- William Castle's House on Haunted Hill is the definitive classic haunted house horror picture. The premise is appropriately weird: eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) offers five people $10,000 each to be locked up in a supposedly haunted house overnight with him and his wife, Annabelle (Carol Ohmart). The seemingly random assortment of participants includes an innocent working widow named Nora (Carolyn Craig), a hotshot test pilot named Lance (Richard Long), the solemn psychiatrist Dr. Trent (Alan Marshal), renowned newspaper columnist Ruth Bridges (Julie Mitchum), and the shaky alcoholic Pritchard (Elisha Cook Jr.), the last of whom owns the house. Enough for his wife's "party," according to Loren's strange sense of humor.
- Pritchard opens by explaining how seven different people were killed in the house over the years, but it's really his dark hint "maybe more before morning" that sets the film's tone. The strange occurrences start off innocently enough with a dropped chandelier and and an unexplained bump on Lance's head. Oh don't worry, Nora: that terrifying old woman (Leona Anderson) who grabbed you in the dark is just the house's blind caretaker. Tougher to explain the disappearing/reappearing disembodied head that Nora finds in her luggage, but you can rely on Dr. Trent to diagnose such an obvious case of female hysteria. When the strangely aloof Annabelle shows up hanged in the hallway, however, suddenly hysteria isn't going to cut it. Time to get out the guns, each of which arrives packaged in its own coffin.
- Did I mention that this haunted house has a deadly pool of acid in its basement? Suddenly I don't feel so bad about all those cardboard boxes sitting around in our laundry room. At any rate, the acid pool plays a role is what is deservedly the film's most famous scene involving a skeleton listed "as himself" in the end credits. As engaging as that scene was, however, I found myself more far more charmed by the film's excellent employment of Price and Cook Jr. as two people who could inject a chill into any room. Sure, by film's end there's a barely plausible explanation for everything that doesn't involve any ghosts, but I'll have forgotten it by the next time I watch House on Haunted Hill. What I will remember is that this was one horror film that mixed fun and suspense in exactly the right proportions.
- The house's exterior is Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House.
- Apparently, this film was occasionally shown with a skeleton that emerged at the appropriate moment in the movie theater. Also, it was originally released in 3D.
