House On Haunted Hill

As another Halloween season is regrettably drawing to a close, I'd like to mention another of my favorite movies from my favorite time of year. This movie gave me the first scare I can remember from a horror flick. House On Haunted Hill was the second in a series of fright films made by Producer-Director William Castle from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s. Twin opening monologues, one by Vincent Price and the other by Elisha Cook, Jr. (in a role very different from his turn in The Maltese Falcon) are excellent mood setters. Frederick Loren (Price) is a millionaire who promises five people (all of whom need the money) $10,000 each if they can survive a night of being locked inside a supposedly haunted mansion. He is married to his fourth wife, Annabelle (Carol Ohmart), a gold digger who doesn't seem to be concerned that his three previous wives all died under mysterious circumstances. As it turns out, they both try to use the house as a cover to murder the other. In the process, they nearly frighten to death one of the guests, Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig). While this film probably works better in a theater than television, it is a good fright all the same. The highlight scene for me comes early on in the film when Nora is crouching down in a darkened storage room. As she rises, she shines her candle in the face of Mrs. Slydes, the old blind wife of the caretaker. Trust me, Mrs. Slydes is a lot scarier and uglier than Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz
could ever hope to be. Mrs. Slydes is played by Leona Anderson, the sister of the real-life Broncho Billy who, as Gilbert Anderson, appears in 1903's The Great Train Robbery, one of  the first commercially produced motion pictures in history. If you've never seen this great film by Willam Castle, you are missing out. Among his other notable films are Macabre, 13 Ghosts, and The Haunting. He was loosely portrayed by John Goodman in 1993's Matinee.