“An evil old house, the kind some people call haunted, is like an undiscovered country waiting to be explored.”
I’m not a huge fan of ghost stories, but I love a good haunted house story. I know that sounds like a contradiction – aren’t houses haunted by ghosts? – but I like stories about bad places. About buildings or ruins or even parts of the countryside that are dark, twisted, or just plain wrong. They may have ghosts in them, but it’s the place that feels horrifying. I’m thinking of movies like Grave Encounters or Session 9 or 1408. And I’m thinking about The Haunting.
Based on Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel, the 1963 movie, by director Robert Wise and screenwriter Nelson Gidding, is my favorite haunted house movie. (Though I’ll also confess a fondness for the more gaudy horrors of 1973’s The Legend of Hell House.) The horror of Hill House isn’t an overt or even necessarily supernatural one (though there are events that are unexplained). It is instead a creeping, existential dread and psychological breakdown. Maybe it’s about a haunted house. Or maybe it’s about a haunted person. It seems to me to capture the exact mood of the original novel, if not all the details. Here, let’s just read the novel’s opening paragraph so you can see what I’m talking about:
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
Come on, that’s some creepy stuff. And if nothing else, the movie makes me feel the same way as the prose. That things are off. That something’s wrong. That these people are at the mercy of something without pity or remorse, something that never sleeps but always watches. Some places are just wrong – not sane – and nothing in them can be good for the human mind or soul.
I know that’s a lot to put on a black and white horror movie from 1963, but I feel like The Haunting can handle it.
Robert Wise directed The Haunting in between academy awards for musicals (West Side Story in 1961 and The Sound of Music in 1965), and at first blush he seems an odd choice to direct such a creepy film. Wise’s first directing job, however, was as a replacement for the original director on Curse of the Cat People for producer Val Lewton. Lewton was the famous producer of films like I Walked With a Zombie and the original Cat People (directed by Jacques Tourneur). Wise directed a number of films for Lewton, including The Body Snatcher with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.
The dark shadows and eerie atmosphere of the horror film was something Wise was intimately familiar with, and he’d use all that experience to make The Haunting.
The Medium
I have the 2013 Blu-ray release from Warner Bros., and it looks great, with sharp detail and solid blacks. There are only a couple of extras, including a piecemeal commentary track. Somehow there’s no 4k release of this classic, but there is of the 1999 remake.
There are currently no free or subscription options to watch The Haunting via streaming, but it can be purchased or rented at the usual online vendors. The Blu-ray can often be found for around $10, if you prefer physical media.
The Movie
The Haunting opens with shots of Hill House, our home for most of the next hour and fifty-two minutes. There’s a voiceover talking about the house and it’s dark history. If you don’t like voiceovers this may be a trial for you – between this and Eleanor’s internal thoughts, we’ll be getting a lot of it. The images of the house, played by Ettington Park – a former country house in Warwickshire, England – are all at an angle, the details enhanced by filming in infrared. It doesn’t look quite right. Some of the actors were frightened of the location without any special effects required. It’s a hotel now, so you could stay in Hill House yourself, if you wanted to. (No thanks.)
We then meet the narrator, Dr. John Markaway (Richard Johnson), as he talks with the owners of the house, hoping to convince them to let him investigate it. He’s planning on including assistants who have had experience with the supernatural. (I have seen this movie a few times, but this was the first time I realized that Johnson had also appeared in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979), though he’s more hirsute and sweaty in that film.)
The owners quickly acquiesce, and then we’re introduced to Eleanor (Julie Harris), a meek and nervous woman, living with her sister after the death of her invalid mother – whom she had long taken care of. Eleanor is a dichotomy – she’s both fragile and fiery, capable of decisive and bold actions (like taking a car that she only partially owns), but is also tormented by indecision, guilt and fear. Much of her experience is internal, which is why Wise went with the voiceover for her thoughts. We need that, because Eleonor’s surface is like that of a deep, dark pond – revealing little of what lies below.
Eleanor will become the focus of the film, and of Hill House. When she first sees it, driving her half-stolen car down the long, twisting drive, she says “It’s watching me!” And Wise makes sure to show us the house, windows blank and somehow staring, as if it is indeed watching her.
