House on Haunted Hill (1959) - film review

At the suggestion of his wife, Annabelle, eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren invites five strangers to his house, offering each of them ten thousand dollars if they manage to spend one full night in the house.  One of the guests, Watson Pritchard, is convinced that the house is haunted, since his brother was murdered there by his wife, and this was preceded by several other killings.  One previous tenant of the house died horrifically when he fell into a vat of acid in the cellar,  a vat which is still there.  Dr David Trent dismisses all this talk of ghosts and is confident he will collect his cheque from Loren in the morning.   Nora Manning is less certain and becomes increasingly neurotic as she is assailed by a series of frightening apparitions.  Loren issues each of his guests with a loaded gun, but, as one of the guests points out, these will be useless against the spirits of the dead...

House on Haunted Hill is the best in a series of low budget horror movies that were produced and directed by William Castle in the late 1950s, early 1960s.  Other films in the series included: Macabre (1958), 13 Ghosts (1960) and The Old Dark House (1963).  For several of these films, Castle made use of his patented Emergo system, which involved flying a mock skeleton over the heads of his audience on a pulley system at crucial moments in the film.  Needless to say the system did not endure, as it ended up being used for target practice, by spectators who found a new and exciting use for their popcorn and empty drinks cans.  

House on Haunted Hill offers enough chills and thrills to make gimmicks such as Emergo an unnecessary distraction.  Its success inspired Alfred Hitchcock to make his own low budget horror flick, Psycho (1960).   Although the multi-twisted plot is too clever for its own good, and is basically a rip off of H.G. Clouzot’s
Les Diaboliques (1955), Castle draws the maximum possible menace from it and crafts an intricate and compelling murder mystery (the twist being that the murder hasn’t yet taken place). 

Some highly effective camerawork and lighting lend the film an appropriately creepy atmosphere which is almost guaranteed to bring on the goose bumps.  The macabre delights on offer include severed heads, floating zombies, a rope with a life of its own, a walking skeleton with overt homicidal tendencies and, scariest of all, a seductively sinister Vincent Price.  The underbelly of dry dark humour adds to the film’s entertainment value, helping to make this a classic of its kind.  Don’t waste your  time or your money on the trashy 1999 remake; the original is far more satisfying.

© Alex Sullivan 2010

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