House on Haunted Hill

Excellent movie of the genre. Highly recommended.

[7.2/10] Watched this one at a Halloween party, with the usual sort of merriment, laughing, and talking over the film, so take this all with a grain of salt, but this was an enjoyable heap of camp. I couldn’t recall whether I’d seen Vincent Price outside of *Edward Scissorhands* so it was fun to see him skulking around in his natural environment. The mystery was sufficiently convoluted and twisty to be fun, and mixing the supernatural horror elements with the parlor mystery and jilted lovers bit paid dividends. There’s plenty of artifacts of the time -- most notably how many times the women are accused of being “hysterical” -- but for the most part its kitschy charms are quite endearing.

i enjoyed this movie. Its campy and lots of fun. Actually i was expecting a straight up ghost story, but there's more going on here than that. Vincent Price is very good (nothing unusual there) and the skeleton scene at the end is great!

I watched the French version several times over to improve my listening and I must say the premise of the movie was very interesting however I was greatly disappointed that [spoiler] Watson Pritchard did not have a larger role and was more or so regulated to drunk, seeing how he was the one with the introduction I'm rather surprised he didn't come up as the protagonist battling it out with actual ghosts and perhaps Frederick Loren himself. The doctor being behind it all was interesting and was not one I saw but upon rewatching there are of course clues and of course the (more obvious now) silhouette you see as to the man who grabs Nora. I do wish we got more backstory over Frederick and Annabelle, and honestly quite a wishlist I could write up [/spoiler] but perhaps this was always intended to be a rather short surface-level watch? I can't say if I'm judging this justifiable, too harshly or too easily given this was from the 1950s and the first time I've ever _sat_ down to watch an old film before.

But definitely seeing how my French has improved, I trust it won't be the last. My favorite actors were by far Vincent Price and Elisha Cook Jr., there was this particular frame that Alan Marshal and Vincent Price share too that I just love because [spoiler] it has such a nice foreshadowing, it happens when they're in the hall and Lance is talking to Ruth Bridgers after Nora's outburst [/spoiler].

An entertaining one-off for sure.

It was a fun watch.

In this oft-referenced pseudo-horror classic, Vincent Price lures five strangers to stay overnight at a notorious abandoned mansion, promising ten grand to those who make it through to the next morning. Price is perfectly in his element as the shifty, flamboyant playboy who's somehow able to deliver his lines with a straight face, especially when he breaks out a charming, housewifey set of party favors: a cute set of tiny coffins containing loaded pistols.

His ultimate reasoning for gathering this spooky little house party doesn't make very much sense, though, and the gotcha scenes are worse than I'd expect to find in a run-down amusement park's old haunted house. About as hammy and silly as it gets, it's tough to imagine anyone ever getting spooked out by this wacky form of the genre, but that doesn't mean it can't be entertaining for the wrong reasons. Even in the late fifties, I have to imagine it was better suited to laughs than it ever was to screams.

I had high expectations for this but I guess I thought it was going to be scary. There is one very memorable shock and it's a good one. Actually, it's more than a fright, it's creepy. But after that there was very little haunting going on. Instead it was about distrust and double-crosses between the guests. It seems the movie is misnamed.

Vincent Price really steals the show. He's such a ham, but he's so good at it. Richard Long is also excellent as his normal cool self. I feel the need to point out that Carolyn Craig may make you want to grab ear plugs. Her screams of terror made me cringe several times.

This is another relatively successful Vincent Price movie, but almost entirely on the strength of his enormous personality and screen presence.

Poor to me. Although it sounds strange, the remake is better

Featured in The Schlocky Horror Picture Show S02E08.

https://trakt.tv/shows/the-schlocky-horror-picture-show/seasons/2/episodes/8