House on Haunted Hill

House on Haunted Hill
by William Castle

House on Haunted Hill
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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Alan Marshal, Carol Ohmart, Carolyn Craig, Richard Long, Vincent Price
Director: William Castle
Cinematographer: Carl E. Guthrie
Producer: William Castle
Editor: Roy V. Livingston
Producer: Robb White
Writer: Robb White
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 75 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-10-26
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Warner Home Video

Movie Reviews of House on Haunted Hill

Movie Review: House On Haunted Hill '59: The Ultimate Print Is WB's DVD
Summary: 5 Stars

My original copy of House On Haunted Hill was a budget video cassette, so you can imagine how much of an improvement the DVD was! I noticed a tiny bit of noise on the film, especially near the beginning and the end, and often when a scene changed, but in general the picture was quiet to silent.

I was struck by my ability to see the quality of the original film: in particular, the scene where the chandelier falls in the hallway near the beginning, the shot from the top of the room is softer than the surrounding shots... perhaps because stunt doubles were being used? I don't know and I'm not sure how to find out, but it sure wasn't noticeable in the video cassette I had! :)

Another amazing difference was being able to read the ending credits! Again in my video tape the end credits were ghosts themselves, completely bleeding out any recognizable letters.

The audio, to my ears, was excellent considering the source material. The noise floor was remarkably low, and dynamics were impressive as well. Some websites comment on a minor lack of bass, but again compared to the video, voices were remarkably warm.

Only the slightest hint of stressing of the limits of the audio system were detectable only during screams or occasionally during complex organ chords... possibly due more to the organ than the recording. Any distortion was kept to an amazing minimum, such that I doubt your average person would catch it.

The widescreen version was an eye-opener as well. This movie is laid out better than it appears if you've only seen the cropped version! Excellent subject balance shows up scene after scene... and the loss of this balance is obvious (and unavoidable) in the pan-and-scan version. In the opening credits as the doctor looks down upon the city so far below the house and the hill, the feeling of being way up above seems lost in the cramped pan-and-scan version.

In pan-and-scan, shoulders are constantly cropped off, people feel stuffed into the scene, perspective is occasionally off, and to my eyes it is just not as appealing a presentation visually as the original widescreen.

Pan-and-scan also occasionally gave motion in the room a jerky movement as the pan-and-scan tried to follow the focus of the action... often leaving out nice details available only in the widescreen version. Again, I have heard the pan-and-scan gives more detail for what is there, but I personally saw no loss in the widescreen version whatsoever.

The scene on the front cover of the DVD with Annabelle recoiling from a gruesome hand isn't in the film; possibly it is taken from publicity stills? I believe the same is true for the shot of Norra Manning looking through the cobwebs... and the shot of Frederick & Annabelle on the front inside cover... and the shot of Jonas Slydes holding Norra on the back cover... makes you wish there was a collector's book of publicity stills to go with it, huh?

Of course as a HOHH junkie I would have loved a full disc of extras, but the trailer is a wonderful addition by itself and will work well as a teaser for the movie to show my friends and get them hooked. :-) This is and will always been a classic Halloween movie; this DVD beautifully preserves it for Halloweens to come. I couldn't be happier with my purchase!

"What husband hasn't at one time wanted to kill his wife?" - Frederick Loren, chapter 15

Summary of House on Haunted Hill

House on Haunted Hill (View amazon detail page) ASIN: 0790744309 Binding: DVD
William Castle's gimmick-laden comic thriller is not so much a horror movie as a fairground funhouse come to life. Vincent Price stars as a deliciously silky millionaire married to a greedy gold digger (Carol Ohmart) who refuses to divorce him. When he turns his wife's idea for a haunted-house party into a contest--$10,000 to whoever will spend the night in "the only truly haunted house in the world"--it seems he may have found an alternative to divorce. Five strangers gather to test their stamina, Price hands each of them delightfully twisted party favors (loaded handguns, delivered in their own tiny coffins), and the spook show begins. Blood drips from the ceiling, zombielike apparitions float through rooms, severed heads and skeletons suddenly appear, and then a guest is found hanging in the stairwell. Full of screams and things that go bump in the night, House on Haunted Hill isn't particularly scary and often makes little sense, but, like a Halloween haunted house, the spectacle of spook-show clichés is quite entertaining, and Price makes a sardonic master of ceremonies. The original theatrical presentations featured a typically outrageous Castle-engineered gimmick: Emergo, which was nothing more than a skeleton that appeared to fly out of the screen and over the audience on a guide wire. --Sean Axmaker
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