Today's treat is a classic of public domain horror, William Castle's original House on Haunted Hill.
An eccentric millionaire - played by the incomparable Vincent Price - offers five strangers a ten thousand dollar prize if they can survive a night spent locked in a ghost-ridden mansion. But is the place really haunted, or is there a living menace at play?
Nah, there couldn't be.
Many keys have been stroked on the internet about Castle and his fantabulous "ballyhoo" style. House on Haunted Hill was presented in "Emergo", which was basically a plastic skeleton on a wire that would come swinging out at the audience during an opportune moment. If you have a toy skeleton of your own, keep it handy to reenact "Emergo" at that scene. You'll know it when you see it.
House has a special place in my family's lore. My mother and her sisters went to see it at the drive-in when she was little, and the film frightened her so badly that she had nightmares for weeks. (One can only imagine how much more traumatized she would have been had she seen the film in "Emergo".) She always described it to her own children as one of the scariest films she had ever seen. When I finally got her to watch again recently - the first time she'd seen it in over fifty years - she was a bit chagrined at how quaint the thing was.
While I am sure that House on Haunted Hill won't be giving any of you night terrors, it's still a great way to spend a few hours this Halloween season.
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