![]() ![]() ![]() Full of screams and things that go bump in the night, House on Haunted Hill isn't particularly scary and often makes little sense, but, like a Halloween haunted house, the spectacle of spook-show clichés is quite entertaining, and Price makes a sardonic master of ceremonies. Blood drips from the ceiling, zombielike apparitions float through rooms, severed heads and skeletons suddenly appear, and then a guest is found hanging in the stairwell. Five strangers gather to test their stamina, Price hands each of them delightfully twisted party favors (loaded handguns, delivered in their own tiny coffins), and the spook show begins. When he turns his wife's idea for a haunted-house party into a contest-$10,000 to whoever will spend the night in "the only truly haunted house in the world"-it seems he may have found an alternative to divorce. ![]() ![]() Vincent Price stars as a deliciously silky millionaire married to a greedy gold digger (Carol Ohmart) who refuses to divorce him. Sardonicus (1961) about a man with his face caught in a grotesque frozen smile the juvenile comedy Zotz! (1962) about a magical coin the remake of The Old Dark House (1963) for Hammer the Grand Guignol psycho-thriller Strait-Jacket (1964) with Joan Crawford The Night Walker (1965), a psycho-thriller about a dream lover the prank phonecall psycho-thriller I Saw What You Did (1965) the psycho-thriller Let’s Kill Uncle (1965) the ghost comedy The Spirit is Willing (1967) the reality-bending sf film Project X (1968) as producer of the classic occult film Rosemary’s Baby (1968) as producer of the anthology series Ghost Story (1972-3) Shanks (1974) with Marcel Marceau as a puppeteer who can resurrect the dead and as producer of the firestarting insect film Bug! (1975).William Castle's gimmick-laden comic thriller is not so much a horror movie as a fairground funhouse come to life. William Castle’s other films of genre note as producer-director are:– as director of Crime Doctor’s Manhunt (1945), the sixth in a series of Columbia crime thrillers, of which Castle directed several, featuring a forensicologist against a split-personalitied killer the psycho-thriller Macabre (1958) the classic The Tingler (1959), probably Castle’s best film the haunted house film 13 Ghosts (1960) the psycho-thriller Homicidal (1961) Mr. This in turn produced a direct-to-dvd sequel with Return to House on Haunted Hill (2007). The film was given a worthwhile big-budget remake as House on Haunted Hill (1999). Vincent Price and Carol Ohmart play off one another with a marvellously glacial dislike. Nevertheless, the luridness of Castle’s pop-up effects and some effective plot twists on behalf of frequent Castle collaborator Robb White make the film an undeniably entertaining carnival show. William Castle lacked any style as a director and his pace is slow and pedestrian – his films invariably belied the threat of scaring people to death that he constantly promised to do. Carol Ohmart attacked by a pop-up skeletonĭramatically, House on Haunted Hill is talk heavy. The plot involves a group being offered $10,000 each if they can survive a night in the titular house and Castle even uses star Vincent Price as the equivalent of a carnival barker at the start of the film, having him turn to the screen to offer the same challenge directly to the audience. In House on Haunted Hill, Castle does not just stop at theatrical gimmickry – the entire film has been constructed as the cinematic equivalent of a fairground haunted house show with heads popping up out of boxes, ghosts out of closets, hanging bodies and acid pools. The great gimmick in House on Haunted Hill was having a skeleton winched across the theatre on a wire at the point in the film when a skeleton appears to rise from an acid pool and pursue the heroine. Castle conducted stunts like taking out insurance policies in case audiences died of fright – Macabre (1958), or wiring theatre seats up with electric shock buzzers to jolt audiences at appropriate moments – The Tingler (1959). William Castle was a filmmaker who conceived his films in a spirit of entrepreneurial hucksterism not unakin to that of a P.T. House on Haunted Hill is one of the films of the great William Castle. ![]()
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