That trick of leaving in a kind of reality while coming to film a ghost story gives this one the status as a classic its parts are recognizable, while the eerie, not-so-playful core they hide cannot be lifted so easily. Despite a few hard turns as to where the script will go, in many scenes each shot naturally picks up exactly where the other left off, giving us long stretches of the cast getting to physically act out this implausible story together - a saving grace at times, courtesy of earlier standards. But these definitions can’t reach the heady thrill of effects that look all the more possible for being slightly fake, underscored with the flourish of internally consistent logic. It’s more than adequate as a horror film, delivering a few true shocks at perfectly unexpected moments.
HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959 FULL MOVIE) MOVIE
At times, it feels like the movie has run into a wall at others, that rewrites have been abruptly slotted into place: also like a lecturer, now consulting his notes and finding the time for a subject is up, our thorough tour of the house is aborted in favor of staying with two guests who have decided to hang back on their own.Īs a plotted movie, House on Haunted Hill has the feel of a rough draft with a few loose trapdoors. Read on Unsung Films: Eyes Without a Face.Īt the same time, I have no doubt this is where the film needed to go - and under the generous hand of William Castle (and his freedom to do whatever he wanted in his B-movies, I’m sure), we get a whole scene of Frederick Loren ( Price) candidly discussing how his wife wants to kill him in place of a simple aside line. After a long introduction, the movie is almost halfway over by the time its party has officially started.
He claims my ghosts will help his work on hysteria, but don’t you see a little touch of greed around the mouth and eyes?” The same hardly applies to the film as a whole: you can almost see it getting dragged into these kinds of details, like a lecturer slowly getting off-topic - there’s been a murder almost every place in the house, and our host can’t wait to show his guests what’s in the wine cellar. The game is eccentric, for instance, but the narration to explain why these people would spend a night in a mansion for $10,000 is quite sober, with a screwball comedy’s tight construction: “This is Dr. Ghosts have grown old, yet their monuments still remain - films that look strange from the outside only because of the passing changes. But House on Haunted Hill is the Price of 1959, whose word is a command, his walk through a mansion simply familiar with the place and his position of control within it. The source for parlour-game parody in Clue, of course, and all that Vincent Price represents in Tim Burton’s films. House on Haunted Hill is a classic ripe enough that a plethora of other films seem to echo beneath the surface at nearly every moment: the head floating disembodied in darkness from Eraserhead the reaching, choking branches in The Evil Dead. The master of horror, Vincent Price, stars as a very wealthy man who gives a haunted house party, offering to give each of his guests 10000 - if they can.