Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I talked about this a little bit when this cool-sounding Spierig Bros movie was announced, but the fact that they're making a Winchester Mystery House movie is really cool to me. Growing up in the Bay Area, I actually visited this place a couple times, never really appreciating how fucking bonkers the real life story behind the big weird house was.
The short version is the old lady who owned the house was the heir to the Winchester rifle fortune. She was left alone as her entire family died around her, young and old, and became a bit nutty. She believed the family was cursed by the souls of those killed by the rifles and the only way to keep the vengeful spirits at bay was to spend her fortune adding on to her house. She had hidden passages, staircases going to nowhere, doors that open to a blank wall and all sorts of crazy shit built in her house.
Back in the '80s it was a bit of a local attraction and I went as part of a school field trip. It's a creepy place, but also a whole lotta fun. I remember spending most of the tour looking for secret passages, pressing odd colored stones and testing uneven planks. Sadly I came up empty handed.
The Spierig's movie has Helen Mirren cast in this role and CBS Films just announced that Jason Clarke will join her. Clarke will be the skeptical psychiatrist that soon comes to discover Ms. Winchester might not be so looney tunes after all.
Clarke is a great straight man and pairing him with Mirren seems to be a good combo for this crazy story. Can't wait to see how this one shakes out.
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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