Campy 1958 horror-comedy comes alive with smart aleck MST
Written: Nov 03 '09 (Updated Nov 03 '09)
Product Rating:
Pros: Vincent Price unctious as always; meeting Robert Mitchum's sister June; colorization; MST3K snide commentary
Cons: Slow at times - but what do you expect from a 1958 horror/comedy?
The Bottom Line: It's a love story gone morbid! It's a shocking thriller! It's absurd! It's colorized! Vincent Price as your host! June Mitchum is there (Robert's sister!) AND you get MST3000 commentary!
frwhiskey's Full Review: Vincent Price - House on Haunted Hill/Last Man on ...
The House on Haunted Hill, a 1958 horror film starring Vincent Price, sets a ridiculous murder plot up in a mauseleum-style huge house on a hill. (It's a home in Lose Angeles, built by Frank Lloyd Wright, in ancient Mesopotamian style).
Vincent Price plays the eccentric millionaire obsessed with his beautiful wife. They are throwing a "party", inviting four unknowns to come and spend the night in a locked up haunted house. Each will be paid $10,000 ($66K today) if they survive through the night without being murdered by the seven previously murdered victims, now vindictive ghosts, it seems. SCARY!!! SHOCKING!
Well, no, hilarious. From the creeking doors, to the dusty, cobweb-coated old furniture, old wallpaper and carpets, crashing chandiliers and walking skeleton, everything in the film is designed to make an adult laugh. The inimitable voice of Vincent Price, with moustache and tall bearing, dominate the film; his wife (Carol Ohmart) is smug with a gorgeous mop of blonde hair cascading down her back, dress in skintight and decadent outfits. She radiates confidence and beauty, but also misery - they hate being married to each other, and discuss it as she brushes her long, thick locks in her bedroom.
The four "guests" are:
a typist - female, early 20's, desperate for the money, and dopey/screaming in personality;
a psychiatrist - older, bigger male, dull and methodical, always scientifically droning;
a test pilot -40'ish male, charming, sweet-talking; a gossip columnist - a lady in her 60's, dour and alcoholic, small and precise, sharp-minded yet quiet (in fact, it's the sister of Robert Mitchum, June Mitchum, and her small mouth and facial shape resembles him a lot).
The plot moves along as they are locked into the house just before midnight for the night, with steel doors barring their exit until the servants come in the morning to release them - if they're alive.
They do the usual explorations of a large and spooky house - including sliding doors behind which one can disappear, an acid vat (handy for dissolving the bodies), and naturally, it's the young typist who does the most screaming. The test pilot is after her, but he gets clobbered by a ghost behind one "mystery door", thus wearing a bandaid on his forehead the rest of the film.
The original black and white photography has been colorized, and the effect is fantastic. The house is full of wonderfully expensive antiques, albeit dusty and spidery. Vincent Price glides with both voice and feet about these four fools, while a hidden love affair finally erupts into a double murder - both into the acid bath down in the cellar, one pushed by a skeleton, of course.
The acting is wooden, the plot absurd, the actors perhaps on drugs, yet on any standard basis of film reviewing I am not recommending this old and campy horror film. It's the sheer old-fashioned humor.
My brother and I laughed all the way through this classic film, because of the marvelously snide remarks by Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K). At all convenient pauses in the screen dialogues, he inserts the typical sophomoric critical remarks that are so dumb you have to a laugh. My best friend in high school days was brilliant at such repartee, and I thought of her throughout - although she's passed away from lung cancer; she was the type to have made insulting remarks about the priest in a low voice had she been alive at her own funeral.
If you do not know the MST3K phenomenon, you may not even like it; however, it is an optional track on the DVD if you don't like the smart aleck approach to life.
Would children scream? Not today's sophisticated tykes - oh no! They would hoot would laughter as we did.
Suffice to say that "NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD" is also advertised on this DVD for future "Creature Feature" viewing.
Now I am on the hunt for ALL of the Mystery Science Theater dubbings available. Yes, it's true, I'm still mentally in high school. And you who read this, you know if you are, too.
"Vincent Price Collection" contains "House On Haunted Hill", "The Bat" and "The Last Man Standing." "House On Haunted Hill" - A Perennial favorite of ...More at HotMovieSale.com
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