asper this is not. For there is little cartoon friendly about the new 13 ghosts inhabiting the live action film here in 2001. Forget the cute and campy spooks in the original - a flimsy 1960 William Castle feature promoting cheesy 3-D glasses as a gimmicky device.

  Producer Joel Silver promises a variation on the glasses theme for eerie effect in the redo, but be warned: the new 13 Ghosts contains state of the art scare tactics and gobs of gore are everywhere. Like that's a bad thing?

  So aside from the updated eye-grabbing effects, look for lots of rip-roaring terror from the remodeled ghouls (played by actors), called, among other things, Headless Torso, The Jackal, Suicide Woman and The Breaker. In 13 Ghosts, the spirit of madness gets unleashed when a motherless family inherits a magnificent house from an odd and peculiar uncle (F. Murray Abraham).

  Unlike the first movie, this maniac mansion has a modernist bent with wonderfully sculpted glass walls, but all hell breaks loose when the father (Tony Shalhoub), the daughter (Shannon Elizabeth) and the son (Alec Roberts) discover, and inadvertently release, the evil that lurks behind the glass. Along for the family's wild ride is an erratically suspicious
actors
Tony Shalhoub
Shannon Elizabeth
F. Murray Abraham
Alec Roberts
Mathew Lillard
Embeth Davidtz

director
Steve Beck

locations
Vancouver, B.C.

outtake
The corridors and rooms for this film were constructed from a variety of
unusual building
materials, such as glass, copper, steel, aluminum and brass. In fact, some rooms are completely made from sheets of glass.

clairvoyant ghostbuster (Matthew Lillard) and a sidekick (Embeth Davidtz) hoping to help free the ghosts.

  Filmed in Vancouver, 13 Ghosts is one mean trip which pushes the boundaries of yech!, even measured by the buckets of blood school of filmmaking. "Apparently, it was too much," says American Pie's Shannon Elizabeth, who plays the college-aged daughter. "I've been told they are trying to tone it down. But how can a scary movie be too scary?"

  Good question. By all reports, the shape-shifting glass rooms of the mansion are mind-boggling and bizarre, so are the ghostly and mostly creepy images. One thing is confirmed - the old audience viewer ghost glasses are replaced. "We have the glasses," reports Elizabeth, referring to the family members in the film.

  "We find them in the house, so the glasses, when we put them on, allow you the audience, and the characters, to see the ghosts. And they allow us
to see Latin etchings that are on the walls and on the floors that are basically spells that the ghosts cannot cross - our protection."

  Another Neal Marshall Stevens trick in the script allows moviegoers to see what the characters cannot, now and again. "So we can't see what's going on, but you can see what's about to happen because of where the glasses are placed," reports Elizabeth. "And then, there are times that you can't see what's going on, but something is happening."

  For instance, there is her bathroom scene. "It's cool," she says. "I'm looking in the mirror and I don't see anything around me and the camera tracks down and goes through the glasses sitting on a table, and now the audience sees through the point of view of the glasses - things that I can't see."

  And we're betting it's at least one of the freaky 13 ghosts. She won't say. But she will admit this much: "Special effects will make or break this movie." Now that's scary.

- Bob Thompson