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DVD The Haunting
Certain to remain one of the greatest haunted-house movies ever made, Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963) is antithetical to all the gory horror films of subsequent decades, because its considerable frights remain implicitly rooted in the viewer's sensitivity to abject fear. A classic spook-fest based on Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House (which also inspired the 1999 remake directed by Jan de Bont), the film begins with a prologue that concisely establishes the dark history of Hill House, a massive New England mansion (actually filmed in England) that will play host to four daring guests determined to investigate--and hopefully debunk--the legacy of death and ghostly possession that has given the mansion its terrifying reputation.
Consumed by guilt and grief over her mother's recent death and driven to adventure by her belief in the supernatural, Eleanor Vance (Julie Harris) is the most unstable--and therefore the most vulnerable--visitor to Hill House. She's invited there by anthropologist Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson), along with the bohemian lesbian Theodora (Claire Bloom), who has acute extra-sensory abilities, and glib playboy Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn, from Wise's West Side Story), who will gladly inherit Hill House if it proves to be hospitable. Of course, the shadowy mansion is anything but welcoming to its unwanted intruders. Strange noises, from muffled wails to deafening pounding, set the stage for even scarier occurrences, including a door that appears to breathe (with a slowly turning doorknob that's almost unbearably suspenseful), unexplained writing on walls, and a delicate spiral staircase that seems to have a life of its own.
The genius of The Haunting lies in the restraint of Wise and screenwriter Nelson Gidding, who elicit almost all of the film's mounting terror from the psychology of its characters--particularly Eleanor, whose grip on sanity grows increasingly tenuous. The presence of lurking spirits relies heavily on the power of suggestion (likewise the cautious handling of Theodora's attraction to Eleanor) and the film's use of sound is more terrifying than anything Wise could have shown with his camera. Like Jack Clayton's 1961 chiller, The Innocents, The Haunting knows the value of planting the seeds of terror in the mind, as opposed to letting them blossom graphically on the screen. What you don't see is infinitely more frightening than what you do, and with nary a severed head or bloody corpse in sight, The Haunting is guaranteed to chill you to the bone. --Jeff Shannon
One of the tricks they used in the original "Alien" was that you barely saw the alien on camera, just a glimpse of a tail or part of the head. You are always anticipating the creature and thus are always a bit on edge. This same idea is employed in "The Haunting" to an even greater degree. You never see the ghosts at all in this movie, so your imagination makes them more terrible than anything special effects could produce. The original "Thirteen Ghosts" is a good example of showing too much in the way of bad special effects--the end result being cheesy not scary. Getting back to "The Haunting", the direction of Robert Wise is very effective in setting the mood, but what really sells it is the performance of Julie Harris. All the actors are fine here, particularly the Claire Bloom's enigmatic take on her role, but Julie Harris as Eleanor is one of the great combinations of actor and role in cinema history. Just as Robert Shaw becomes Quint in "Jaws", Harris inhabits her part seemlessly. Her fear and confusion are so tangible that the viewer cannot help but be chilled. If you watch the haunting waiting for something to jump out and yell "boo", there's very little of that here. The fear is all in Eleanor's mind--whether the ghosts are real or not--they are very real to her and to us as well.
One of the great haunted house movies of all time
Robert Wise's THE HAUNTING (1963), the original version of Shirley Jackson's THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, is one of the greatest haunted house movies in Hollywood's history. It scares the hell out of you with simple, but very effective things, like a pounding on a wall that gets louder and louder, a wall that moves in and out, cold spots in a hallway, and voices from the dead heard through a wall. This is definitely NOT the dreadful 1999 Jan De Bont remake with its terrible cast, awful writing, and gory special effects. What Wise does with sound effects is extraordinary, much more effective than any gore.
We have four key actors: Julie Harris as the scared and vulnerable Eleanor, Claire Bloom as the cynical and manipulative Theodora, Richard Johnson as the scholarly Dr. John Markway, and Russ Tamblyn as the playful Luke. Dr. Markway is coordinating a weekend seminar of sorts to investigate ghostly phenomena and all manners of the occult in a large haunted house in the most remote part of New England. Hill House has a history of suicide, insanity, and murder, centered in a library with a large circular metal staircase where a woman hung herself. Eleanor is the most responsive to messages from the great beyond, including her name written in a chalky substance on a hall wall. For her, the giant staircase is the center of the house. By contrast, Luke just has a drink and laughs it off-until voices start talking through the wall and door knobs move by themselves. The brilliant screenplay is by Nelson Gidding.
