joshfedderson The House on Haunted hill was a great picture, this movie was from a generation where Horror was in it's prime. The 20's, 30's,40's, and 50's and some 60's were great horror decades. This movie is from that era.The story goes as follows, a rich man and his wife invite five people to his mansion. But this is not any ordinary mansion, supposedly it's haunted. He invites them for a "Ghost Party" and starting at midnight, whoever survives the night until the morning will win $10,000. At first everyone thinks this guys party is a joke, but then things start to get creepier and out of place. Heads appear, ghost appear, a woman kills herself (or so we think). And the night becomes a living hell for each individual person.The Five Guest 1. A Doctor 2. An old Widowed woman 3. A pilot 4. A young woman who works for the host company 5. A previous owner of the mansion, who knows it's haunted and dangerousAs things play out, we find out that some things have been a scary joke,and and some things have not. Out of these seven people the host and his wife included, three of them play major roles in the nights events. As the movie progressed I knew something was fishy about the whole event, it's not until halfway into the film I found out what was really going on, and I loved how the story play's out. I won't spoil anything then what I have already. Let's just say it's a game of cat and mouse sort of. I loved The House on Haunted Hill, a classic 50's movie that never gets old. 10/10.

Maddyclassicfilms House on Haunted Hill is directed by William Castle. The film stars Vincent Price, Elisha Cook Jr., Richard Long, Carol Ohmart, Alan Marshal, Carolyn Craig and Julie Mitchum.Millionaire Frederick Loren(Vincent Price)and his wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart)invite five guests for Annabelle's birthday party. They are pilot Lance Schroeder(Richard Long),Mr. Pritchard (Elisha Cook Jr.)the current owner of the house, Nora Manning(Carolyn Craig), Dr. David Trent(Alan Marshal)and Ruth Bridgers(Julie Mitchum.This is a party with a difference, the group will have to spend the night in a famous haunted house. The guests will be paid ten thousand dollars each if they stay(and survive)the whole night. As the night goes on some very frightening and strange events occur and things take a deadly turn. Are there really violent spirits haunting this house? Can the group trust one another? This film is a perfect mix of horror and comedy, there are some very scary moments(the ghostly apparitions and the blood stain)and two terrific twists.Vincent Price is the highlight amongst the cast, his character is a very clever and observant man and Price gets the films best lines. Elisha Cook Jr. steals every scene he's in as the man who believes in the ghosts and is obsessed by the murders that occurred in the house.This is great fun and it's a film that I never get tired of watching, perfect viewing for Halloween or a dark and stormy day.

Leofwine_draca They don't make 'em like this anymore. More's the pity, as William Castle's cheap and cheerful little spine-chiller is camp entertainment all the way. The budget is low, but Castle makes the best of his small location by filling it with macabre gags: a bloody severed head in a suitcase, a wraith of an old woman who slides around, a body hanging from a noose. These shocks are all served up in the best, nostalgia-ridden time-honoured tradition, with plenty of shrieks and screams as Castle derives maximum terror from each of the slight supernatural occurrences that he builds up.As an added bonus, horror star Vincent Price is cast in the lead role of Frederick Loren, a demented joker with plenty of tricks up his sleeves. Price is at his campest, jovial best here when talking sinisterly with his "amusing" wife, who has thrown the party. It turns out that his darling has tried to poison him on at least one occasion - but she makes out it's the other way round to a gullible guest (then again, what red-blooded male wouldn't fall for her charms?). The role seems to have been written for Price, either that or he just naturally fits it like a glove, and I really couldn't imagine any other actor in the role.Fleshing out the cast are Carol Ohmart as the lovely but devious wife, Alan Marshal as a stern doctor who hides some terrible secrets, and Richard Long as the young dashing hero. Only Long comes off badly - but his role is a poorly-written one, with much time taken up with indecision and a lack of action. Elisha Cook Jr. (who appeared again with Price in Corman's THE HAUNTED PALACE) enjoys himself as a spaced-out drunk who regales us with stories of murder and death, and it's a role he would essentially play in most of his latter-day films. The casting directors duly noted: if you needed an old-time and comical drunk, Elisha Cook was your man.Okay, so the direction is strictly by the book and the plot rather simplistic, but Castle concentrated here on the gimmicks of which he was so fond - this was the film where his infamous 'Emergo' came into play (a rubber glow-in-the-dark skeleton sailed past cinema-goers at a vital moment in the action). The opening of the film is a spooky masterpiece - disembodied heads introduce the cast and tell tall stories while screams and chains rattle in the darkness. And the best effect of all is saved until the end, where a woman is attacked by a ghostly skeleton which pushes her into an acid bath! It all turns out to be Price's work, as he's rigged up the skeleton as a puppet - although you're required to suspend disbelief in his fantastic mechanism. This skeleton moment is the highlight of a richly entertaining film, delightfully old-fashioned and catered for the kid in all of us. A remake followed in 1999 but obviously there's no substitute for Castle or Price. Just sit back, dim the lights and enjoy!

