Review of House on Haunted Hill (1959) by James M — 29 Apr 2010

Ah, the house of horrors ride in carnivals and amusement parks. Sit in the cart, lean back, and the ride commences. It progresses slowly at first, with atmospheric sounds and the cover of darkness, followed by subsequent stops: some intended to make you jump, some intended to make you laugh, most intended to make you do both. At the end of the ride, you'll come out happy, your girlfriend in your arm, a goofy smile across both of your faces. Sure the cart itself is rickety and well worn, some of the drapes are falling, some of the gears exposed. It's a ride that has ben taken by thousands and thousands and thousands of others before you. That's part of the fun though, isn't it? It's part of the experience.

William Castle, known as theking of the gimmic and shlockmeister extraordinarie, was also a very underrated director. He made films like amusement park rides. His films were innocent, naive even, and sought to, above all else, make the audience have a good time, for viewers to walk out of the screening with a big, goofy smile on their faces. They were events, not films, but they were so good natured that they managed to tap into the innocence of the previous decade while ignoring the burgeoning cynicism of their current ones.

The House on Haunted Hill does not make a lick of sense, nor is it meant to. Plotholes you say? But there's no real plot to begin with! The movie is, in essence a very atmospheric carnival show: a series of tingling stops loosely strung together around a flimsy plot. It's fun, it's funny, it's atmospheric and sometimes even creepy. The story is merely the means to an end: complete entertainment.

Vincent Price is in top form as the charming, slimy, sarcastic millionaire. Everyone else is serviceable at worst, effective at best. Castle's direction does what it sets out to do, and does it well. He may have been as gimmicky, shlocky or trashy as people accused him of being, as if those are negative attributes, but a hack he was not.

The film is incredibly enjoyable as much more than a piece of notalgia (even for those of us who were born not long before Vincent Price died) if one is willing to go to the film, rather than waiting for it to come. Few films are as joyous, intoxicating and just plain FUN as this.