(1997) Zero stars
When 5 people step into an elevator to attend a Halloween party at the famed Hollywood Tower Hotel in 1939 their lives are cut short when a bolt of lightening strikes the building sending them plunging to their deaths. The hotel is immediately closed forever. Sixty years later tabloid reporter, Buzzy (Steve Guttenberg), struggles for credibility. Once a successful journalist, Buzzy finds himself slumming after some misinformation cost him his prestigious position. When an elderly woman shows up in his office one day with a juicy story about what really happened to the 5 who perished all those years ago, Buzzy sees this as his opportunity to restore his journalistic integrity. His investigation leads him back to the spooky hotel where he pieces together the mystery with his snaggletoothed niece (Kirsten Dunst) and the great great-grandson of the hotel’s elevator operator.
Last summer JSP and I were in Disney World and we made it our mission to see and ride every damn attraction (after a week we pretty much succeeded). One day we were on a Disney bus traveling from Blizzard Beach back to our hotel when the bus driver became overly chatty. Now if anyone knows me they know that I’d rather die than speak publically. JSP, on the other hand, is a regular George Burns and he had no problem shouting out answers to the bus driver’s Disney trivia. In fact, he dominated. One question the bus driver asked was to name the Disney rides that preceded their movie counterparts (rather than what rides had been created as a result of a Disney movie). It was during this moment that I learned of the Tower of Terror movie. In the Tower of Terror gift shop I located the film for $20. “Yeah, right” I exclaimed. Thanks to Netflix I copied it about 2 weeks later and tucked it away for Horrorthon 2009.
As you might expect, Tower of Terror is an excruciating exercise to plod through. The middling story is no more complicated than the plot of the Disney attraction and I’m fairly certain that they filmed the majority of the picture on the set of the ride. This is a made-for-television kid’s movie, which means zero scares, terrible humor, and pretty bad FX. By time the credits rolled all I wanted to do was go back on the cool ride.
