House on Haunted Hill

Summary

“So beautiful. So greedy. So cold.”

When I was a young teenager, I became increasingly interested in horror, science fiction, and creature films from the golden age. I can largely credit Joe Dante’s film Matinee for spurring my interest in that genre alongside Turner Classic Movies for showing so many of those films from yesteryear during the month of October. I remember vividly that one film stood above all others from the perspective of my younger sister and myself – House on Haunted Hill. Even as jaded as we were from watching marathons of The X-Files alongside the more contemporary horror films that were shown on AMC, we still were blown away by the strange mix of macabre humor and scares that House on Haunted Hill offered. Starring the inimitable Vincent Price in one of his greatest roles, the film was written by Robb White and directed by William Castle (the inspiration for John Goodman’s character in Matinee.) House on Haunted Hill has had an interesting life in the home video realm, because its copyright was not renewed in 1963 and therefore it fell into the public domain. That means that there have been a lot of releases of the film (particularly in the DVD and VHS era,) but the quality of those releases has varied dramatically. Even in the Blu-ray era, the film has now seen four different releases, including one well reviewed release by Shout! Factory. For this release, Film Masters has thrown their hat in the ring. Film Masters has released a number of public domain releases that they have dome some work towards, so this film definitely falls in their wheel house.

Frederick Lawrence (Vincent Price) has invited five guests to stay overnight at the house on haunted hill for his wife’s birthday. If they can stay overnight, just twelve hours, they will be paid $10,000 dollars. Lance (Richard Schroeder) is a test pilot who needs the cash. Ruth Bridges (Julie Mitchum) is a columnist and a gambler. Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook Jr.) is the owner of the home and terribly afraid of the ghosts inside it, but he needs the cash. Psychiatrist David Trent (Alan Marshal) claims that this will help his work on hysteria. Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig) supports her whole family working for one of Frederick’s companies as a typist. The guests all arrive in the hearses that have been sent to drive them, and they enter the house. Before their host appears, they introduce themselves and discuss that none of the guests know the host personally. A chandelier falls and startles the guests. Annabelle Lawrence (Carol Ohmart) asks her husband why he insisted on inviting strangers instead of her friends for her birthday party. He explains that he wanted an interesting cross section between drunk and pilot, shrink and typist. The host joins the waiting guests and informs that once the house is locked up at midnight, there will be no phones or electricity – and they will be locked in. Pritchard explains that there are seven ghosts – four men, and three women. Pritchard takes them on a tour of the house and explains the different murders that have taken place, including a wine maker who killed his wife by putting her into a vat of acid in the basement. There are a few strange encounters for Nora with a frightening old woman presence and a box with a head. No one else sees any of the things she sees. At midnight, Nora asks to leave the house, but it is locked down. Frederick has a gift for every person in tiny coffins that he presents to them. The gift is a loaded gun.

House on Haunted Hill is seventy five minutes of inspired insanity. It is funny, campy, and still has the occasional moment that is surprisingly effective in terms of scares (such as the first time the older female ghost is shown onscreen.) I have loved it since I was a kid, and I think all of the things that appealed to me then, still work now. The script follows a setup of an Agatha Christie style meet-up amongst a group of morally dubious characters, and then puts them into a house where a number of ghoulish murders have occurred at the behest of an eccentric millionaire who may want to see his wife dead. The script may not be completely convincing (I mean, how many houses have acid pits?,) but the script does have some enjoyable twists and turns as it reaches its climax. The script has everything that a horror and mystery fan would want in a guilty pleasure, but it becomes so much more because the film has Vincent Price in peak form. Vincent Price is synonymous with a certain type of horror film from yesteryear, and this ranks with his best performances in Roger Corman’s films. It will always be my favorite Vincent Price performance. He dominates this film completely. There are a couple other notable performances – Elisha Cook Jr. who also opens and closes out the picture is very memorable, and Carol Ohmart is great as Annabelle. The rest of the cast is almost notable for how forgettable they are. The film has a lot of atmosphere thanks to the shadow filled black and white cinematography by Carl E. Guthrie and the well constructed sets by Morris Hoffman. For the exteriors of the house itself, the famous Ennis House by architect Frank Lloyd Wright was utilized. (This house was also famously used in Blade Runner and many other films.) The music composed by Von Dexter is as good as you can get for this type of film. I love it.

Overall – if you have never watched House on Haunted Hill, I highly recommend you check it out.

Video

As I mentioned above, Film Masters specializes in releasing films that have a past in the public domain. I don’t have any reason to believe that they started from an original camera negative or anything like that. Their restoration work does not have the finesse of some of the bigger labels, or even of some of the smaller labels that are performing their own scans, but I still thought this was a pretty attractive presentation overall. I compared it to a streaming version online, and found the Film Masters restoration looked better. I think it would be somewhat silly to even propose that this would be the definitive release of this film, but for fans that do not have a solid Blu-ray copy, I think this version will suffice.

Audio

Like the film transfer, the DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono audio track is not revelatory, but it gets the job done. I have heard terrible versions of this track, and this restoration is much better than most releases have given. This is solid work by Film Masters. Fans will not be upset with this presentation.

Supplements:

Audio Commentary featuring Heath Holland

Essay Booklet featuring writing by Jason A. Ney

Overall Scores:

Video – 3.5/5

Audio – 4/5

Supplements – 2/5

Overall – 3.75/5

House on Haunted Hill is a classic horror film from the golden age of science fiction and a certain brand of horror. Directed by William Castle, and written by Robb White, the film utilized star Vincent Price to perfection. It remains my favorite Vincent Price performance. The film has had a murky past in terms of releases since the VHS era due to its public domain status. The video presentation for the film is pretty decent – much better than some of the DVDs I had back in the day – but it is not a definitive video presentation. The audio presentation on the other hand is very well done. The special features are light, but if your library does not yet have this classic film (which I love and heartily recommend) on Blu-ray, this disc is worth considering.

The film can be purchased at www.moviezyng.com.