The greatest movie ever made..!

hyped garbage

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

"House on Haunted Hill" is a horror movie which may have been unfairly relegated to the bargain bin of history due to the gimmickry of its infamous filmmaker, William Castle. Indeed, during its first showings in the fifties, a skeleton would be lowered down into the audience during a key scene - but apparently this trick was resigned when cinema goers started throwing things at it.Castle, as it turns out, didn't need to resort to such things. He was a more than capable filmmaker: "House on Haunted Hill" features many genuinely shocking, and even frightening, moments.The plot concerns an eccentric millionaire - played by, who else? Vincent Price - who invites a group of people to stay in a supposedly haunted house. If they can last the night, he will give them $10,000.Of course, there are signs that the house may indeed be haunted, but everything is not what it seems, and the guests may have more to fear than spooks.Aside from the indelible Vincent Price, the movie also stars Elisha Cook Jr., a character actor who looks like a smaller, traumatised Jack Nicholson, and Julie Mitchum (brother of Robert) in the last film of her negligible acting career.I was a little troubled by the ending, which seems to try for an open-ended lack of resolution, but doesn't quite get there. Instead it made me think I'd misunderstood something.Aside from this, "House on Haunted Hill" is a must watch for horror fans.

House on Haunted Hall could have easily been a forgettable black & white horror flick lost to the annals of time. What saved it was a phenomenal performance by Vincent Price himself and a few twist and turns along the way.The concept to this one is a fun one, think Fear Factor on the big screen. And while I sat there questioning the decision-making throughout ("Why is he giving them guns? Why are they splitting up?"), the plot makes more and more sense the deeper into the movie you get... Okay, it doesn't make 100% sense but close enough.Price is excellent as the movie's catalyst and while to modern audiences the jump scares and effects may seem laughable, this movie is just campy enough to be enjoyed and appreciated for what it is.P.S. That pitch black bloodcurdling scream will always send chills up my spine.

The laughs and chills come a mile a minute in this tongue in cheek haunted house film so filled with gimmicks that you can't imagine the writers not laughing as they put it all down on paper. Vincent Price, a horror film legend, joins forces with Elisha Cook Jr., a film noir legend, along with Price's obviously gold digging wife (Carol Ohlmart), host a party at the house owned by Cook and rented by Price. Richard Long and Carolyn Craig, two of the guests, search the house, and each of them have frightening moments, but never when the other one is around. The funniest one is spotted by Craig, a floating witch like creature who appears out of nowhere at the most inopportune moments. Those of the chosen guests who make it through the night alive get $10,000 from Price, not without objection from the greedy Ohlmart. You have to watch this straight through without interruption in order to find all the thrills. They pop up unexpectedly, resulting in a sudden scream followed by laughter in response. At least that is how I rescued, certainly not the characters, especially scream queen Craig. Price takes the part seriously with a glint in his eye revealing that he's having a blast making it. Cook, insisting that there have been brutal murders even long before he was given the house, is pathetic looking and thus fantastic as the horror increases.But this is a William Castle film and thus is filled with delicious gimmicks. This was the first of his films to utilize this tactic, perfected in "The Tingler" and "Thirteen Ghosts". It's obvious from the start who the guilty party(s) are/most likely are, but certain details are dropped that will keep you guessing. While the exposition gets a little talky at times and slows it down, it's never for long. And in regards to the leading man, where there's Vincent, you know that the Price is right!

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