Due to coursework and Christmas I ain't gonna be on here too much for a while
Due to coursework and Christmas I ain't gonna be on here too much for a while
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House on Haunted Hill was made in 1959 by William Castle a prolific director of horror films including the original Rosemary's Daughter and 13 Ghosts. It is definitely one of the best horror films of all time.
The film starts and are introduced to Watson Pritchard the owner of the house. He ominously informs us of the houses history. How his brother and sister--in-law have been murdered there along with 5 other people. Then we meet Mr. Loren (played by Vincent Price) he is a millionaire who has decided to throw a party in the house for his wife. He invites five complete strangers to come along all of whom are in need of money and he has promised them $10,000 each if they stay the whole night. In this group we have a test pilot, a psychiatrist, a journalist, a employee of Loren's called Nora and Pritchard the owner. They've all never met before and fond the whole affair rather mysterious.
Loren's wife shows no interest in the house she has clearly married him for his money and makes no secret
of it having tried to poison him in the past. Loren has no affection for his wife any more understandably and they're both only with each other as he needs to get rid of her without loosing his money and she wants rid of him and to keep all his money. Added to this, this is Loren's 4th wife and the previous three didn't meet happy ends.
They all go on a tour of the house except Loren's wife. Nora and the Test Pilot go off on their own and come upon something strange. The residents find strange things. Ghosts appear and people die. They eventually all decide to lock themselves in their room but even this doesn't work. And finally at the end we have a twist or two.
This really is a fantastic haunted house film, one of the best of its kind. It is this film along with Bucket of Blood that influenced Alfred Hitchcock to make Psycho. A lot of older horror films when compared with modern horror can seem quite tame and not scary at all but I still think House on Haunted Hill is quite a scary film. It has gone from an X to a 12 most others end up as P.G.s. It has a lot of atmosphere to it and the inside of the house looked great for the film. The outside not so much as it looked like some sort of weird complex rather than a house but you only really see the outside once. I liked the ending to this film and it really is a great story that culminates this climax. I like the fact that you're never quite sure whether there are ghosts in the house or not.
The acting is quite good. Vincent Price was really good as Loren and his wife was also very good and I liked the relationship between them. The guy who played Pritchard was abit annoying as he looked like a cross between George Bush and Donnie Osmond. All the characters had a part to play as well (except for the journalist who didn't do much) none of this modern craze of throwing loads of people in with no other point than to boost the kill count.
Personally I think William Castle is quite a good director and like his films despite the odd mess. In this film there were a few annoying bits where they used the same footage over and over again. At one point the cars are driving up a hill, the film cuts to them inside the car then shows the cars again but the cars are back where they started as they just used the same footage over. This happens in one other occasion where a woman is screaming.
The music was also extremely good, perfect for a horror film of this kind.
My DVD has no extras and I doubt that there is one out there with extras except for maybe some combination with the remake. The remake is a waste of time not a terrible film but it's not great. I'd personally recommend you watch this and forget about the new one. There is also a colour version of this one out I believe. Yet again I don't think a colour version would have the same effect maybe it would but I'm happy enough with the black and white and don't see any particular need to go colour.
I've never really understood why they called this House on Haunted Hill. The hill really doesn't have any significance. It's the house that's haunted not the hill. The house is on top of a hill yes but if a house was in a field we wouldn't call it House on Haunted Field. William Castle clearly just loved his alliteration.
If you don't want to buy this film don't bother, looking on wikipedia I discovered it is in the public domain here --> http://www.archive.org/details/House_On_Haunted_Hill.avi
How handy is that? And excellent value for money.
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Pictures of House On Haunted Hill (DVD)
Donnie Osmond spliced with George Bush
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Aug 11th, 2008
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