House on Haunted Hill

An archetypal funhouse of Castle hokum. Millionaire Price offers five strangers $10,000 to live through the night, locked in a haunted mansion (atmospherically played in exteriors by Wright’s Ennis Brown House). But does he have an ulterior motive concerning his young wife (his fifth!)? Or does she? It’s scarcely important, compared with giving the audience a good scare, via a vat of acid in the basement, severed heads, guns in coffins etc and, on the first run, “Emergo”, a glowing skeleton swooping through the theatres. The shocks are executed with a minimum of ingenuity in light, sound and editing, and the plot becomes an interference, but taken as a creaky ghost-train ride, 75 minutes’ entertaining nonsense is assured.

d/p William Castle sc Robb White p Carl E. Guthrie ed Roy Livingstone ad David Milton m Von Dexter cast Vincent Price, Carolyn Craig, Richard Long, Elisha Cook Jr, Carol Ohmart, Alan Marshall, Julie Mitchum
(1959, USA, 75min, b/w)