He introduces himself as Watson Pritchard, the owner of “the only real haunted house in the world,” which has claimed several lives, including that of his brother. ( The Maltese Falcon, The Killing) drifts toward us Zardoz-like. At the outset, we sit in the darkness of the theater listening to sounds that could be coming from any Halloween sound-effects tape: screams, creaking doors, moans, rattling chains then the head of character actor Elisha Cook Jr.
It’s a very straightforward film, but efficiently designed and executed, like the stately, severely right-angled Frank Lloyd Wright home which stands in for the titular haunted house (it also featured in Blade Runner). The slumber party begins: (L-R) Julie Mitchum, Alan Marshal, Vincent Price, Richard Long, Carolyn Craig, and Elisha Cook Jr. When Price agreed to a two-picture deal for Castle ( The Tinglerquickly followed), horror film history was made.
The subsequent one-two punch of The Fly (1958) and House on Haunted Hill fixed this personality in the minds of moviegoers, and cemented him as a cultural icon. He could be the romantic leading man or a sneering villain in a swashbuckler, but in 1953’s 3-D House of Wax he essayed what would become his signature role: the droll murderer, an antihero at the center of a black-humored horror tale. Price had been acting in pictures since the late 30’s, occasionally stealing the spotlight in films such as Laura (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), and His Kind of Woman (1951) – the latter an eccentric little film that allowed Price to display his knack for comedy. It wasn’t just a big film for Castle, who had heretofore directed B-pictures in a variety of categories, and had just begun to dabble in horror with Macabre (1958) it also played a significant part in the career transition of Vincent Price. Since July I’ve been posting reviews of the films featured on the William Castle Film Collection DVD box set, encompassing Castle’s run at Columbia Pictures although his career was far from over, I’d like to close out this survey of his horror work (for now) by circling back to the film that became his breakthrough in the genre, House on Haunted Hill (1959).