House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Very well executed

Touches You

Excellent but underrated film

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Wealthy Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) invites five strangers to a party for his wife Annabelle in a haunted house. He offers them $10k each to stay the night.This has both Vincent Price and a terrific B-horror premise. The first scare attempt comes from a ridiculous creepy dummy. I laughed when the dummy is rolled across the floor. The special effects are in its infancy. It's all campy done seriously. I can't really endorse this. The acting is stiff. I don't care about the character. The only actor I recognize is Price and he's a charismatic co-star. After the initial chuckle at its campiness, it becomes a bore since I don't care anybody or anything in this. It's an old classic with which I don't have anything memorable to take away.

Vincent Price and the wife are creepy. Elisha Cook is freaking everyone out with this ghost stories. It's a house of murder. The old lady (caretaker?) popping out of the shadows made me jump. There's a nice plot twist. But then the movie drove itself off a cliff. That skeleton. C'mon. I've seen scarier skeletons at the chiropractor's office. And then a semi-confession and boom, movie pretty much ends. It's like back in in the VCR days when you'd tape a late-night movie and your tape would run out before the movie ended. Maybe they ran out of money before they filmed a proper 3rd act.

House on Haunted Hill is directed by William Castle. The film stars Vincent Price, Elisha Cook Jr., Richard Long, Carol Ohmart, Alan Marshal, Carolyn Craig and Julie Mitchum.Millionaire Frederick Loren(Vincent Price)and his wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart)invite five guests for Annabelle's birthday party. They are pilot Lance Schroeder(Richard Long),Mr. Pritchard (Elisha Cook Jr.)the current owner of the house, Nora Manning(Carolyn Craig), Dr. David Trent(Alan Marshal)and Ruth Bridgers(Julie Mitchum.This is a party with a difference, the group will have to spend the night in a famous haunted house. The guests will be paid ten thousand dollars each if they stay(and survive)the whole night. As the night goes on some very frightening and strange events occur and things take a deadly turn. Are there really violent spirits haunting this house? Can the group trust one another? This film is a perfect mix of horror and comedy, there are some very scary moments(the ghostly apparitions and the blood stain)and two terrific twists.Vincent Price is the highlight amongst the cast, his character is a very clever and observant man and Price gets the films best lines. Elisha Cook Jr. steals every scene he's in as the man who believes in the ghosts and is obsessed by the murders that occurred in the house.This is great fun and it's a film that I never get tired of watching, perfect viewing for Halloween or a dark and stormy day.

Eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) concocts a complicated and fiendish plan to catch out scheming would-be murderers, his wife blonde femme fatale Annabelle Loren (Carol Ohmart) and concerned psychiatrist Dr. David Trent (Alan Marshal). Frederick invites a motley crew of guests as party attendees for his wife's party, offering each of them $10k to stay all night locked in the haunted house, scene of multiple murders in the past. One of the guests, the house owner Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook Jr.), is a survivor of a previous incident during which his brother was murdered. And seemingly two steps away from being committed himself, Pritchard has returned to warn the others of the terrors of this house and possibly meet his fate. The action revolves around the murder plot and forces test pilot Lance Schroeder (Richard Long), into an investigation of the house's secrets in order to find a way out of the house, so he can contact the authorities. Scream queen secretary/typist Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig) forces the pace along screaming the place down and jumping at shadows at every opportunity.Although this film was made in 1959, it follows the normal path of this type of haunted house movie, where a clueless group of people are frightened into taking precipitous actions while armed with guns - due to sheer terror. False walls,traps, red herrings and suspicious motives of all the guests locked together in the house until morning.Talking Pictures TV - Freeview 81.