Chad

indiephantom

Have a Rifftrax copy of this one ready to go. Should be lots of fun.

ntnon

HULU: http://www.hulu.com/house-on-haunted-hill - in Black & White and Color

Trevor

That's what I'll do on the 23rd.

I accidentally watched this 'straight' earlier in the Challenge, can't believe we've never used this as a subset pick. It's one of my favorites. I may have watched it each year actually.

Undeadcow

There are a lot of characters at first and it's hard to track but wow what plot twists fly by. It's a little disappointing to find the house is actually seemingly not haunted in the original.

If the acid eats human tissue, how is the rope suspending the skeleton able to hold?

The 1999 remake came out when I was in high school and Dark Castle fluff is a guilty pleasure of mine so when I more recently caught the original House on Haunted Hill I kept expecting some maniacal surgeon to pop up. By the way, the 1999 remake had one of the most epic organ and ambient music soundtracks - I had the CD, it was great: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list..._FAUvtyZbPkCx7.

Mondo Kane

It might be hard to believe, but I've never seen this movie on a TV screen before. Only on my computer. The first time was back on either the 2nd or 3rd horror challenge (I think I watched it on Googlevideo way back when) and now I'm currently watching it on Midnite Mausoleum's livestream: http://www.livestream.com/midnitemausoleum (It's been playing there since the start of October)

Since I'm doing my traditional Drive-In totals, anyone know for sure what kind of dead animal Elijah Cook throws in the acid? At first it looks like a flattened rat, but when it floats back up, it's skeleton looks like a dog!

indiephantom

I was only familiar with the final "hoax" bit from a great episode of Amazing Stories that was directed by Robert Zemeckis. This was fun to finally check out. Would have been interesting to see theatrically back in its day.

That poster makes it look like an Italian giallo or something. Incredible.

ntnon

For what it's worth, Rifftrax folks say it's a dead rat going in, and a tiny dinosaur coming out...

I remember enjoying this a few years ago, but managed to conveniently forget just enough that I enjoyed it this time round, too. I like that it plays a bit like live Clue(do), and that there are plots within plots, but I think that some of the inter-relations either weren't explained as well as I'd hoped, or just sailed past me as I was enjoying some other aspect.

Much of it is overly contrived and doesn't really stand up to any scrutiny, but the whole is just so entertaining and absorbing that it doesn't really matter much about the acid, the guns, everyone's willingness to not question anything, the wandering around slowly peering into every corner while running "terrified", that most believe nothing but the lies, etc.

Rifftrax rightly mocks the frequent slow-pans around the room, and I thought it very intriguing to then go on to watch the Castle Old Dark House and see a number of similarities.

(I also heard for the first time this time Vincent Price say "It's close to midnight," which I assume is said by many people in many contexts and yet must surely have influenced the sung lyrics of Thriller...)

Mondo Kane

Brilliant

Spiderbite

I have watched this movie a couple of times before and I really want to like it since I love "Haunted House" movies and this one is always near the top of so many lists...but it just doesn't do much for me.

It's not very creepy or spooky (except for the real close-up of the blind housekeeper...now that is a creepy shot). The story is predictable (even the final twist) and not very interesting. The acting is wooden and the young girl is so bad she completely takes me out of the movie every time she speaks. Price seems bored and the rest of the characters are quite bland and uninteresting (with the exception of Price's wife).

I just don't care what happens to these people. And really...nothing does happen to them. But it still mildly held my interest to the end so I have to bump it half a star for that.

One question though...at the end we find out there everything was a hoax. So why does the guy talk to the camera at the end, acting like there are real ghosts in the house when it was just shown there was no ghostly presence there at all? I just found it out of place. Guess it maybe freaked a few people out in 1959?

My rating: **1/2 out of *****

DaveyJoe

Spiderbite, in regards to the end I got the impression that the House was haunted, or the host of some malevolent spirit that caused all of the previous murders/accidents. There something weird going on if so many people have died there over the years, even if the characters in this movie had the "motive" to try to kill each other.

This was my first time viewing the movie, and it was okay. I thought it started pretty strongly and had quite a few scares and creepy moments in the first act, but it got pretty slow around the middle. Vincent Price is always fun to watch, but I agree that the lead female was pretty weak, and I didn't enjoy watching the Lance character hit on both her and Price's wife. There's something about the way they portray leading men and their relationships with women in movies from this era that creeps me out. Like earlier in the month while watching The Uninvited I was grossed out watching Ray Milland spend most of the movie hitting on the traumatized younger woman who was 20 years younger than he was.

The film picked up again toward the end with some more creepy moments, but I think it just wasn't the same watching this on a computer. It would be neat to see this in a dark theater with the sound turned up.

cwileyy

Oh no! I totally got my dates mixed up and thought the subset day was today! Oh well.

In any case, I really like this movie. Yeah, it's not scary, and none of it really makes sense, but there's something that just fits the spirit of the season with this one. It just feels like a classic "Halloween" movie. The schlock of everything just gives it so much charm.

I remember seeing this a few years back for the first time, and it just grabbed onto me. Now, it comes on every year.