James Hitchcock Eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren and his glamorous young wife Annabelle invite five people to a house party. And not just any house party. This is a haunted house party. Loren has rented a mansion in which, over the years, seven people have been murdered and which is said to be haunted by their ghosts. The rules of the party are that whoever stays in the house for one night will earn $10,000. After midnight, however, the only door to the house will be locked until the morning, and there will be no escape. (All the windows are barred). The five, all of whom are in need of money, are a test pilot, a newspaper columnist, a psychiatrist, a secretary who works for one of Loren's companies and the brother of one of the murder victims. The plot is superficially similar to that of another horror film from a few years later, "The Haunting", which also concerned a disparate group of people invited to stay in a haunted house. There is, however, a major difference. Everything that happens in "House on Haunted Hill" can be explained in rational terms. Although Watson Pritchard (he whose brother was murdered in the house) wanders around warning his fellow guests that the ghosts are coming for them, they are threatened not by malevolent supernatural forces but by human evil. The supposed "party" is no more than an elaborate set-up for a complicated murder scheme- and there may be more than one person with murder in mind. When I say that everything in the film can be explained in rational terms, I was simply using the word "rational" to mean "non- supernatural". I was not implying that the plot makes a lot of sense, because it doesn't. The lack of logic starts with the house itself. It is supposed to be Victorian, and looks it from the inside, but the shots of the exterior show a building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1924 and which would still have looked strikingly modernistic in 1959. The film-makers couldn't even be bothered to look for a genuine Victorian property. It is the sort of less-than-desirable residence which still lacked electricity even in the late fifties- Loren and his guests have to make do with gas lighting- but which comes equipped with its own vat of acid in the basement for the unwary to stumble into. (As soon as this vat was mentioned I knew that at least one character would meet their death in it). And what self-respecting architect would design, and what self-respecting fire department allow, a house with only one door and bars on all the windows? The problems with the film do not end with the architecture. The plot seems full of holes. It is never, for example, explained why Pritchard has accepted Loren's invitation to spend a night in a building which obviously terrifies him and where he clearly expects to be killed. He can't have been that much in need of money. More importantly, the storyline, with its two interlinked murder plots, can be confusing and difficult to follow. Without wanting to give away too much of the ending, I can say that both schemes are so complicated, and so dependent on predicting exactly how a third person, who is not a party to the scheme, will behave, that I cannot imagine any would-be murderer ever coming up with them, especially as one of the killers does not seem to care very much about evading detection. The acting is undistinguished. Vincent Price, by far the best-known cast member, was a gifted actor, and could give good performances even in low-budget horror flicks, a genre in which he seemed to specialise. (I am thinking of films like Michael Reeves' "Witchfinder-General" and some of the Edgar Allen Poe series he made with Roger Corman). This, however, is one low-budget horror flick in which he failed to shine and it is not one of his better films. None of his co-stars, however, is any better, and some are considerably worse. Carol Ohmart is able to convey Annabelle's glamour, but never succeeds in conveying her essentially vicious nature. Elisha Cook's acting as Pritchard seems horribly mannered and exaggerated. Julie Mitchum (sister of the more famous Robert) as the columnist has so little to do that I wondered why the scriptwriter didn't simply write her character out and make do with four guests instead of five. Director William Castle does manage to pull a few surprises, resulting in a couple of genuinely scary moments, although these might have been more effective with a higher budget for special effects, but the film is little more than a cheap and nasty shocker which looks very dated today. There were some excellent horror films from the late fifties and early sixties- "The Haunting", "The Masque of the Red Death" and, above all, Hitchcock's "Psycho", but "House on Haunted Hill" is not one of them. I find myself quite unable to comprehend the relatively high score it enjoys on this board. 4/10