June 29^th, 1999

"SOME HOUSES ARE BORN BAD"

To coinciede with the upcoming release of Jan De Bont's remake of "The Haunting" here's three suggestions for spooky haunted house chills. Of course we couldn't pass over Robert Wise's 1963 original The Haunting and William Castle's 1958 shlocker House On Haunted Hill. Both are based on Shirley Jackson's classic novel "Haunting Of Hill House". Our third entry is a modern day ghost tale from one of Hollywood's most influential men.

House On Haunted Hill [1958] was showman Castle's first haunted house movie (13 Ghosts, his second) stars Vincent Price as a millionaire who offers a group of seven people ten-thousand dollars each if they can spend the night in a supposedly haunted house. It turns out it's mostly Price pulling pranks on everyone, but there's also a few spirits lurking around.

William Castle was known as a "showman" more than a director thanks to the many pranks he'd set-up to delight an audience. House... was no exception as he had theatre owners rig up a fake skeleton on a pulley that was cued to swoop overhead when the scene that has Price puppetering a skeleton to frighten is on-screen.

Price is a joy to watch here and seems to be having fun and this turns out to be a light-hearted film that's a lot of fun if you don't take it an iota seriously.

The Haunting [1963] is still heralded as "the" haunted house film. A literate, moody and serious take on Jackson's novel has a group of people gathered at "Hull House" by a professor to investigate the ghostly goings-on. Shirley Jackson is the timid volunteer who finds her grip on reality slowing erroding.

Director Wise has crafted a spooky little film here using sound effects and understated chills to hide the fact we never once actually see the ghosts. Imaginative and heady, this is a glowing example of "mood over violence" a feat that very few films over the years have managed to pull-off (Psycho and Texas Chain Saw Massacre are two others).

Poltergeist [1982] was producer Steven Spielberg's contribution and it's a mixed bag. While I was amazed at some of the top-class effects and the finale kicks some major ass, the problem is it seems to take longer to get there than it should.

The Freeling family moves into a new house only to find it was built on a old burial ground. This leads to many nasty ghost activities. And at the time this came out the stale plot wasn't stale (if that makes sense).

Still, it has some extremely well-done moments with a face-ripping, a giant possessed tree and one impressive sequence that has coffins (and zombies) popping from the ground.

Director Hopper (Texas Chain Saw...) hasn't yet been able to top this one even if there's reports Spielberg was unhappy with his work and shot some footage.