Review: House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Does one even need to give a summation of House on Haunted Hill?  So much of it is part of the popular lexicon that it only seems necessary because of how often it gets confused with The Haunting due to that movie being based off of The Haunting of Hill House.  To give a quick recap: Millionaire Frederick Loren (played by legend Vincent Price) rents a supposedly haunted house and invites five guests to join him and his wife for a party, with a reward for anyone who makes it through the night without leaving (or dying).

The Lorens (wife Annabelle is played by Carol Ohmart) do not like each other: She finds him overly possessive and jealous and he believes her to have attempted to murder him by poison earlier in their marriage.  With that information - and the reveal that none of the invitees have ever met the Lorens or each other before - we get into the party.

I'll be honest: Most of these characters only exist to give the more interesting characters someone to talk to or to provide exposition.  Vincent Price is a legend and gives the film its best acting, but Ohmart gives an absolutely delicious performance as his scheming wife.  Any scene that features one of them commands your attention.  Carolyn Craig, (as Nora Manning, an employee of Frederick) is the designated screamer in this film - the character is the one with the most supernatural encounters - but she provides a decent amount of shading for an underwritten character.  Once you get past those three characters, there isn't much to write about, not because anyone is bad, but because the movie moves quickly through its plot (it is a short 75 minutes) so we don't get much time with anyone else.

I think most of the modern audience would find the film cheesy - and make no mistake, it is - but part of why it feels so cliche is because of how many of them it likely set.  Hell, it might've been full of cliches at the time (though its positive reviews suggest it was a rather fresh take on horror) but because of how much it's survived in the public consciousness while others from the same time period have faded.

An interesting fact: The film was released with the 'Emergo' gimmick, where a skeleton would fly above the audience during a certain scene.  If a revival screening ever happens near me and includes that, I would be hard pressed to find a reason to skip it.

While the movie does build some tension, having multiple plot shifts in such a short film does make some parts feel rushed.  Again, everything works, but like the characters, certain arcs don't feel like they get enough attention; details are dropped of a larger narrative but none of it is explored beyond the hinting.

I'd still give this movie an easy recommend (it is vastly superior to - and somehow less dated than - the 1999 remake), especially if you want to check out some older horror films.  In fact, prior to my watching this film, I had never seen Vincent Price in a horror film, having only seen him in Edwards Scissorhands and hearing him as the voice of Ratigan in The Great Mouse Detective.  He's one of the greats of the genre, and it was genuinely enjoyable to see him in his element.

7 out of 10