Halloween Horror: House on Haunted Hill (1959)

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Would you spend one night in a haunted house for a large sum of money? Most every kid has bounced this idea off a classmate or friend at some point. Perhaps I’m too much of a child of the 1990s, raised on shows like The Simpsons, but it’s always been a pleasure of mine to track down the origin point for movie references and common story ideas. So, even if House on Haunted Hill has never been directly parodied in a Treehouse of Horror segment (admittedly, I haven’t been paying attention the past two decades), it was great to finally watch the movie in which Vincent Price’s millionaire invites five strangers to spend the night in a haunted house for $10,000 (a large sum in 1959). Sure, House on Haunted Hill is not seriously scary, but it delivers creepy carnivalesque fun.

House on Haunted Hill plays like the film version of a carnival haunted house. This must be what producer-director William Castle had in mind. Admired today by filmmakers like John Waters and Robert Zemeckis, Castle, the director of numerous thrillers, was a shameless showman who often relied on gimmicks to promote his movies. Although the exterior of the haunted house uses shots of Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Ennis House in Los Angeles, with its distinct patterned block construction (and which is featured in other movies, such as Blade Runner and The Rocketeer), the inside looks like your standard creepy Victorian mansion. The large chandelier over the entrance way will rustle and fall. Something creepy is revealed when a box is opened. Strange hands reach out from behind doorways. Figures grab you in dark rooms. There are things hidden behind curtains, surprising sliding doors, and multiple entrances for most rooms, never letting you feel safe in one place. Skeletons pop out and a hanged body is discovered. In one of the most effective scares, the eerie gliding presence of an old lady presages her terrifying reappearance, when her contorted face is suddenly revealed.

While some of the scares are more routine, the film’s opening is the most effective and artistic. After the production titles, over a blank black screen, a woman’s voice gives out a blood-curdling shriek, which is then followed by eerie moaning, more screams, a sinister cackle, and the sound of lurching chains. It’s all very much what you’d hear at one of the amusement fright houses at Clifton Hill in Niagara Falls, but as a shock opening, it works. 

We then see a disembodied head set against the black background, played by the great character actor Elisha Cook, Jr., who introduces himself as Watson Pritchard. Pritchard tells us about his dark personal history with the “only really haunted house in the world.” An image of the house’s architecturally strange exterior is presented, followed by the image of the disembodied head of Vincent Price’s millionaire laid overtop. Price’s Frederick Loren explains that he is hosting a haunted house party for his wife at the place. Price’s Loren introduces all the characters he has invited, teasing their sordid reasons for needing the cash. Price is always so capable at suggesting veiled menace and winking insinuations when he speaks. The strange, disembodied, almost floating heads suggest the ghostly presences described by Pritchard—some victims were beheaded in the house—while the direct address to the audience, with each head looking at and speaking directly to us, brings the viewer right into the picture. It’s like a carny picking us out of the crowd and bringing us into his sinister attraction.

The cast is made up of solid actors, which adds a lot to the appeal today of a B-movie like this. Richard Long plays Lance Schroeder, a handsome test pilot, and Carolyn Craig plays Nora Manning, a pretty young secretary who needs money to help her family. Long and Craig look like standard clean-cut 1950s leads, but they lack the woodenness to their dialogue we might expect. The character actress Julie Mitchum plays a wry, alcoholic columnist. Alan Marshal plays Dr. David Trent, a psychiatrist who is attending to confirm his research into hysteria. Most of the attendees are sceptics, but Cook’s Pritchard is the true believer, claiming to have barely survived his one night in the house. Pritchard’s doomsaying builds up our apprehension, and allows the different personalities and beliefs to bounce off each other. The sinister emotions between Price and his wife, played by Carol Ohmart, are also well set up. It’s clear they both hate each other, so we don’t know which way the plot will direct the hate. Will one kill the other? Overall, it’s a well assembled Clue-like cast of characters. While this isn’t the most sophisticated closed-setting microcosm of a society, the characters are certainly more interesting than in most midcentury American horror movies.

House on Haunted Hill remains the case of a great idea well-executed. It’s not flawless and it’s certainly an amusement park-style scare. Thematically, the film is also a good reminder of the long-running connections between carnival amusements and Hollywood show business (long before Jurassic Park was compared to theme park rides). A few points in this film that I won’t spoil make the connection even deeper, and apparently some screenings in 1959 actually featured a real prop skeleton that would be lowered down over the audience near the end of the film. Even viewed today, sans skeleton gimmick, this carnivalesque fright house movie is a very fun time. 

7 out of 10

House on Haunted Hill (1959, USA)

Directed by William Castle; written by Robb White; starring Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Richard Long, Alan Marshal, Carolyn Craig, Elisha Cook, and Julie Mitchum.

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