House on Haunted Hill [PG]

The rich and eccentric Frederick Loren and his wife Annabelle hire out a mysterious mansion on Haunted Hill to host a little themed party: haunted house themed, so inspired by venue’s reputation of being haunted by the ghosts of several people who were murdered there. Five guests and strangers to each other are invited to attend with the invitation all the more appealing as Loren promises to pay each of them $10,000 if they stay the entire night. At first a few bangs, doors closing on their own, and chandeliers falling from the roof successfully put the guests on edge, but the party takes a turn for the worst when one of them dies and fingers are pointed in all directions as to who’s to blame: the guests or the ghosts? 

How have I gone so long without ever having seen this movie!? This flick rocks like a hurricane! Aside from maybe one or two opaque gaps in the plot, this film has everything you could want in a horror movie, gruesome visions, doors slowly creaking closed on their own, ghostly apparitions, inanimate objects moving on their own, death, and screaming; lots and lots of screaming. In fact, the first thing you see is darkness with nothing over the top save for a woman’s eardrum-piercing shirk of fear! You know you’re in for a good ride from that alone! Not to mention it stars Vincent Price in all his velvety-voiced deliciousness! 

The rich and eccentric Frederick Loren and his wife Annabelle hire out a mysterious mansion on Haunted Hill to host a little themed party: haunted house themed, so inspired by venue’s reputation of being haunted by the ghosts of several people who were murdered there. Five guests and strangers to each other are invited to attend with the invitation all the more appealing as Loren promises to pay each of them $10,000 if they stay the entire night. At first a few bangs, doors closing on their own, and chandeliers falling from the roof successfully put the guests on edge, but the party takes a turn for the worst when one of them dies and fingers are pointed in all directions as to who’s to blame: the guests or the ghosts? 

Let’s get the badness out of the way first shall we. The plot itself is actually pretty damned great and it takes a turn that no one could see coming. Of course, this is due to the fact that the sudden twist sort of warrants a little bit of a back story or exposition and doesn’t get it. So yes, it achieves a brilliant effect in that you lean back from the screen and go “WHA??!!”, but once you’re over the shock it doesn’t seem all that believable and feels a bit sudden and tacked on as though the writers suddenly had this brilliant idea but then couldn’t think how to properly bring everything together in the end. 

Then there are a few question marks regarding certain characters and certain events that take place that are emphasised as having relevance to what’s going on. Whilst the major events are properly explained there are some that just aren’t at all, which sort of makes you question why was such a significant portion of the screenplay devoted to drawing attention to it? 

Aside from these little hiccups, the movie is absolutely brilliant because it’s a good, old-fashioned, horror that piques and plays to the most primal elements of the human psyche. We’ve got eerie sounds in the distance, candles flickering with no wind, an organ playing by itself, doors creaking closed and locking by themselves, curtains moving that aren’t covering a window, and then sudden appearances of people (or other things) that you just really weren’t ready for! All these work together so gloriously to culminate in a feeling of absolute cat-like readiness and anticipation. You yell at the screen “don’t go in there by yourself you twit!” or “don’t go down to the cellar!” and you clutch the couch or bed cushion so tightly it’s in danger of exploding and covering you in a shower of fluff! It’s fabulous! See, you don’t need people getting sucked into mattresses and then fountains of blood rising to the ceiling, you don’t need sadistically gory traps that rip peoples’ mouths permanently open, you don’t need an elevator filled with blood, all you need is a good scream from a woman, a slow walk, and an even slower creaking door closing by itself and that’s enough to get the blood rushing faster, the breath to catch, and the hands to grip whatever’s closest. 

Starring Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Richard Long, Alan Marshal, Carolyn Craig, Elisha Cook Jr., Julie Mitchum, Leona Anderson, Howard Hoffman, and featuring Skeleton as himself, House on Haunted Hill is a classic flick filled with suspense, drama, desperation, hysteria, dark comedy, murder, and death. I loved it right from the get-go, seriously this movie rules!