After an initial introduction to the baroque interior of the house and the obligatory odd housekeeper – the almost arch Mrs. Dudley (Rosalie Crutchley) – the rest of our intrepid supernatural explorers arrive. In addition to Dr. Markaway, there’s the son of the owner, Luke (a very young Russ Tamblyn), who is more interested in the value of the house and the objects in it than any of that supernatural jazz, and Theo (Claire Bloom), the stylish and modern psychic. Friction in the group is evident, with Markaway aggravated by Theo’s mercenary attitude, Eleanor obviously attracted to the debonair (and married) doctor, and Theo (as straightforward a lesbian as 1963 would allow on screen) annoyed by the same attraction.
While interpersonal conflicts will play a role in the events that follow, it’s Hill House itself that injects the most dramatic moments. On the first night both Eleanor and Theo are tormented by a presence pounding on their doors and something trying to turn the doorknobs. The men hear nothing, though they’re distracted by a phantom dog (a classic in supernatural literature). Then, the next day, they find the words “Eleanor help Eleanor come home” written on the wall of a hallway.
There’s a kind of dance going on, both figuratively and – in one scene – literally, between Eleanor and the house. She’s both fascinated and terrified of it. For once in her life, she feels like she’s the center of attention. That this appears to be the attention of a fractured, monstrous piece of architecture is almost beside the point. The house is full of mirrors and faces, all of them seeming to stare at her. It’s intoxicating for woman whose life has been one of devotion to (and resentment of) another. Her own fascination with the house is so great that you start to wonder – is the house haunting Eleanor, or is she haunting the house?
The house, in the form of the director, messes with us, the audience, as well. The sounds are too loud, the angles are all wrong, the camera can’t seem to settle – it’s always either in motion or tilted. The house is impossible to track, internally. The film plays with the screen entrance/exit expectation. Movies (and comic books, for that matter) are set up so that if someone exits to the right of the screen they enter the next room from the left. It sets up continuity of movement and helps to orient the viewer as to where people are coming from/going to. Not in this movie. Good luck figuring out where rooms are in relation to each other. The viewer is just as lost as the characters.
I found myself wondering if Sam Raimi had seen this film before directing the Evil Dead films. The times in which the house “attacks” are very reminiscent of scenes in Raimi’s movies, with Dutch angles amplified by crash zooms and shockingly loud sound effects. This is probably the only time I’ve thought of The Haunting and Evil Dead at the same time.
There’s also a subtle and almost self-deprecating sense of humor to the film that I don’t think I noticed in my previous viewings. The way Mrs. Dudley repeats her ‘ominous’ patter for both Eleanor and Theo (and the way she almost has to shout it over the women talking past her). Luke’s scheming to cut demonic pictures out of a book and send them as holiday postcards.
Eventually everything comes to a head when Mrs. Markaway (played by Ms. Moneypenny herself, Lois Maxwell) arrives. Overcome with jealousy and fear of abandonment by both Dr. Markaway and the house, Eleanor has something like a mental breakdown, leading Markaway to call the whole thing off and send her home.
But Eleanor and Hill House aren’t done with each other.
For my own part, I believe it’s the house that comes to invade and haunt Eleanor. That a house could have that level of impact, that a dwelling could be so twisted and malevolent as to break a person, is a scary idea. I’m not necessarily talking about ghosts; I mean sometimes it seems like even the architecture of a place can feel oppressive. To me, anyway. (I know when my wife and I were looking for a house there were a few that just felt… bad. Sick inside. Nice enough houses – well cared for and not falling down or anything – just not right.)
The Bottom Line
The Haunting is one of the best haunted house movies of all time, if not THE best. The plot is familiar now from dozens of similar setups – parapsychologist investigates sinister house, brings sensitives along, bad stuff happens. Very few, if any of them, have succeeded on the level that The Haunting does. It’s psychologically horrifying in a way that the disappointing remake could never hope to match. Regardless of your interpretation of events – is it all in Eleanor’s head? Does she cause the events? Or is the house truly haunted? – it’s a tragedy. One you can’t look away from.
