Friday, February 19, 2016

100 Scariest Movie Moments: #37 House on Haunted Hill

It’s truly amazing to find that House on Haunted Hill came out several years before The Haunting. Everything about this movie screams that it was made as an attempt to cash-in on the later film; playing out with a much stronger B-movie vibe and giving us definitive answers, whereas The Haunting gave us only questions and ambiguity. It reminds me of how film buffs frequently say that they should remake bad movies to create good versions, because The Haunting was effectively this movie done again, and done better.



The set up is that millionaire Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) has invited five people to a party at a supposedly haunted house. Once the doors are locked, they’ll all be trapped in the house for the night. The next morning they, or their surviving next-of-kin, will receive $10,000.



One interesting variation on the general set-up of the Haunted House movie is that none of the deaths are claimed to be “mysterious.” Seven people have died in the house, all by murder. So within this setting, the ghosts (assuming that they exist) must use humans to carry out their evil. They also note that none of the murders have been normal stabbings or shootings, with at least one carried out by a man throwing his wife in a tank of acid. Perhaps the filmmakers intended this to bring back an element of ambiguity to the deaths. However, for the deaths we witness, the events and motives leading to them were clearly in motion long before any of these people set foot in the house.



The movie uses a lot of weird events and shock scares. I don’t think for one moment you would put it past Loren to have set them up, and none of them would have been especially difficult to fake. Dead bodies, a face in a box, and someone being jumped from behind by the caretaker… He also gives all of the guests loaded guns, for God knows what reason. The scares do grow stronger over the course of the film, but to list them all would take far too much of my time and the time of anyone who reads this.



The B-plot, if you could really consider it separate from the A-plot, is how Loren and his wife both despise each other, and each of them are convinced the other will kill them if given the opportunity... or maybe they’re just paranoid... or maybe the wife is merely casting suspicion on him. At no point do you believe either of them would hesitate to kill the other if presented with the opportunity. And in the end, your suspicions about both of them prove to be entirely founded.



The final resolution shows that both Loren and his wife (Carol Ohmart) were attempting to kill each other, but that Loren was one step ahead of her. He set her up to think she’d killed him, then used a skeleton on a string to scare her so that she fell into a vat of acid, along with her lover. He then disposes of the skeleton in the acid and confesses to the murder, knowing that in the absence of any evidence of his ambush, he can claim that the whole thing was self-defense, and at worst, receive a light sentence.



I will be honest, I do love the ending. I like it mainly because it’s not something we often see. Usually villains will either be rational, planning to get away with it all, or irrational, planning to take their victims will them. However, Loren fully intended to be caught while still taking measures for damage control. I give the ending points for novelty if nothing else, although I suppose that it might be an attempt to conform to the Hayes Code while still giving the villain a win.



Now, I realize that from the tone of this review, it probably sounds like I’ll say that no one should watch this movie. However, the opposite is true! It’s 75 minutes long; much shorter than a lot of modern B-movies. It also has some real talent, and many of the cheap scares pack more of a punch than any shark-filled tornado. I highly recommend this movie for Halloween, or any night when you don’t want to be bored.

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