House On Haunted Hill

Starring: Vincent Price Director: William Castle

A millionaire throws a haunted house party in the original version of this terrifying horror story.

DVD Features:

Description by OLDIES.com:

"The ghosts are moving tonight...restless, hungry..." Eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) invites five seemingly random strangers to a macabre party in a legendary haunted mansion hosted by his wife, Annabelle (Carol Ohmart). The guests will each receive $10,000 if they agree to spend a night in the house - and survive! The partygoers, armed with handguns that are presented as party favors, are forced to deal with decapitated heads in suitcases, a vat of sulfuric acid in the basement and the discovery of Annabelle hanging from the rafters with a noose around her neck. The night is filled with terror, shocks and unexpected twists. House on Haunted Hill is a highly inventive and unnerving horror cult classic that combines Vincent Price's menacingly suave persona with the renowned flamboyance of producer/director William Castle. Price delivers one of his most sinister performances, a tour de force of tongue-in-cheek evil. During its initial release, Castle, possessing a remarkable knack for gimmicks, rigged the theaters with a skeleton that flew out from the screen and over audiences' heads. Von Dexter's eerie music score creates a nervous tension broken by sudden bloodcurdling screams.

Product Description:

Vincent Price has one of his juiciest roles in this haunted-house thriller as millionaire playboy Frederick Loren, who invites five guests out to a genuine haunted house, offering them each $10,000 if they spend the night. Elisha Cook Jr. plays one of the guests, a nervous alcoholic who has been in this house before and witnessed some terrible things. Mr. Loren's beautiful but treacherous wife (Carol Ohmart) is also present--and might be out to kill Frederick during the course of the evening; then again, he might be out to kill her. Severed heads, a skeleton, an acid vat, ghostly screams, and a noose that creeps around on its own and strangles unsuspecting victims are just some of the treats in a film that has been spooking delighted audiences on late-night TV for decades. Producer-director William Castle (THE TINGLER) claimed this was filmed in a process called Emergo, which meant that at a key moment a glow-in-the-dark skeleton on a wire was rigged to sail over the audience's heads. The skeleton is long since gone, but the goofy thrills remain in this classic tale, from a script by Robb White.

Plot Keywords:

Ghosts | Haunted Houses | Horror | Psychic Forces | Theatrical Release

Exerpts:

"This is what she used on my brother and her sister...Hacked 'em to pieces. We found parts of the bodies scattered all over the house. Funny thing is, the heads were never found. Hands, feet...things like that, but no heads." -- Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook Jr.) after pulling a knife out of a drawer and brandishing it at the other guests "You mean there's two heads just floating around here?" -- Lance Schroeder (Richard Long) "You can hear them at night; they whisper to each other." -- Pritchard

Production Notes:

• A 1999 remake of this film starred Geoffrey Rush and Famke Janssen.

Cast and Crew: