TOWER OF TERRORGenre: Family, Fantasy, Comedy, Mystery, Thriller
Originally Aired 26 October 1997
Directed by D.J. MacHale
Starring: Steve Guttenberg, Kirsten Dunst, Nia Peeples, Michael McShane, Amzie Strickland, Melora Hardin, Alastair Duncan, Lindsay Ridgeway, John Franklin, Wendy Worthington, Lela Ivey
Not Rated (PG-level; some scary images and mild peril).
89 minutes
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is one of my favorite attractions at Disneyland Resort and probably my favorite altogether of Disney's California Adventure Park (part of Disneyland Resort), but before it came to California, it opened at Disney's Hollywood Studios at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida in 1994. Based on the classic CBS horror/fantasy anthology series The Twilight Zone which originally ran from 1959-1964, the Tower of Terror makes for a most prominent landmark in the four Disney Parks where one resides. In the ride's storyline, the tower is the "Hollywood Tower Hotel", a dilapidated hotel from the Golden Age of Hollywood, when it was the finest hotel in California where the creme de la creme met for the finest parties. One fateful night in 1939, Halloween night by chance, lightning struck the Hollywood Tower hotel with disastrous consequences, causing an entire wing to vanish and resulting in a particularly peculiar fate for four hotel guests and a bellhop who seemingly evaporated as their elevator took them into another dimension. Now, guests are invited to relive the events of that night, entering the hotel's dusty, cobweb-laced lobby and into the library where the mood is so marvelously set by a raging thunderstorm showing through the windows as an old television set comes on. On the screen is a message from none other than The Twilight Zone series creator/host, Rod Serling: "Tonight's story on The Twilight Zone is somewhat unique and calls for different kind of introduction. This, as you may recognize is a maintenance elevator, still in operation, waiting for you. We invite you, if you dare, to step aboard, because in tonight's episode, you are the star. And this elevator travels directly to...the Twilight Zone." Guests board one of three elevator ride vehicles which then rise to the top of the attraction structure and into an unnerving starry view as lightning appears to strike and guests see their ghostly silhouettes reflected before the elevator plunges into a faster-than-gravity free fall.
"The next time you check into a deserted hotel on the dark side of Hollywood, make sure you just what kind of vacancy you're filling, or you might just find yourself a permanent resident of...the Twilight Zone."
In 1997, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror became the first Disney Parks attraction to be adapted into a feature film, simply TOWER OF TERROR, made for TV and aired as a special presentation of ABC's The Wonderful World of Disney. In contrast to the theme park attraction, TOWER OF TERROR has no connection to the The Twilight Zone series and brand; also the movie sucks. It was made for TV, and nobody ought to mistake it for otherwise. It's cheap and childish and not much fun at all.
On Halloween Night 1939, as a raging party took place in the lobby of the ritzy Hollywood Tower Hotel, five people boarded an elevator. Among them were a singer, her boyfriend, a bellhop, and the most famous child star of the time, Sally Shine (Lindsay Ridgeway), along with her nanny. As the elevator reached the top floor, lightning strikes the hotel, seemingly vaporizing the five persons. 58 years later, tabloid photographer/journalist Buzzy Crocker (Steve Guttenberg) is approached by septuagenarian Abigail Gregory (Amzie Strickland), a woman who was at the Hollywood Tower Hotel on Halloween 1939, and reveals that the events that night were the result of a spell cast by Sally Shine's nanny, Emiline Partridge (Wendy Worthington), a secret witch who loathed Sally. The Hollywood Tower Hotel has been closed ever since the accident, but Buzzy arranges with the building's owner Chris 'Q' Todd (Michael McShane) to make a visit. Bringing along his niece, Anna (Kirsten Dunst), to pose for photos as Sally Shine's ghost, they naturally discover that the hotel is actually haunted. Returning on Halloween with hopes of reversing the spell that placed the elevator's passengers in a ghostly limbo, Buzzy and Anna meet the ghosts, including Ms. Partridge, who they discover is actually innocent and the spell was cast by Abigail Gregory, Sally Shine's envious sister. Now, with Abigail hoping to finish the spell she botched decades ago, putting Sally and the elevator passengers in limbo instead of to a grimmer fate, Buzzy and Anna hurry to stop her and send the ghosts into the next world.
It's fairly dark material, but the movie certainly doesn't seem to realize it. TOWER OF TERROR looks and feels like a sub-par Disney Channel production, and is incompetent in almost every respect. Unlike the Haunted Mansion, which is mostly horror with a thick comedic vein and was misguidedly adapted into a comedy with a thick horror vein, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is a horror-thriller straight up, and the movie does away with the atmosphere almost entirely, casting b-grade comedic actor Steve Guttenberg in the lead role and throwing in a few obligatory spooky moments that would be too tame for the Haunted Mansion. The acting is cheesy, the sparse effects are cartoonish and the whole thing feels like an insult. Disney diehards may, at best, be able to tolerate it, but the average person over the age of six will find themselves drowning in the mediocrity.
So How Much is Taken From the Ride? The theming of CBS' The Twilight Zone around which the attraction revolves is entirely absent, but the basic background of the hotel's haunting, five guests in an elevator struck by lightning, is taken directly from the attraction's storyline and elaborated upon.
With a meager TV movie budget, the Hollywood Tower Hotel exterior and much of the interior is filmed on location at The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in Orlando, Florida at Disney's Hollywood Studios in the Walt Disney World Resort.
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