House on Haunted Hill (1959)

5/10

For all its reputation as a horror classic, House on Haunted Hill can feel talky and underwhelming for a modern viewer, particularly devoted horror fans. The iconic Vincent Prince is a delight leading this story set in an allegedly haunted house, and director William Castle—known as the “king of the gimmick”—creates an eerie sense of atmosphere. But despite an intriguing ambiguity, the film’s campy qualities fatally undermine the climax and render it laughable.

Price plays eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren, who invites five people to a “haunted-house” party for his wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart) at a home he has rented. Frederick offers $10,000 to each guest who is able to stay in the house for one night. All the guests are strangers to the Lorens and to one another: test pilot Lance Schroeder (Richard Long), psychiatrist Dr. David Trent (Alan Marshal), newspaper columnist Ruth Bridgers (Julie Mitchum); Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig), who works for one of Frederick’s companies; and Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook), owner of the house and a certified drunk who sincerely believes it to be haunted by ghosts of people who were murdered there, including his own brother.

The Lorens have a tense relationship. Annabelle is the fourth of Frederick’s wives, with all her predecessors now dead. Frederick believes Annabelle plans to kill him and take his money. Their mutual suspicions play out at the party, where the doors are locked and guests unable to leave after midnight. Nora sees what she believes are ghosts, which heightens the sense of anxiety. When Frederick distributes “party favours” in the form of a loaded handgun for each guest, you know things aren’t going to end well. But his guests really need that money…

A consistent theme of House on Haunted Hill is that people are never quite sure of what they’re seeing. Nora is terrified by what appears to be a ghostly woman reaching out for her. Frederick reassures her that this is Mrs. Slydes (Leona Anderson), who is blind and one of two caretakers along with her husband Jonas (Howard Hoffman). Yet the way Mrs. Slydes exits the room after her first encounter with Nora, she appears to be gliding, not walking, moving more like a prop from a carnival funhouse—or a ghost—than a living human being. And Mrs. Slydes’ expression and hand gestures sure seem like someone trying to look as scary as possible.

As Nora experiences more and more frightening sights, she becomes increasingly panicked—which Dr. Trent, who specializes in “hysteria”, treats as a medical condition. Doctors once considered female hysteria as uncontrollable emotional excess in women, which they viewed in the 19th century as a diagnosable physical illness and in the 20th as a mental illness. It’s a darkly amusing reflection of contemporary misogyny when Nora’s perfectly understandable reactions are dismissed as a gendered mental illness.

To be fair, all the characters start to act in more unusual ways in the face of mounting fear. Film scholar John Kenneth Muir writes:

Though produced more than half a century ago, The House on Haunted Hill remains a study in filmmaking economy, with just a handful of interesting and diverse characters trapped in a mostly empty house, facing their own problems as much as they do the specter of a dangerous spirit. Yet what makes The House on Haunted Hill so much fun is the central conceit that—when frightened—people are uncertain of what they’ve seen and can be manipulated into believing and doing things that seem against their character. Here, a sinister and exploitative man stokes terror on purpose and hopes that murder will be the outcome.

All these are interesting ideas, but too many plot elements in the movie just don’t add up. Mrs. Slydes glide away from Nora in a way that makes her look like either a carnival attraction or a ghost, since no human being could move in this way. Later in the movie, we see characters are deliberately manipulating what happens in the house to induce fear among the guests. Did someone build a lifelike full-scale dummy of Mrs. Slydes and rig it on strings?

In another case, the appearance of a “ghost” is unambiguously an illusion created by someone who is very much alive. The problem is that as the film progresses, the various illusions created by characters become too elaborate to maintain believability. But it’s in the climax when things really fall apart.

A vat of acid in the wine cellar plays a key role in killing two characters. The first death we never see, prompting questions of exactly how that person died. The second we do see. Unfortunately it’s the goofiest scene in the movie and destroys any sense of real fear. We can accept that scared people might not act in the most rational manner. But the way a character allows themselves to be so frightened by a cheap-looking skeleton on strings that they fall into an open vat of acid, which they are clearly aware of and have been walking around at the centre of the room, is so ridiculous it shatters any suspension of disbelief.

When House on Haunted Hill originally played in theatres, it was often accompanied by one of Castle’s famous gimmicks. In this case the gimmick was “Emergo”, which involved the theatre rigging a pulley system so a plastic skeleton would fly over the audience at a key moment. Doubtless this provided a cheap thrill that enhanced the experience for contemporary audiences. Sadly for home viewers, all we have is the unconvincing plastic skeleton in the film itself.

The actors all do a fine job—particularly Price, who is magnetic every second he’s onscreen, and Ohmart. But despite a commendably creepy vibe, the film just isn’t that scary. The climactic scene with the skeleton and acid is unintentionally hilarious. Maybe modern horror viewers are desensitized. But in any era, a character so paralyzed with fear by a cheap-looking Halloween decoration that they essentially allow themselves to be killed—instead of, say, walking away—should elicit more mockery and derision than fear.