House On Haunted Hill (1959)
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Horror Movies & Sci-Fi Movies Database
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03.12.09
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Five people are invited by Frederick and Annabelle Loren to spend 12 hours in the house on Haunted Hill. All who manage to do so will receive $10,000. The house is presumably haunted - one of the guests, Mr. Pritchard, who seems to know a great deal about the history of the place and says there are seven in all - but greed drives most of the victims who immediately face various threats to their lives. A chandelier almost kills one; another is haunted by the ghostly apparition of an old crone; while yet another gets a bump on the head in a mysterious room. As the guests continue to be frightened and threatened, two have their own very specific reason for being there and not everyone will live through the night.
Movie Tagline:
See it with someone with warm hands!
Also Known As:
The House on Haunted Hill
Title: House On Haunted Hill
Release Date: February 17, 1959
Runtime: 75 mins
Genre: Drama
All Genres: Drama, Horror, Thriller
Languages: English
Country: USA
Colors: Black and White
Sound: Mono
IMDB Rating: 6.8
Brimstone Pit Rating: 7.8 - (Rate This Horror Movie)
Category: Horror Movies Starting With H
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Director(s):
William Castle
Cast:
Vincent Price ...Frederick Loren
Carol Ohmart ...Annabelle Loren
Richard Long ...Lance Schroeder
Alan Marshal ...Dr. David Trent
Carolyn Craig ...Nora Manning
Elisha Cook Jr. ...Watson Pritchard (as Elisha Cook)
Julie Mitchum ...Ruth Bridgers
Leona Anderson ...Mrs. Slydes
Howard Hoffman ...Jonas
Remaining Cast:
Producer(s):
William Castle
Robb White
Writer(s):
Robb White
Composer(s):
Von Dexter
Movie Soundtrack(s):
"House on Haunted Hill"
More Movie Taglines:
- See it with someone with warm hands!
- The 13 greatest shocks of all time!
- Consult your doctor! Bring your seat belts!
- First Film With the Amazing New Wonder EMERGO: The Thrills Fly Right Into The Audience!
- The 13 Greatest SHOCKS ever seen!
- Acclaimed The Super-Shocker Of The Century!
Movie Quote(s):
- Frederick Loren: Once, the door is locked, there is no way out. The windows have bars the jail would be proud of and the only door to the outside locks like a vault.
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Watson Pritchard: Only the ghosts in this house are glad we're here.
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Watson Pritchard: [shows everyone a knife] This is what she used on my brother and her sister, hacked them to pieces. We found parts of their bodies all over the house, in places you wouldn't think. A funny thing is the heads have never been found, hands and feet and things like that, but no heads. Dr. David Trent: The wife, probably in a fit of rage, threatened her husband with the knife, and then, carried away by hysteria, took a swing at him and simply went on from there. Lance Schroeder: [laughing] She certainly went on, how many people did she kill, Mr. Pritchard? Watson Pritchard: Only two, her husband and her sister, nobody else was here. Lance Schroeder: So there are two loose heads just floating around here someplace? Watson Pritchard: You can hear them at night, they whisper to each other, and then cry.
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Watson Pritchard: [opening lines] The ghosts are moving tonight, restless... hungry. May I introduce myself? I'm Watson Pritchard. In just a moment I'll show you the only really haunted house in the world. Since it was built a century ago, seven people including my brother have been murdered in it, since then, I've owned the house. I only spent one night then and when they found me in the morning, I... I was almost dead.
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Lance Schroeder: If I were gonna haunt somebody, this would certainly be the house I'd do it in.
Movie Trivia:
- The large grosses for this film were noticed by Alfred Hitchcock. This led him to create his own low-budget horror film - Psycho (1960).
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The Ennis Brown House in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1924, and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was used for the exterior shots of the haunted house during the film's opening sequence.
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William Castle had related the story of meeting Vincent Price on a day when Price had learned that he had been passed over for a part. Over coffee, Castle described the premise of this picture. Price liked the idea and it led to a two-picture collaboration, this and The Tingler (1959).
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The popular theme music originally had haunting lyrics by Richard Kayne, but only the orchestral version was used in the final film. For the record, the lyrics went as follows: There's a house on Haunted Hill / Where ev'rything's lonely and still / Lonely and still / And the ghost of a sigh / When we whispered good-bye / Lingers on / And each night gives a heart broken cry / There's a house on Haunted Hill / Where love walked there's a strange silent chill / Strange silent chill / There are mem'ries that yearn / For our hearts to return / And a promise we failed to fulfill / But we'll never go back / No, we'll never go back / To the house on Haunted Hill!
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SPOILER: Used a gimmick called "Emergo" in theaters. When the skeleton rises from the acid vat in the film, a lighted plastic skeleton on a wire appeared from a black box next to the screen to swoop over the heads of the audience. The skeleton would then be pulled back into the box as Vincent Price reels in the skeleton in the film. Many theaters soon stopped using this "effect" because when the local boys heard about it, they would bring slingshots to the theater; when the skeleton started its journey, they would pull out their slingshots and fire at it with stones, BBs, ball bearings and whatever else they could find.
IMDB Links:
» User Comments at imdb.com
» More information at imdb.com
Keywords:
Party, Murder, Eccentric, Haunted House, Caretaker ...[more]
Keywords All:
Gun, Ghost, Psychiatrist, Champagne, Kiss, Cigarette Smoking, Organ, Place Name In Title, Skeleton, Remade, Bandage, Trapdoor, Blood, Fake Suicide, Severed Head, Chandelier, Screaming, Test Pilot, Blind, Acid, Hanging, Knife, Public Domain, Wine Cellar, Horror Movie Remade, Twist In The End
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Rating: 7.8 out of 10.0 - 75 votes cast total
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