House on Haunted Hill

Frederick Loren (Vincent Price), an eccentric millionaire, invites five people to a party he is throwing for his fourth wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart) in an allegedly haunted house he has rented, promising to give each $10,000 with the stipulation that they stay the entire night in the house after the doors are locked at midnight. The guests are test pilot Lance Schroeder (Richard Long), newspaper columnist Ruth Bridges (Julie Mitchum), psychiatrist Dr. David Trent (Alan Marshal) who specializes in hysteria, Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig) who works for one of Loren's companies, and the house's owner Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook). All are strangers to both the Lorens and each other, with their only commonality a desperate need for money.

The Lorens have a tense relationship since Frederick is convinced Annabelle tried to poison him in order to acquire his wealth, which Annabelle firmly denies, attributing his suspicions to paranoia and jealousy. Watson believes the house is genuinely haunted by the ghosts of those murdered there, including his own brother. He gives a tour of the house, including a vat of acid in the basement which was used by a previous resident to kill his wife. When Lance and Nora remain behind to further explore the basement, Lance is locked in an empty room and struck on the head, while Nora is confronted by a menacing ghost.

Annabelle privately warns Lance that her husband is scheming something, and that she suspects him of murdering his second and third wives after his first wife disappeared. Gathering downstairs, the guests are told the rules of the party, and each is given a .45 ACP caliber pistol for protection. Having encountered further apparitions, Nora decides against staying the night but the caretakers lock the doors five minutes early, taking that option out of the guests' hands.

Hearing a scream, Lance and David find Annabelle's corpse, suspended to suggest she hanged herself but the absence of a perch immediately arouses suspicions of murder. Lance is confronted by Nora, who tells him an unseen assailant strangled her and left her for dead. In light of Annabelle's warnings, they both suspect Frederick. He tells her to remain out of sight so that her attacker will still think her dead. To survive the night, Lance and David propose that everyone stay in their rooms and shoot anyone who enters, thus the innocents will have no reason to leave their rooms and the killer must stay put or admit his guilt.

Nora is chased from her room into the basement by Annabelle's ghost. Aroused by the ghostly sounds, David concludes that the killer is about and proposes he and Frederick split up to search the house. Lance uncovers a secret room at the end of the second-floor hall, but once he enters the door shuts behind him, trapping him. David instead meets with Annabelle, who had faked her death using a hanging harness and sedatives. Secretly lovers, the two of them have orchestrated the various mishaps in order to manipulate Nora into killing Frederick. Nora, seeing Frederick enter the basement with a gun in his hand, does indeed shoot him. After she flees, David slips in to dispose of Frederick's body in the vat of acid.

Annabelle walks to the basement to confirm her husband is dead. A skeleton rises from the acid, accuses her in Frederick's voice, and shoves her into the vat. Frederick emerges from the shadows, holding the puppeteer control unit that he used to manipulate the skeleton and revealing he had known their plot all along.

After Nora, Watson and Ruth release Lance from the secret room, Nora tells them that she shot Frederick. When they arrive in the cellar, Frederick explains that he loaded her gun with blanks, that his wife and David plotted to kill him, and that they both met their end in the vat of acid. He implies that he will claim self-defense and, although responsible for their deaths, will not be convicted. Watson remains convinced the house is haunted, with David and Annabelle now added to its ranks of ghosts, and that he will be the next victim.

Exterior shots of the house were filmed at the historic Ennis House in Los Feliz California, designed in 1924 by Frank Lloyd Wright.[4][5] The bulk of the film was shot on sound stages,[6] depicting the interior of the house in a combination of styles, including 1890s Victorian, with gas chandeliers and sconces. The poster for the film included an illustration of a house in yet a third style, that of a fanciful four-story Romanesque structure.

The theatrical trailer promoted the film as The House on Haunted Hill, although all advertising material and the title on the film itself were simply titled House on Haunted Hill.

The film is perhaps best known for a promotional gimmick used in the film's original theatrical release called "Emergo."[7] In some theaters that showed the film, exhibitors rigged an elaborate pulley system near the theater screen which allowed a plastic skeleton to be flown over the audience during a corresponding scene late in the film.[8] (Several modern repertory cinemas including the Film Forum and Loew's Jersey Theatre have hosted revival screenings of the film during which the "Emergo" gimmick has been recreated.)[9][10]

Thanks in part to Castle's gimmickry, the film was a huge success. Alfred Hitchcock took notice of the low-budget film's performance at the box office and made his own low-budget horror film, which became the critically acclaimed hit Psycho (1960).[11] Castle was himself a Hitchcock fan and would try to imitate Hitchcock's work in later films such as Homicidal (1961).[7]

• Vincent Price as Frederick Loren
• Carol Ohmart as Annabelle Loren
• Richard Long as Lance Schroeder
• Alan Marshal as Dr. David Trent
• Carolyn Craig as Nora Manning
• Elisha Cook Jr. as Watson Pritchard (credited as Elisha Cook)
• Julie Mitchum as Ruth Bridgers
• Leona Anderson as Mrs. Slydes
• Howard Hoffman as Jonas Slydes

Vincent Price in House on Haunted Hill

House on Haunted Hill was originally released theatrically by Allied Artists. Two major studios have released the film on home video in remastered versions. Warner Home Video released the film on DVD as a tie-in to the release of the 1999 remake. In 2005, the film was colorized by Legend Films. The color version was released on DVD the same year by 20th Century Fox. Extras prepared by Legend Films for the Fox DVD release included an audio commentary track by comedian Michael J. Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000, two versions of the trailer and a slideshow of images from the film's original press book.

Johnny Legend released a 50th anniversary DVD containing a whole slew of extras such as both the original theatrical trailer and TV spots plus several William Castle and Vincent Price theatrical trailers, a Carol Ohmart profile and "golden age" TV shows starring Vincent Price. A DivX file of the colorized version with the commentary embedded is available as part of Nelson's RiffTrax On Demand service.[12] In 2009, a newly recorded commentary by Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett was released by RiffTrax.[13] The RiffTrax team performed a Live RiffTrax of House on Haunted Hill on 28 October 2010.

House on Haunted Hill was released in a restored Blu-ray edition as part of Shout! Factory's 2014 Vincent Price Collection II.[14]

On 28 September 2011, the estate of William Castle released an annotated screenplay from House on Haunted Hill which is a copy of the shooting script along with Castle's "margin notes" and the leather-bound style Castle used for his shooting script. This edition includes introductions from Joe Dante and Castle's daughter Terry. It also features its own version of "Emergo" in which the skeleton appears to readers via a "flip page" method.[15] Mondo Media re-released the film 2015 as part of his Mondo X Chiller series on 28 March 2015 in the Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers, New York.[16]

The film received critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has received a fresh 88% rating based on 26 reviews with an average rating of 7.10/10.[17] Allmovie has praised the film retrospectively, writing, "Campy and creepy in equal measures, House on Haunted Hill deserves its status as a horror classic."[18]

The film was remade as the 1999 film House on Haunted Hill, which had a 2007 sequel titled Return to House on Haunted Hill. The 1999 film was released to middling reviews but was a box office success, while the 2007 sequel was direct-to-video and widely panned.

As of 2017, another remake is in development along with a prequel to the original film, with the latter being written by Castle's daughter Terry Castle.[19]

• List of American films of 1959
• List of ghost films

Wikimedia Commons has media related to House on Haunted Hill (1959 film).

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• House on Haunted Hill is available for free download at the Internet Archive
• House on Haunted Hill at IMDb
• House on Haunted Hill at the TCM Movie Database
• House on Haunted Hill at AllMovie
• House on Haunted Hill on VincentPrice.org