Gore Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean deservedly takes all the credit for spurring Disney into turning several of its most notable theme park attractions into blockbuster movies, but it’s easy to forget given the successes and failures to follow in the aftermath that made-for-television film Tower of Terror got there first.
Befitting its status as a surreptitious game-changer, the family-friendly horror comedy is currently in the midst of getting a remake on a much grander scale, even if it’s been a long time since we’ve heard a peep from the big budget version that lined up Scarlett Johansson to star and produce before going radio silent in the wake of the Black Widow star taking legal action against the Mouse House.
The premise and execution are fairly standard, with Steve Guttenberg’s journalist investigating a mystery that unfolded in 1939, during which five people vanished without a trace on Halloween. It might not be regarded as a classic, then, but the outpouring of admiration to swamp a retrospective Reddit thread does show that Tower of Terror holds a special place in the hearts of a certain generation.
History may have forgotten about it, but director D. J. MacHale’s spooky spectacular was the first-ever adaptation of a Disney ride as a feature, which in a way opened the doors for not just the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, but Eddie Murphy’s Haunted Mansion and its upcoming reboot, Dwayne Johnson’s Jungle Cruise, Brad Bird’s catastrophic box office bomb Tomorrowland, and even the in-development likes of Big Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain, which is a decent legacy to leave behind.