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House on Haunted Hill (1959)

October 10, 2016 Movie of the Week

Schlock master William Castle’s House on Haunted Hill is one of the best B movies ever made. It’s filled to the brim with adorably dated special effects, mind-numbing plot holes, and a heaping helping of over the top Vincent Price creepiness, making it a must watch for any horror movie fan.

The story centers around a “haunted house party”. Eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren (Price) and his wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart) have invited a group of strangers to join them for a night of frights locked inside a purportedly haunted mansion. Everyone who survives until morning will walk away with $10,000, no strings attached. That number was a bit more impressive in 1959, sure, but I’d totally do it given the chance. The guest list consists of Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig), who works for one of Loren’s numerous businesses; Lance Schroeder (Richard Long), a surprisingly dim-witted test pilot; Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook), the disturbed and perpetually drunken owner of the house; Ruth Bridges (Julie Mitchum), a newspaper columnist with a gambling problem; and David Trent (Alan Marshal), a greedy psychiatrist. These people are total strangers and in truth have only one thing in common: each of them could really use that money. Couldn’t we all.

It’s a silly premise, sure, but a fun one - even if said premise quickly dissolves into the most contrived and hilariously ill thought out murder plot in the history of history. But it’s important to note that while the Lorens, whose relationship is rocky to say the least, may have had ulterior motives for arranging this spooky shindig, that doesn’t mean that the place itself isn’t teeming with supernatural occurrences aplenty. After all, it wouldn’t be the House on Haunted Hill if the house (or, at the very least, the hill) wasn’t haunted! And that’s this film’s chief strength. That house is haunted as hell. I’m talking creepy monster arms grabbing people, severed heads disappearing and reappearing wherever they please, floating apparitions, walls dripping blood levels of haunted. And sure, some of the paranormal activity is explained away in the film’s finale as part of the aforementioned elaborate ruse (laughably dubbed “the perfect crime” in the movie itself), but the vast majority were merely bizarre and inexplicable things that just kinda happened because this is a story set in a haunted house atop an equally haunted hill. I love that.

my favorite is how meandering people are, even in the midst of a terrible emergency

they respond to “what is the emergency” with “well, the thing is, four weeks ago–”

and then he’s like “WHAT IS THE EMERGENCY RIGHT NOW”

and they’re like “so what happened this morning was, i said to my wife, i said–”

“WHAT IS CURRENTLY HAPPENING AT THIS MOMENT”

“oh i’m having a heart attack”

my second favorite is how specific he has to get sometimes

like, “what is your emergency?”

“i’m sitting in a pool of blood.”

“… is it… your blood?”

“yes i think so”

“do you know where it’s coming from?”

“probably the stab wound”

“have you been stabbed?”

Children Don’t Have Gender Identity

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