“The ghosts are moving tonight, restless, hungry.”

 

It opens with a scream…

As part of a party for his fourth wife, Annabelle (Carol Ohmart), millionaire Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) invites five strangers of differing backgrounds to a haunted house. Once there, he informs them if they can spend the night at the house on haunted hill… and survive… they will be given $10,000 each. They are given the option to leave before midnight, but before they have this chance the staff rush out, locking the doors behind, forcing everybody to risk their lives in the house until the morning.

Since the house was built centuries earlier, seven people have been murdered there. One of those people is the brother of party guest and owner of the house, Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook). The most recent murder was by his brother’s wife, killing him and her sister. While this may have been a result of jealous rage over a cheating husband, nobody knows for sure; however, the legend of the house’s ghosts remains as a result.

The other guests of the party are a bit more dubious of the ghost stories: Lance Schroeder (Richard Long), a test pilot, Ruth Bridges (Julie Mitchum), a newspaper columnist with a severe gambling problem, Dr. David Trent (Alan Marshal), a psychiatrist who believes learning about ghosts will help him treat patients with hysteria, and Norah Manning (Carolyn Craig), a secretary at Loren’s company.

As the night goes on Lance and Norah face several “ghosts” who turn out to be the house’s staff, but the real deadly spirit is Annabelle herself, who has been finding ways to get her husband murdered where she cannot be blamed and take his money. This plan is assisted by the party favors Loren gives each person – a pistol to defend themselves. When Annabelle’s body is found hanging by a noose in the stairway (in a fashion I don’t even see a ghost being able to handle, let alone the props team), her “ghost” starts haunting Norah, continuing the plan to force one of the guests to murder her husband who appears more and more mysterious and murdersome as the movie goes on. As we learn that Annabelle is not dead, and the hanging was all a plot set by her and her lover, Dr. Trent, Loren discovers his wife’s misdeeds and finds his own way to annul the marriage.

You can find this gem of a film in glorious color on YouTube. The original black-and-white version is also available.

The first time I saw this movie was as a teenager watching the Ghoul show on late-night television. Not being a fan of horror movies, this one intrigued me because of the murder mystery aspect, as well as because it starred Vincent Price. I had recently watched the 1960 film adaptation of The House of Usher (starring Price in another leading role) in English class, and seeing this actor again inspired me to keep watching.

This was by far not Price’s first role, and definitely not his first B-horror film. Previously starring in such films as The Fly (1958) and Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), Vincent Price would go on to be the king of B-movies, his dark bravado would haunt the nightmares of movie-goers alongside Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.

While looking up the actors in this film I came across a review on imdb that says a lot about why this film is great:

The ghosts aren’t very scary, nor do we see anything really supernatural, but the atmosphere and uneasiness of this film makes for an incredible who done it story as you wonder who will get it. The set is intoxicating inasmuch as you never really see all of it, nor is it really explained what such a dangerous pit is doing in such a precarious spot in the basement. Such a matter isn’t important. On the other side of the coin, the music and the special effects are rather hokey, but then when this was in the theaters, a lot of the teenagers would have been making out to have really bothered to pick this movie apart. It is only in recent years that movies have turned away from gore and back to movies with style and substance that we appreciate films like this.

This film is often forgotten by some, and embraced by others for its classic tropes that have been reused time and again in the horror genre and television sitcoms, most notably spending the night in a haunted house (see several episodes of The Monkees and Scooby Doo). It is remembered more recently though from its remake in 1999, which I refused to watch because I loved the original too much to face its destruction.

That is, until recently. Next week I’ll tackle the 1999 remake of House on Haunted Hill, starring Geoffrey Rush and Famke Janssen.