Something else that director William Castle is great at is imagery. Can you always tell that it’s aimed to please a certain audience? Sure, but it works sometimes. Something that’s aimed at mainstream audiences isn’t always necessarily bad. That being said, it makes for a very entertaining film. Is it cheesy and gimmicky like I mentioned? Sure, I’ll get more into that later–but it definitely is that. There are a lot of back stabbings and twists, making for a classic mystery story. The movie isn’t exactly a whodunnit story, but for some reason it had that feel to me, which made it a lot of fun. I love the atmosphere that this film creates because it’s prime 1950’s haunted house atmosphere. Characters like Frederick, Annabelle and Lance are all very interesting characters that make for a compelling mystery.Īnother strong aspect to this film is the atmosphere. You think you know everyone’s motivations, but you don’t really know. The characters may not have dimension, but they do have hidden layers. This isn’t to say that all of the characters are interesting (I’ll get into that later) but the characters who are interesting here add a lot of intrigue to this story. But even when he’s not onscreen, a lot of the characters themselves–although the acting may not be there–are far more interesting than I expected. As far as acting goes, Vincent Price is obviously your strongest player here, but luckily he really is enough to carry it. Loren himself.Īlthough we may get the typical 50’s horror movie acting, with either very wooden delivery or over the top delivery, there’s some great character stuff here. What do the party-goers get if they stay all night? Ten thousand dollars from Mr. Loren holds a party, but not a normal party, at this particular party he invites five strangers to spend a night with him and his wife at a supposedly haunted mansion. House on Haunted Hill follows Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) a millionaire in the middle of his fourth marriage, though it may not be the happiest one. Does his 1959 haunted house film House on Haunted Hill also remain as entertaining? Well, let me put it this way, there’s a reason people still love this film 57 years later. They’re popcorn horror films and more often then not Castle made them work. Sardonicus are sillier films, but they’re still as entertaining as they were five decades ago. His films like The Old Dark House, 13 Ghosts and Mr. His film The Tingler is a perfect example of this, although in that particular situation his gimmick got in the way of his storytelling big time. This isn’t an insult, the man has done great stuff, some of it was just kind of stupid. Whereas Hitchcock took films that could so easily fall flat and made them astoundingly brilliant, Castle was more of a mainstream gimmicky kind of director. William Castle is a classic horror director, but he’s not exactly Alfred Hitchcock.
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