Ghost Stories

 

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Wealthy Fredrick Loren (Vincent Price), and his unfaithful wife (Carol Ohmart), invite five strangers to a party at a haunted house.  If they stay through the night, each gets ten thousand dollars.

I wish I could have seen House On Haunted Hill as gimmick master William Castle first showed it.  More skilled as a showman than as a director, his stunts including taking out well publicized "fright insurance" and electrifying theater seats to shock audience members when a monster attacked.  For House On Haunted Hill, he introduced "Emergo," which just meant an inflatable skeleton would fly over the audience.  In a cheap, '50s way, that had to be fun.

Without that, the film is left lacking any thrills.  What it does have is Vincent Price in top form.  He plays...well...Vincent Price.  He's charming, disdainfully, and mocking.  He did it in dozens of other movies, but he didn't do it any better.  The rest of the cast pull off their parts, with Elisha Cook (of Maltese Falcon fame) and Carol Ohmart being the most memorable, but all are in Price's shadow.

The story doesn't stand up so well.  Nora (Carolyn Craig) is one of the dimmest and weakest females in film.  When she gets scared, she demands that another guest (who she just met) take her out of the house.  When he doesn't jump to it, she just stands there.  Why doesn't she just leave?  And why doesn't she move when a rope wraps around her legs?  She never even considers that any of the ghostly effects could be faked (after being invited to a birthday party in a haunted house); instead, she screams at everything.  The other characters aren't much better as they separate whenever they have a chance.  Isn't there a rule about that?  After they've separated multiple times for no reason, they actually choose to all split up (each to their own room).  It's only six hours.  Why don't they all sit in the living room together? 

There's also the whole issue of the pool of acid.  Several people attempt to toss bodies in, which in every case would really mess things up for them, legally.  What kind of plans do these people have?

Well, plot isn't the strong suit here.  Watching House On Haunted Hill is like watching someone else walk through a Jaycee's Halloween haunted house.  It's not frightening, it doesn't make sense, but a few things look cool.

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