House on Haunted Hill
(1958)
[DVD Info]

Fredrick Loren (Vincent Price) has rented an old house for the evening because his wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart) wants to throw a party, a haunted house party. He invites five guests and tells them that he’ll pay them $10,000 to spend the night there. All the guests are chauffeured in hearses to the house and no one to greet them. To break the ice they introduce themselves. Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook) owns the house. He spent one night there and barely made it out alive, and his brother didn’t make it out at all. Lance Schroeder (Richard Long) is a test pilot. He’s very brave but also very desperate for money. Ruth Bridgers (Julie Mitchum) is a reporter for the newspaper. She came to write a story on the house. She’s also an alcoholic and has plenty of debt from gambling. Dr. David Trent (Alan Marshall) is a psychologist and wants to use this experience to prove his theories on hysteria. He has no need for the money; he’s just greedy. Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig) works for one of Fredrick’s companies. Her husband died in a car accident and she’s the only one left to take care of her family. As they wait, a chandelier mysteriously falls, almost hitting Nora. Fredrick arrives and greets his guests. They take a tour of the house, which is led by Watson. Lance and Nora get separated; Lace gets locked in a closet and Nora sees a creepy old woman coming towards her in the dark. Nora runs to the others telling them of Lance’s disappearance and claiming to have seen a ghost. They find Lance lying on the floor bleeding, but otherwise fine. Dr. Trent blames it all on hysteria. As Midnight rolls around, they’re all locked in the house by the caretakers. Now things will get interesting. Fredrick gives out the party favors, loaded guns. Nora finds a head in her suitcase and then disappears; Annabelle hangs herself. Suspicions and paranoia run rampant. Their own worst enemy is themselves…will they make it out alive?

Giving a drunk person a gun is a good idea.
Talking loudly about someone who's hysterical outside their room doesn't make things worse.

"What husband doesn't want to kill his wife?" ~Fredrick Loren.

Their logic on how to get through the night.

For a movie made in the 50s, it really had its moments. This is coming from someone as jaded as myself when it comes to scary movies. Sure, it had its terribly cheesy moments and some laughable dialogue, but it still held up well. I saw the most recent remake a long time ago, so I didn’t remember what happens (I know it had that guy with the caterpillar eyebrows…Peter Gallagher I think?), but I remember not liking it that much. I actually really liked this one despite it being in black and white and whatnot. That affect in the beginning with the floating heads was pretty creepy too. I couldn’t really tell you why though. Haha.

One thing that really bothered me about this movie was their logic on how to get through the night. They all separate into different rooms and lock themselves in with their guns. People can come and go from their own rooms and no one would know. Someone could go into someone else’s room and kill them and then go back into their own room and no one would have any idea who did it. The smart thing to do would be all sit in the living room together and not let anyone leave till morning…but then we wouldn’t have a movie if they did it that way. Also…I was disappointed in the lack of ghost in this flick. It’s supposed to be a HAUNTED house right? Watson was hyping it up with all his ghost talk…but no ghost appears. False advertising!

In all, this was a good movie. I enjoyed it. I really like Vincent Price! He has this really cute forlorn look on his face the whole movie. He just needs a hug! I also fully enjoy the swaggering skeleton. I wouldn’t be scared of a swaggering skeleton…I’d want to be his friend. Hehehe. Anyway, it’s a good movie and I’d recommend checking it out if you like old school horror mysteries. With vengeful spirits, stock footage, double crossing, death faking, and scream queens...the jury gives this flick:

(Where were the Ghosts?)

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