Watch On Bruised Onion Studio YouTube Channel
House On Haunted Hill (1959)
American campy supernatural horror film.
Frederick Loren (Vincent Price), an eccentric millionaire, invites five people to a party he is throwing for his fourth wife Annabelle (Carol Ohmart) in an allegedly haunted house he has rented, promising to give each $10,000 with the stipulation that they stay the entire night in the house after the doors are locked at midnight.
The Samuel Freeman House in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1924, and now listed on the National Historic Register, was used for the exterior shots of the haunted house during the film’s opening sequence.
The film is perhaps best known for a promotional gimmick used in the film’s original theatrical release called “Emergo.” In some theaters that showed the film, exhibitors rigged an elaborate pulley system near the theater screen which allowed a glow-in-the-dark plastic skeleton to be flown over the audience during a corresponding scene late in the film.
Thanks in part to Castle’s gimmickry, House on Haunted Hill was a huge success. Alfred Hitchcock took notice of the low-budget film’s performance at the box office and made his own low-budget horror film, which became the critically acclaimed hit Psycho (1960).
Interesting Trivia:
The $10,000 offered to each of the guests in 1959 would be equal to about $83,450 in 2017.
| Directed by | William Castle |
|---|---|
| Produced by | William Castle Robb White |
| Written by | Robb White |
| Starring | Vincent Price Carol Ohmart Elisha Cook Carolyn Craig Alan Marshal Julie Mitchum Richard Long |
| Music by | Richard Kayne Richard Loring Von Dexter |
| Cinematography | Carl E. Guthrie |
| Edited by | Roy V. Livingston |
| Color process | Black and hite |
|
Production
company |
William Castle Productions
|
| Distributed by | Allied Artists |
|
Release date
|
February 17, 1959 |
|
Running time
|
75 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $200,000 (estimated) |
| Box office | $2.5 million |
