‘Only the ghosts in this house are glad we’re here...’
William Castle, the infamous filmmaker and producer, has mainly endured in the annals of cinema history due to his reliance on gimmickry. This began with Macabre in 1958 with Castle providing every customer with a certificate for a $1,000 life insurance policy from Lloyd’s of London in case they should die of fright during the film. Perhaps most famously, Castle rigged some of the seats throughout screenings of The Tingler so that they would vibrate during key moments mimicking the sensation of an electric shock. The gimmick for House on Haunted Hill was a little more reserved (a skeleton with red-lighted eye sockets floated over the audience during the film’s conclusion), and that’s perhaps because the film is effective enough without the need for cheap thrills…
The plot is devilishly simple, Frederick Loren (Vincent Price), an eccentric and enigmatic millionaire, offers a group of five strangers $10,000 to spend a night in a haunted house with him and his doomed wife, Annabelle (Carol Ohmart). The strangers are made up of a young woman who needs the money to support her family (Nora Manning), a test pilot (Richard Long), a newspaper columnist (Julie Mitchum – sister of Robert), a psychiatrist (Alan Marshal) and the house’s owner (Elisha Cook).
A couple of interesting trivia points before we begin: Richard Long often went by ‘Dick’ Long, so that’s wonderful, obviously. Less wonderful, however, is the fact that Manning, so beautiful in this film, shot herself just over a decade after this film was released at age of 36. It’s a cruel world. Anyway, the film is great. Price elevates it, and is a joy throughout, all sly winks and nods to camera, but it is the premise and the presentation of the supernatural that really pops. This is a haunted-house, ghost-train of a movie with real scares, fake scares and trickery of all kinds. At just over 90 minutes it’s an easy breezy watch and it is clear that Castle has a knack, not just for gimmickry, but also for delivering a well timed scare.
House on Haunted Hill puts on no airs and graces. This is pure entertainment for the masses. And yet, it’s huge success was one of the things that influenced Alfred Hitchcock to make Psycho. Forget the gimmicks, House on Haunted Hill is great without them.