I have no idea who the technical people here are, but imagine the house exteriors are a miniature model, while the interiors are magnificent full-scale sets by a master production designer. The visuals, in ghostly B&W and Panavision on DVD, are extraordinarily scary and elaborate, with room after room-dining room, hallways, bedrooms, an outdoor sculpture garden, and the library with the metal winding staircase that has loose bolts. This is a masterpiece of a ghost chiller. Is it ghost or ghoul, Dr. Markway wants to know? Is the house haunted or a deranged "bad house", a house born bad? Three generations of the Crane family have lived and died mysteriously in Hill House. And Eleanor, in particular, feels close to them, especially when she climbs the frightening metal staircase. She is living the terrors of a house that the three others are merely observing and noting on notepads every night. Who of this quartet will actually survive their expedition inside this insane house?
THE HAUNTING is up there with THE UNINVITED (1944) and Hitchcock's original PSYCHO (1960) as one of the great, terrifying haunted house movies of all time. It takes itself very seriously and thus invites us to intelligently ponder its subtle horrors. I watched it in my dimly lit bedroom of my parents' house on Halloween Night, an ideal time to be fully receptive to its glorious terrors. Forget there ever was a remake to this Robert Wise masterpiece of the occult that returns a master filmmaker to his roots with producer Val Lewton at RKO in the 1940's. THE HAUNTING (1963-accept no updated color substitutes! It doesn't have a drop of blood, but still be warned to not watch this alone! (REVIEWED FROM LETTERBOXED DVD)
The most masterly crafted tale of terror ever brought to screen!
If you add the impressive performances of Julie Harris and Claire Bloom. The male characters work out as support.. finally we have to acknowledge the astonishing camera work, the use of lenses that deform the reality and the fabulous artistic direction, blended with a perfect script, you will have to admit there is not any hole in this treasured jewel of this gifted director, who made his debut in this genre: Robert Wise.
When a recent widower (the wonderfully overemphatic George C. Scott ) moves into an antique Washington mansion, his realization that he may not be the only resident leads him toward a deadly secret that refuses to remain buried....The best haunted-house film since the legendary Haunting, this potent, classy combination of the mystery and horror genres eschews explicit gore and dumb shocks in exchange for a subtle creepiness that occasionally builds to a terrifying peak (watch out for that seance scene!). The result is a satisfyingly intelligent horror film with an intriguing dash of Watergate-era paranoia. Director Peter Medak went on to direct the considerably more gratuitous and somewhat less effective Romeo Is Bleeding and The Krays. --Andrew WrightMore Info about this DVD Director(s): Peter Medak DVD Release Date: Released the 12 September 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Four people enter the Belasco Mansion, the so-called "Everest of haunted houses," hired by a dying millionaire to investigate the possibility of life after death. Physicist Clive Revill leads the quartet, which includes his wife Gayle Hunnicut and two mediums. Pamela Franklin, young and impulsive, immediately makes contact with what she perceives as a tortured spirit, while Roddy McDowall, the only survivor from the previous investigation 20 years ago, closes himself off completely, deathly afraid of the malevolent forces that crushed his former comrades in body and spirit. Science fiction and horror legend Richard Matheson, responsible for penning such horror classics as The Devil Rides Out and Roger Corman's The Pit and the Pendulum, brings a literate sensibility and a... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Pamela Franklin - Roddy McDowall - Gayle Hunnicutt Director(s): John Hough DVD Release Date: Released the 04 September 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The definitive screen adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, the 1961 production of The Innocents remains one of the most effective ghost stories ever filmed. Originally promoted as the first truly "adult" chiller of the big screen (a marginally valid claim considering the release of Psycho a year earlier), the film arrived at a time when the thematic depth of James's story could finally be addressed without the compromise of reductive discretion. And while the Freudian anxiety that fuels the story may seem tame by today's standards, the psychological horrors that comprise the story's "dark secret" are given full expression in a film that brilliantly clouds the boundary between tragic reality and frightful imagination.
This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation. The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man's gaze and the target of a killer. Laura, handsomely shot in dreamy black and white, is the first and best of Otto Preminger's cool, controlled murder mysteries. In the gritty world of film noir it remains the most refined and elegant example... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Tierney - Dana Andrews Director(s): Rouben Mamoulian - Otto Preminger DVD Release Date: Released the 15 March 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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William Castle's gimmick-laden comic thriller is not so much a horror movie as a fairground funhouse come to life. Vincent Price stars as a deliciously silky millionaire married to a greedy gold digger (Carol Ohmart) who refuses to divorce him. When he turns his wife's idea for a haunted-house party into a contest--$10,000 to whoever will spend the night in "the only truly haunted house in the world"--it seems he may have found an alternative to divorce. Five strangers gather to test their stamina, Price hands each of them delightfully twisted party favors (loaded handguns, delivered in their own tiny coffins), and the spook show begins. Blood drips from the ceiling, zombielike apparitions float through rooms, severed heads and skeletons suddenly appear, and then a guest is found hanging... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vincent Price - Carol Ohmart Director(s): William Castle DVD Release Date: Released the 21 August 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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