Alternate versions

Due to numerous circumstances (i.e. running time constraints and what not) a great deal of footage was excised from this motion picture. Three of the most important scenes were returned for the DVD release. They are:

• two different versions of the same scene involving the real Jennifer Jenzen (Debi Mazar), a haughty, foul mouthed, arrogant movie producer and her assistant Sara (Ali Larter), who are on the set of a cheap drama Jennifer is producing. In one version, the set is in the courtyard of a regular house where a woman is telling a man, who is suffering from a seemingly terminal illness, to embrace life in spite of his condition. In the other version, a young couple, who seem to be medieval peasants, are frolicking on a meadow, falling to the ground and making out. In both versions, unhappy with the lack of sex and nudity in the film that could bring in the teen male audience, Jennifer curses the director out. Sara then arrives with a strange Art Deco music puzzle box that came in the mail for Jennifer. Despite Sara's advice and a warning label on the box, Jennifer arrogantly opens it the wrong way just because she was told not to, and cuts her finger on it. Sara laughs at this so vengeful Jennifer fires her on the spot and gives her the box to get rid of it. Sara however, finds the invite for the party on Haunted Hill in the box, and, although shocked by Jennifer's impromptu decision to fire her, she still tries to tell Jennifer about it, but when Jennifer refuses to hear her out, Sara just takes the invitation for herself and leaves, smiling.
• a scene towards the climax when Eddie Baker (Taye Diggs) and Sara are running from the shadow demon exploding the floorboards, they are led into a dead end. Eddie jumps onto a hanging light fixture, holding onto Sara as the floor beneath them explodes. He loses his grip on Sara and she falls through the hole into a subterranean cavern beneath the house where the remains of Doctor Vannicut's victims lie. The shadow creeps into the cavern and reanimates the dead bodies causing this huge zombie attack. Eddie drops down and saves Sara and the chase continues from where it left off in the finished cut of the film (however, if you notice, in the finished cut of the film during the chase scene there is a continuity error when Sara's running. In one shot she's wearing her jacket and in the other it's mysteriously vanished, it's vanished because during the cut portion of this climactic chase, Sara loses her jacket when she falls into the cavern. Her jacket is then used by Eddie to pull her up and out to safety).
• an epilogue was also cut from the film involving the real Jennifer Jenzen (Debbie Mazar) inheriting the house on haunted hill. When she goes to check it out with real estate agent Dick (played by Jeffrey Combs (who is also Dr. Vannicut!) we see her enter the house and then a horrifying scream follows. The scene was cut because director William Malone felt the scene was a bit too humorous for the film and that it did not fit what was filmed at all).

Also, a little P.S. was taken off the original ending again because of running time constraints where the film wraps on that Unsolved Mysteries-type program it began with where we learn from the Robert Stack-ish host that Jennifer and Eddie were later rescued from atop the house by the coast guard and now live in San Deigo and have six kids.

In the scene where Sara and Eddie go into Dr. Vannicut's office and discover an old picture of the staff of the hospital, the scene in the final cut of the film is a lot shorter. In the original version of the scene they explore the room a lot more before finding the picture, in fact they find lots of body parts in pickel jars and a lot of creepy paperwork! This scene was also shortened due to pacing and running time.

When Sara and Eddie find the knife that Evelyn used to kill Donald, it was orignally in the movie after they found his decapitated corpse in the Saturation Chamber. It was later edited so that they found it beforehand as it seemed to make more sense why they blamed Steven for it.