Reasons the Plot Makes Absolutely NO Sense--SPOILERS

WARNING: SPOILERS

The more one thinks about the action, the more the plot couldn't have happened that way.

The part of the plot that doesn't make sense is (what turned out to be the writer's story of) how a writer based on himself was fooled so his publisher could win a bet.

For starters, the publisher didn't know the writer was going to make that bet until the minute he did it. It doesn't state how much time passed between when the bet was made and when the writer went to the supposedly abandoned mansion but it seemed to be very little time. The publisher would have immediately had to:

--Clear all this with the owner of the mansion.
--Round up actors, rehearse them as to their parts, and pay them enough to go clear the hell to Wales.
--Know that the writer was going to ask directions at the train station so he could meet the young married couple.
--Have an artist paint portraits of the actors as they'd have appeared 40 years earlier.
--Arrange things such as a slot in the door of the locked room to pass food through.
--Make everything look as if it had been sitting for forty years (obviously not in every case as the writer noticed the lack of dust, the clean bed, and the fresh water in the pitcher).
--When the actor playing the deranged brother was strangling the writer, the writer thought it was for real. How did the actor know he wouldn't strangle the writer too much or that the writer wouldn't turn on him and kill him? Potential tragic outcome either way.
--Not to mention severely damaging three cars. A lot to win a bet.

This would all take considerable time to set up if it could be done at all. This was sloppy plotting on the writer's part and not material for a bestseller. I'm surprised someone agreed to make this movie and that the actors thought it was a good enough idea to be in it. This was like a really bad episode of Night Gallery, not a major motion picture. No suspension of disbelief whatsoever.

Now it's killing me to know whether the original novel, which was made into numerous movies, made this little sense.