House on Haunted Hill (1959) by William Castle

Director: William Castle

Year: 1959

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Ghosts

Plot:

Renting a supposedly haunted house, an entrepreneur invites guests out for a party for his wife, where they learn the house is haunted by ghosts and are forced to stay inside the house as they begin to suspect that the experience has nothing to do with ghosts, and they must try to get out alive.

Review:

This is a little flawed, but there are some good points to it. The fact that the house looks pretty creepy works for it, for there's always a hallway that looks creepy when blackened out or a piece of furniture that gives off a feeling of dread. The big halls and huge spaces make it stand out in the creepiness factor. When it gets to working right, the film is really on. The biggest instance is the film's incredibly creepy finale, which is simply insane and one of the most creative ideas ever used to end a film. Another big moment is its classic scene of one character checking hollow walls, and a completely unknown character pops up unexpectedly, which is followed by the being floating down the hallway in an unearthly manner in front of the terrified witness, which is a really excellent jump-scene and one of the greatest scenes in the film.

There are a couple of other really great jump scenes in here where the ghosts pop out and terrorize the characters, including one really great one near the end where several individual jump scenes converge at once to throw in a really spectacular scene. This does have some great moments, but there are some problems with this one that really lowers this one. The biggest one is that the film really makes no mention of the ghosts haunting the house for most of the movie. It's mentioned several times throughout that they're responsible for several past incidents in the house, and it's built around them, yet they are hardly in the movie. There are only a few scenes with them involved in the film's play-out, and these don't really do much of anything to make non-believers actually believe that ghosts are behind it.

Once the marital strife subplot is brought up, the ghost angle pretty much sinks into the background and is completely ignored for most of the film, which winds up hurting the film's premise for the majority of the time. The other really big flaw is that there's a really drawn-out pace for this one. The constant dealings with the married couple, which take up the majority of the second half of the film, are completely dull and boring, as nothing interesting happens during the entire part. Seeing them argue with each other is boring and slows down the film, offering nothing much interesting for the film, as all the bickering and pretend-deaths get old fast, and even worse, they take time away from the film's purpose. These are the film's biggest flaws.

Overview: ***.5/5

A tad overrated but still a good movie, there's a lot to like here, which keeps this one quite heavy on the positive factors throughout, which are more than enough to overcome the few factors on display holding this back. Give it a shot if you're a fan of this particular style or era of genre fare or if you're a hardcore fan of the creative crew, while most others out there will want to heed caution.