircase and swallows Pritchett on the way. Price realizes the attic might hold the lockdown mechanisms and runs there, with Sara and Eddie behind him. He opens an iron window guard and sacrifices himself so the others have time to flee. Sara just escapes, but the entity traps Eddie inside. While it menaces him, Eddie admits he was adopted and, like Sara, has no family link to the hospital staff. Then Pritchett's ghost unlocks the window guard, and Eddie climbs out. Out on the ledge, Sara and Eddie find an envelope holding five checks that Price signed, each made out to cash. They laugh hysterically and then wonder how to get down. Only Sara and Eddie survive.
The post-credits ruling
Yes. After the credits, a black-and-white scene shows the spirits of the 1931 patients torturing the Prices.
✓ Spoiled safelyDog status: fine, no dog dies.
Questions people ask at 1am
Is House on Haunted Hill scary?
Somewhat. House on Haunted Hill is a 4.5 out of 10, with jump scares, frequent gore and no lasting dread.
How does House on Haunted Hill end?
Sara and Eddie escape the attic and find checks signed by Stephen Price on the ledge. Price, Evelyn, Blackburn, Melissa and Pritchett are dead.
Does the dog die in House on Haunted Hill?
No, no dog dies in House on Haunted Hill. No other animal dies in it either.
Is there a post-credits scene in House on Haunted Hill?
Yes. After the credits, House on Haunted Hill shows a black-and-white scene of the spirits of the 1931 patients torturing the Prices.
Why were the guests invited to the house in House on Haunted Hill?
Sara works out that the spirits of the asylum tampered with Price's computer and rewrote the guest list, so that descendants of the five staff who survived the 1931 fire would turn up. Price never invited the people who came.
