‘I don’t want to stay’
Don’t get me wrong. I like Vincent Price films. I think he had the genuine ability to scare and entertain his audience, using only his voice and his screen or stage presence. However, I won’t always give a film five stars just because it has a good actor in it.
House on a haunted hill follows a millionaire named Frederick Loren (Price) who gives five people, including scaredy cat Nora (Carolyn Craig), Lance, David Trent and others, an opportunity to win ten thousand dollars if they were to stay overnight in a haunted house with him and his wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart).
I guess that at the time then it would have been scary, what with the creepy noises in the opening scene, all of which is heard only. However, as the film progressed, I could not help but notice that the film is incredibly stagey. I don’t know if it was due to the trend in expositionary dialogue back in the day, but an awful lot of the dialogue, along with the acting, seemed incredibly stiff and honestly, quite wooden. One of the characters (can’t remember her name but she was the older one in the group) had the emotional depth of certain type of female necessity, the character of Nora kept screaming every five minutes and if it wasn’t for the jump cuts to the ghosts and the random bursts of organ-like piano music, then the film wouldn’t be scary at all. It was, however, still rather jumpy. In addition to that, there was another character (again-can’t remember his name, and I’m sorry for the lazy approach to this) who just reacted and spoke some rather emotionless exposition in response to the various supernatural occurrences. Nobody had any common sense.
Throughout the film, I kept reminding myself that I was honestly only watching it because of Vincent Price’s performance. I wonder if the film was based on something because it seemed incredibly similar to the book ‘the Haunting of Hill House’ by Shirley Jackson. Oh well. Either way, Ghost films always have a stubborn go to list of tropes, involving a scary house, lots of jump scares, creaky doors, screaming, Stand a bunch of idiotic people, in a similar way that perhaps a western always seems to be set in the Old West and always has the fundamental involvement of cowboys, horses and saloons.
Apparently this film has been remade but I have no interest in watching the remake. I think this film influenced most of Hitchcock’s work, but generally, most of the main tropes I.e scaredy cat, man of the house, damsel etc, have been used and recycled so many times in ghost films and horrors in general that it goes beyond cliche into it just being laughable.
Also, I know that every film needs to have plot development, but who won the ten thousand dollars? It was one of the biggest ‘plot lines’ in the entire film. Would you really want to stay in a scary house for that amount of money? (Although to be honest, ten thousand can pay a term at uni and still have enough money left for food and about three months worth of rent, but I don’t think that’s the point).
Stellar performance from Vincent Price, and perhaps a good influence for future horror directors, but at times, it felt like I was playing ‘spot the horror trope’ instead of following a consistent plot line or story. Afterwards, however, it leaves you doubting every creak, bump and noise in the night. It does play on the idea of entrapment, and having next to no contact with the outside world and being imprisioned in an old house all for money, and due to one wealthy man’s manipulation.
If you like horror, then go ahead, watch it at your will, perhaps even laugh at it. However, it just wasn’t my sort of film, even though, ironically, I’d love to see some more Vincent Price films in the future.
2.5/5
captainnextpleasereviews.wordpress.com 