house on haunted hill [1959]

william castle was a consummate showman, the kind that no longer exists. castle would wire the seats in a theater to give the audience a small jolt in order to enhance the action onscreen. his films, with or without gimmicks, are, in my opinion, some of the most enjoyable b-movie fare created in the late 1950s to early 1960s. castle threw everything he knew about scaring people in his films and the results are campy, goofy and a blast to witness.

this movie starts with a few rattling chains, moans and screams - classic haunted house sounds - with the disembodied head of elisha cook as watson pritchard floating in the center of the frame telling us about the history of this haunted house. the great vincent price stars as a millionare in a bad marriage who hosts a haunted house party for seven guests and guarantees each guest $10,000.00 if they survive the night. are there real ghosts lurking in the house waiting to pounce on the guests? cook seems to think so and his large head and slightly psycho expression fits the part of the true believer to a t.

price is as always a wonderful menacing presence. he was the thinking person's b-movie actor. even in crap he was sui generis. when i was a pup watching bob wilkins' creature features program i saw the abominable dr. phibes starring price as the eponymous villain. it freaked me out, one scene in particular, where a man was in a tent in the desert and phibes bound his arms at the wrist with two locked manacles, each were studded with spikes that pierced the wrists of the hapless man. then price all so cool and calculating placed the key to the manacles in a clay jar just out of reach of the man and left the tent. the man then managed to kick over the jar, which broke and unleashed all these scorpions which then proceeded to crawl all over the man, down into his shirt even, as the man then screams out in pain.

cut! for that scene and price's intellectual manner in delivering such a punishment left me huddling under the blanket for protection. price is not so obvious in his sadism in house but it does strike me as odd that william castle in another flick, the tingler, created characters whose marriage was so bad that both the husband and wife try to kill each other. and the characters speak about their desires for murdering one another as if it was the most natural thing married couples do. and so it is for price and his wife in this flick who try to do the same to each other. the levels they achieve are nearly shakespearean in breadth and scope.

thus castle's innovation for this flick was to drop skeletons on the audience during key scenes which i imagine would either make the people leap from their seats in either terror or hilarity. the fx is rather hokey but yet castle achieves a rather cheap surrealism as the atmosphere of the film is reminiscent of a commercial haunted house: safe, goofy and at times terrifying.

watching this movie was like slipping into a pair of thrashed but well-loved jeans. it ain't all that beautiful but the feel is comfy and the look of the jeans is either bummy or timeless or both at the same time. castle made only b-movie horror. yet a couple of his films are the highest of that low genre. he was an artist of the first intensity, really. we could use another william castle now.