HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL 1959

Disembodied screams, rattling chains, and ghoulish groans amidst creaking doors- all a delicious mixture of frightful sounds that emanate from a jet-black screen.

Suddenly Watson Pritchard’s floating head narrates the evening’s spooky tale…

The marvelously dashing face of Vincent Price or for the film’s purposes, Frederick Loren’s head sporting a plucky mustache and highbrow tone introduces himself in front of the imposing Modern-Ancient structure.

Von Dexter’s music, a mixture of solemn strings, and a sustained and queasy Hammond organ & Theremin greet us with an eerie funeral dirge while the shiny black gimmicky funeral cars pull up in front of the quite sinister post-modern structure.

And this is just the opening fanfare of William Castle’s classic House on Haunted Hill!

One of William Castle’s most beloved low-budget, fun-house fright ride through classical B movie horror and exquisitely campy performances. Distributed by Allied Artists and written by Robb White who also did the screenplay for Castle’s Macabre 1958, The Tingler 1959 13 Ghosts 1960 & Homicidal 1961.

White’s story is quirky and wonderfully macabre as it works at a jolting pace delivering some of the most memorable moments of offbeat suspense in this classic B&W B-Horror morsel from the 50s!

The success of the film inspired Alfred Hitchcock to go out and make his own low-budget horror picture- Psycho 1960.

Much of the style and atmosphere can be attributed to the unorthodox detail by art director Dave Milton and set designer Morris Hoffman. The exterior of the house is actually The Ennis Brown House in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, built in 1924, and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

There’s a pervasive sense of dread in House on Haunted Hill, that makes the house itself a ‘spook.’
Whether the house is haunted or not, its forbidding presence tells us that it just doesn’t matter. The history of the house itself, its violent past is enough to give one chills. While not in the classic sense like that of Robert Wise’s diseased and imposing Hill House, William Castle does a fabulous job of inventing a parameter to tell a very cheeky and pleasurable little scare story. As David J Skal puts it succinctly “The real, if unintentional spook in House on Haunted Hill is postwar affluence.”

The narrative is fueled by the creepy atmosphere of the house itself. Not using a claustrophobic Old Dark House trope but rather a modern Gothic construction that swallows you up with odd motifs and a sense of malignancy within the fortress walls. The starkness of the wine cellar and it’s empty minuscule dark grey rooms with sliding panels is almost more creepy than black shadowy corners with cobwebs and clutter. Director of Photography Carl E Guthrie  (Caged 1950) offers some stunning and odd perspective camera angles and low lighting which aid in the disjointed feeling of the sinister house’s magnetism.

The constant explorations into the viscera of the house by the guests is almost as titillating as the criminal set-up and conspiracy that is afoot propelled by Von Dexter’s tantalizingly eerie musical score with deep piano notes and eerie wispy soprano glossolalia.

House on Haunted Hill works wonderfully, partly due to the presence of the urbane master of chills and thrills, the great Vincent Price who plays millionaire playboy Frederick Loren. Vincent Price was a versatile actor who should not be pigeonholed as merely a titan of terror, given his too numerous layered performances in great films like Otto Preminger’s Laura ’44, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Dragonwyck ’46, etc. Vincent Price did however make his mark on the horror genre with House on Haunted Hill. The New York Herald-Tribune praised Price’s performance as having “waggish style and bon-vivant skepticism.”

As David J Skal puts it in his, The Monster Show {Vincent Price} “Could bring an arch elegance to the most insipid goings-on…“

The omnipresent Elisha Cook Jr. is superb as Watson Pritchard, the neurotic sot who is riddled with fear, spouting anecdotes about the house’s grisly history.

I adore Elisha Cook, from his cameo in Rosemary’s Baby, his performance as George Peatty in Kubrick’s masterpiece The Killing ’56 to his very uniquely intense role as Cliff the sexually jazzed up drummer in Phantom Lady ’44.

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The strikingly beautiful Carol Ohmart plays Loren’s treacherously seductive wife Annabelle who is sick of her husband’s irrational jealousy. Has she already tried to poison him once but failed? The story alludes to as much. Annabelle wouldn’t be happy with a million-dollar divorce settlement, she wants ALL her husband’s money! Annabelle is Loren’s fourth wife, the first wife simply disappeared.

The supporting cast is made up of Richard Long, Alan Marshal, Carolyn Craig, Julie Mitchum, Leona Anderson, and Howard Hoffman as Mrs. & Mr. Jonas Slydes.

