Vindictive millionaire Fredrick Loren (Vincent Price), and his unfaithful wife (Carol Ohmart), invite five strangers to a party at a haunted house. They are Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook Jr.), who owns the house and believes in the ghosts, Ruth Bridgers (Julie Mitchum), a columnist with a gambling problem, Dr David Trent (Alan Marshal), a psychologist, Lance Schroeder (Richard Long), a test pilot, and Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig), a typist in Loren’s employ. If they stay through the night, each gets ten thousand dollars.
I wish I could have seen House On Haunted Hill as gimmick master William Castle first showed it. More skilled as a showman than as a director, his stunts including taking out well publicized “fright insurance” and electrifying theater seats to shock audience members when a monster attacked. For House On Haunted Hill, he introduced “Emergo,” which just meant an inflatable skeleton would fly over the audience. In a cheap, ’50s way, that had to be fun.
Without that, the film is lacking the carnival-ride thrills that it clearly was intended to have. There’s still a few good jump scares and some tense moments, but no one is going to be screaming over the big skeleton moment now. What it does have is Vincent Price in top form. He plays…well…Vincent Price. He’s charming, in a disdainful and mocking way. He did the same thing in dozens of other movies, and he always does it well. The rest of the cast pull off their parts, with Elisha Cook (of Maltese Falcon fame) and Carol Ohmart being the most memorable, but all are in Price’s shadow.
The story doesn’t stand up so well. Nora (Carolyn Craig) is one of the dimmest and weakest females in film. When she gets scared, she demands that Lance, who she just met, take her out of the house. When he doesn’t jump to it, she just stands there. Why doesn’t she just leave? And why doesn’t she move when a rope wraps around her legs? She never even considers that any of the ghostly effects could be faked (after being invited to a birthday party in a haunted house); instead, she screams at everything. The other characters aren’t much better as they separate whenever they have a chance. Isn’t there a rule about that? After they’ve separated multiple times for no reason, they actually choose to all split up (each to their own room). It’s only six hours. Why don’t they all sit in the living room together?
There’s also the whole issue of the pool of acid. Several people attempt to toss bodies in, which in every case would really mess things up for them, legally. What kind of plans do these people have?
Well, the plot was never intended to be the draw. Watching House On Haunted Hill is like visiting a Jaycee’s Halloween haunted house in that you know it’s all fake, and a lot of it looks s0-so at best, but in the right mood, it can be a good time. And like visiting that Halloween haunted house, my 3-Reel rating is meant to be for those surrounded by friends and with a beer in hand. Alone and sober, take a Reel off.