To celebrate Halloween Live for Films is having a horror movie review each night in the 31 Days of Horror. You can see last years 31 days here. You can be involved by sending me your review of a horror film – new, old, good, bad, depressing, funny, disgusting, psychological. As long as it can be classed as a horror then you can send it over to me at phil@liveforfilms.com
Click here to see all the reviews for 2011′s 31 Days of Horror.
Today ksl1000 reviews The Haunting.
The Haunting is no doubt a classic ghost story movie based on Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting Of Hill House (1959). The movie is what is basically called “psychological horror,” which means that it is horror that is created more in the mind rather than visually. In other words, the feeling of being scared of things you can’t see. There is no blood and gore whatsoever in this movie. Instead, invisible ghosts and a mansion that seems like it’s alive provide the scares. The brilliant use of lighting and shadows also help create the haunting atmosphere. Even though color movie technology had already been around for quite some time, this movie was deliberately filmed in black and white, because director Robert Wise felt that black and white would make it darker and more eerie. He was so right. Black and white works perfectly for this film.
The story is about four paranormal investigators (Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, and Russ Tamblyn) who go to a 90 year old New England house known as Hill House to study the supernatural happenings inside the house. What happens next is haunting phenomena that will scare you. This house is a huge mansion furnished with expensive, quality items, even though nobody lives there. The mansion is very plush and regal with lots of antiques.
Inside the mansion, strange and bizarre things happen. The house at certain times seems like it’s alive, like it’s breathing. The house actually starts to self-destruct near the end of the movie. This is the way a haunted house movie should be portrayed, in my opinion. It’s what you can’t see that is so frightening, rather than seeing an actual ghost or person on the screen. Rather than blood and monsters, there’s knocks, bangs, and pounding noises. I love some of the camera angles used in the movie. I also like when the house is shown from the outside many times during the movie, with the camera pointed up toward the sky. It’s meant to show that Hill House is staring at you. That is cool.
The acting is very good. Julie Harris plays Eleanor Lance, a rather unique character who has been repressed in her adult life. She whines a lot, but that is her character. The striking Claire Bloom plays Theodora or “Theo,” a character who is a psychic and displays confidence and skepticism at times and fear at other times. Eleanor and Theo supposedly are lesbians in this movie. It is implied in a very subtle way. Richard Johnson plays the always curious paranormal investigator Dr. John Markway. Russ Tamblyn plays the skeptical Luke Sanderson who is supposed to inherit the house one day. He provides a little comic relief. Fay Compton plays the role of Mrs. Sanderson. Lois Maxwell plays Grace Markway, the wife of John Markway, and a non-believer in the supernatural. Valentine Dyall plays the caretaker of Hill House, Mr. Dudley. My favorite character in the whole movie is the housekeeper Mrs. Dudley, played by Rosalie Crutchley. She doesn’t live in the house all the time. She and her husband live miles away in town. Her character is so dark and mysterious. Even though she plays only a very small role, she delivers the best lines in the movie in my opinion when she says, “…in the night…in the dark”.
If you’re a thinking person who has an imagination and doesn’t need to be VISUALLY entertained at all times to avoid boredom, then this movie will provide psychological horror at its finest. On the other hand, if you’re somebody who needs to be VISUALLY entertained at all times (such as needing to SEE the actual ghosts on screen in CGI form), then watch the 1999 remake, which, according to the vast majority of the public, is sub par and falls way short of the original on all levels.
Remember, in the original 1963 movie, it’s what you don’t see that is so scary.
This movie’s musical score by Humphrey Searle is one of the most underrated and forgotten in horror movie history. It’s outstanding, and really fits the haunting atmosphere. It’s too bad it’s not available for sale. I rank it as either my favorite or second favorite horror movie score ever (John Carpenter’s Halloween being the other contender).
This movie is always compared to The Innocents (1961) by horror fans and critics. Why? It’s because both films were released around the same time (1961 and 1963), both are black and white films, both are ghost stories set in haunted Victorian mansions, both are based on novels, both are extremely creepy, and both have innovative camera-work. I often have a hard time deciding which of these two films is better. Of course, the authors whose books these movies are based on (Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting Of Hill House” and Henry James’s “The Turn Of The Screw”) wrote stories that are night and day different. The movies, however, will always be compared due to the above reasons and simply because it comes down to what a person looks for and prefers in a haunted house ghost story movie. When it comes to comparing haunted house movies, I personally put the movie’s atmosphere first and the story second. The next person might do the opposite.
If you want to see a really good supernatural haunted house thriller, then I highly recommend watching The Haunting in the night…………in the dark.