Millionaire Frederick Loren rents a notorious house, the scene of seven brutal murders. Then he invites a sampling of bourgeois America to the Modern-Gothic ‘haunted house’ so that his beautiful wife Annabelle can play party hostess. Behind the couple’s motivations is a hostile and cunning strategy to destroy each other while manipulating their unwitting guests.

The eccentric Loren offers each of the 5 invited an award of $10,000, but only if they are willing to remain in the house once the caretakers lock them in after midnight. Presented in nifty little coffins, they’re each given a gun as charming little party favors. This was the 50s after all, a time when the American Dream was blossoming with possibility and everyone wanted a piece of the pie, willing to do whatever it takes to grab some ready cash. Even if it meant being trapped until morning in an odd and unsavory Gothic structure with veritable strangers.

Among them is Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook Jr.), owner of the house and weary alcoholic who always looks dizzy and dismayed as he relates the story of his brother’s ghastly murder. Pritchard rambles on with his nihilistic warnings of death. He is the authority on the place and the gruesome circumstances involving the other untimely and violent deaths plaguing the cursed house.

Lance Schroeder (Richard Long) is a suave test pilot who isn’t easily rattled. Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig) works for one of Loren’s companies as a secretary. Nora needs the money to help care for her family and does a majority of the film’s screaming. She plays the proverbial ‘hysterical’ woman and is in fact dubbed that by psychiatrist Dr. David Trent (Alan Marshal) a man who specializes in cases of ‘hysteria.’ Saying that ghosts are merely ‘creations’ of hysteria.

Lastly is another avid drinker, newspaper writer Ruth Bridgers (Julie Mitchum) who desperately needs the money because of her gambling addiction. As the guests settle in for the night’s festivities, eerie events begin to unfold. A flickering and falling chandelier. The grotesquely patent blood stain that drips on Ruth Bridger’s hand, the vat filled with acid in the wine cellar, the horrific white-eyed hag in black with talon-like fingers that seems to float passed Nora in the darkness.

Eerie sound effects by Ralph Butler and Charles G.Schelling and the freakish severed head in Nora’s suitcase all help build the hysteria that drives Nora to ultimately shoot Frederick Loren or does she?

That’s the end of all the spooky fun for now…!

I just finished reading Step Right Up! I’m Gonna Scare the Pants Off America. Bill Castle ALWAYS put so much of his heart, good humor, and genuine passion into every project of his. He was always thinking about his audience and how best he could entertain them.

I think that daughter Terry Castle should produce a biopic about her dad. His memoirs and the easily accessible storytelling, relating the utterly fascinating experiences of his life are every bit as titillating as one of his movies. He was loved, admired, and most of all respected by everyone he ever worked with. And all this ballyhoo and celebrating aside, he was NOT a Schlockmeister- William Castle had a serious eye for good stories and knew how to make a darn compelling picture. He treated everyone around him like a human being and knew what he wanted to do once the ideas started pouring out like smoke from one of his fat cigars!

In his chapter, The Skeleton Factory-he recounts how he had been looking for the perfect lead for House on Haunted Hill. While drinking coffee at a shop near Samuel Goldwyn’s studio, he noticed Vincent Price sitting at the next table. Price had told him that he was very dejected having been passed over for a part he really wanted. Price was very gracious with Castle’s friendly intrusion and listened while he told him about the new film he was making in which he’d be perfect for the lead. “During the night many strange ghostly things happen… blood dripping from the ceiling… walls shaking… apparitions appearing. The millionaire, the part I want you to play, has plotted to kill his wife. She plots to kill you. It’s a battle of wits” Price smiles and says, “Who wins?” Castle tells him “You do of course. She tries to throw you into a vat of boiling acid” Price says“How charming!” and agreed to do the picture.

During the scene when the ‘skeleton’ emerges out of the acid vat moving toward Annabelle, an iridescent plastic skeleton on a wire was released above the heads of the audience then reeled back in sync with the skeleton that puppeteer Vincent Price’s character Frederick Loren is reeling in so that when the gimmick goes back into it’s little black box it’s seemingly moving back into the movie screen.

William Castle dubbed this particular gimmick “Emergo” for theatergoers. The rowdy moviegoers began throwing projectiles at the skeleton so the theaters had to stop using this effect.

Emergo all!! I go for now -MonsterGirl