Violence/Gore: There’s a hanging, a severed head, dripping blood stains, and the show-stopping finale - a re-animated skeleton stalking a victim toward a vat of bubbling acid.

Sex/Nudity: None.

Best Line: “Darling, the only ghoul in the house is you.”

Score:

An eccentric millionaire has given six people a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Stay overnight in a house reputed to be haunted by the ghosts of restless murdered souls, with only a loaded handgun for protection from the specters…and perhaps each other, and each will receive the princely sum of $10,000 (it’s 1959, remember) in the morning. But will all six survive the night? And are they really strangers to one another, or is there something more sinister happening in the HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL?

I don’t know what it is about this little curio of a film - a William Castle production starring Vincent Price that doesn’t feature a single fantasy element yet manages to get by on pure mood. It’s one of my all-time favorite movies, and there have been times when I’ve literally watched it to the end and then put it on all over again and watched it a second time all the way through. It’s probably inexplicable, but I’ll try to explain why HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL has such a hold on me and always will.

First and foremost, of course, there’s Vincent Price. This isn’t his most flamboyant performance, not by a long shot. In fact, at times he’s positively sedate, hanging back and letting the rest of the small cast carry the weight of a scene. He’s also not even strictly a dastardly villain, a type of role with which Price has become inextricably and somewhat inaccurately linked in the minds of most genre fans. He’s a morally ambiguous fellow - a millionaire named Frederick Loren who uses his money and name to manipulate other people’s lives for his own needs - but he’s not a monster. Or is he? There’s a melancholy about him - a sense of inevitability that drives him through the film and gives him the conviction to do what he believes is right. But he’s still Vincent Price, and whenever he’s on the screen, his magnetism and pitch-perfect delivery are nothing short of mesmerizing. And by the end of the movie, you do want to see him win out against his conspiratorial foes no matter what the means.

There’s the house. In one of Castle’s delightful low-budget incongruities, the exteriors not only fail to match the wonderful, atmospheric interior sets but completely contradict the very style of the story being told. With the setup about the house having a dark history of murder and betrayal, you would expect an historic gothic mansion or at least something architecturally traditional. Instead, the eponymous house is an artsy concrete pillbox that couldn’t be less of a haunted house if it tried. A Frank Lloyd Wright creation from 1924, the Samuel Freeman House in LA has turned up in a number of productions and now merits a spot on the National Historic Register…but it just ain’t a haunted house, folks. That sort of quirkiness pervades the movie, and it’s a good thing in the end.

There’s the cast. Staying overnight with Price are frequent Twilight Zone guest star Richard Long as the dashing pilot and nominal love interest for mousy heroine Carolyn Craig, dependable character actor Elisha Cook Jr. (who also appeared with Price in the superb Cormanfest, THE HAUNTED PALACE), and the alluring Carol Ohmart as Loren’s scheming wife. They and the rest of the cast are well suited to their roles and never overact..well, except for Craig, who seems on the verge of a psychotic fit from the moment she arrives. Then again, the entire point is that she’s being driven insane for a reason, so she should be forgiven her excesses.

There’s the plot. Packing in a plethora of tried-and-true haunted house scares along with a dash of murder mystery and a touch of sardonic wit, HOUSE has a quiet, methodical pace that allows you to get comfortable with the idea of spending the night in this house with these people. It’s definitely one of those movies that, as you grow more familiar with it, invites you in as part of the story. Sometimes I watch the movie not to admire Price’s suave posturing or Cook’s trademark drunk routine but merely to spend some time with old friends. Odd, isn’t it?

And there’s “Emergo.” As most movie buffs know, Castle used to like to ‘involve’ the audience by coming up with some sort of ridiculous gimmick to go along with his movies. Since a walking skeleton (played expertly by itself, as the closing credits reveal) figures in the film’s conclusion, Castle hit upon the idea of terrifying audiences by releasing a wire-bound skeleton into theaters at a crucial moment. “Emergo” didn’t always perform as planned and sometimes fell into the crowd or just dangled comically, but he became a part of Hollywood lore and earned HOUSE a place in the annals of movie marketing history.

There’s some talk that Alfred Hitchcock, hearing of this film’s box office performance, conceived PSYCHO to cash in on the low budget horror craze. Could be; I wouldn’t doubt it. Anyway, maybe none of this explains why I love this movie so much. Oh well, think I’ll go and watch it again. After all, the ghosts are moving. They’re coming for me now…and then they’ll come for you! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

DVD Extras: Our recommended release (there have been several) comes paired with a less than pristine print of Price’s LAST MAN ON EARTH, but don’t let that dissuade you - the HOUSE print on this disc is very good indeed.

ATB