- Awards
- 21
Connie Stevens, Dean Jones and Cesar Romero in TWO ON A GUILLOTINE (1965) produced and directed by William ("Cannon") Conrad.
Last edited:
Haunted house movies
- Thread starter Snarky Oracle!
- Start date
- Copy link Copy link
- Awards
- 7
i started to put on House on Haunted Hill (1959) masterpiece but it's one of those things where you put it on and just don't feel like watching it
- Awards
- 21
Maybe because it's not really a masterpiece.
- Awards
- 7
it's one of my favorite films of all time and honestly i even liked the remake that came out in (1999) that surprised me to be honest when i first saw it, the worse William Castle film i've ever seen is Macabre (1958 ) WOW was that one awful
- Awards
- 21
HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959) or no hauntings at all??
Last edited by a moderator:
- Awards
- 21
THE HAUNTING (1963) colorized! 
Last edited by a moderator:
- Awards
- 21
THE CHANGELING (1979)
- Awards
- 21
THE INNOCENTS (1961) doesn't start until about 14:30 in:
- Awards
- 8
I remember that one. I believe it slightly predated César Romero's casting as the Joker
Note: Cesar Romero is still my favorite Joker
Not full feature movies, but the # Stooges did several Haunted House theme shows that I find to be better than most Haunted House movies
- Awards
- 21
Speaking of haunted, I had a spooky experience about three or four years ago, having just watched TWO ON A GUILLOTINE on Youtube. After it ended, I got offline and turned off my computer. I went to bed, laying face down with my head at the foot of the bed due to my suffering from sciatica for months and months.
An hour or so into my sleep, I was awakened by a middle-aged woman with a husky voice screaming, "Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!!"
Creeped out to say the least, I wandered into the den where my computer was (and is) located, and found it lit up -- and it was playing the scene from the witching hour of TWO ON A GUILLOTINE (at 1: 06: 25 below) where Virginia Gregg is yelling at Dean Jones.
On rare occasion, I've had my computer pop back on due to perhaps a surge or something, but never like this: where a site I was previously on came up with it, and it started playing a movie I'd been watching, and went precisely to such a macabre scene.
I still don't know how it happened, but I saw it as a message from the great beyond.
An old TV print, commercials included:
^^
It looks like Bill Conrad makes a Hitchcockian cameo at about 58:51...
Last edited:
- Awards
- 21
I'm watching tonight ABBOTT AND CONSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948), and despite being a comedy, it's a bit spookier than most horror films. And, yes, it takes place in a house.
- Awards
- 21
I've been watching HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS and NIGHT OF DARK SHADOWS this afternoon, two theatrical films inspired, of course, by the iconic daytime soap and released just before (and just after) DARK SHADOWS left the small screen.
Their narrative merits aside (I'd like at least one scene inside the soap's foyer set, so the viewer could recognize something from the Collinwood TV interiors) and regardless whether or not either movie qualifies as "haunted house" films -- and they should! -- I just love the autumnal, deeply melancholic vibe, photographically and in terms of production design, that was commonplace on the cusp of the '60s/'70s, petering out of use by, say, 1974.
It's sooooooooooo heart-brokenly atmospheric, and I really missed it when this cinematic approach fell out of fashion by the middle of the '70s (especially on the small screen). In the wake of the volatile '60s, the colour neo-noir style from the start of the following decade conveyed an intense sense of loss, decay and forlorn passage I rather adored.
Imagine if they'd been able to shoot the cheapy, rushed daytime version in this manner.
To me, it almost seemed like the height of cinema. (I would have liked to have seen this gothic neo-noir style used here-and-there in episodes of DYNASTY, certainly FALCON CREST, and even the latter seasons of DALLAS -- which actually did the reverse; but this cinematic high-stylization was probably just too extreme for anything from the 1980s to even be thought of, much less executed. And certainly not on TV at the time).
Hand-held cameras (without stabilizers), dolly shots, deep shadows and no flat lighting, pan-and-blur (or unblur-and-pan), echoes in the audio. It's just so organic and moody and focusing!
Their narrative merits aside (I'd like at least one scene inside the soap's foyer set, so the viewer could recognize something from the Collinwood TV interiors) and regardless whether or not either movie qualifies as "haunted house" films -- and they should! -- I just love the autumnal, deeply melancholic vibe, photographically and in terms of production design, that was commonplace on the cusp of the '60s/'70s, petering out of use by, say, 1974.
It's sooooooooooo heart-brokenly atmospheric, and I really missed it when this cinematic approach fell out of fashion by the middle of the '70s (especially on the small screen). In the wake of the volatile '60s, the colour neo-noir style from the start of the following decade conveyed an intense sense of loss, decay and forlorn passage I rather adored.
Imagine if they'd been able to shoot the cheapy, rushed daytime version in this manner.
To me, it almost seemed like the height of cinema. (I would have liked to have seen this gothic neo-noir style used here-and-there in episodes of DYNASTY, certainly FALCON CREST, and even the latter seasons of DALLAS -- which actually did the reverse; but this cinematic high-stylization was probably just too extreme for anything from the 1980s to even be thought of, much less executed. And certainly not on TV at the time).
Hand-held cameras (without stabilizers), dolly shots, deep shadows and no flat lighting, pan-and-blur (or unblur-and-pan), echoes in the audio. It's just so organic and moody and focusing!
Last edited:
- Awards
- 27
I think that the dvd of THE UNINVITED will be delivered this week. Never seen it, it was never on youtube, but I've read good things about it.
- Awards
- 21
But you hated THE HAUNTING (1963). Which is why I started plagiarizing and appropriating intellectual property from you immediately.
- Awards
- 21
I'm watching an old British horror film with Stephanie Beacham (and a few others, like Peter Cushing) inartfully titled ...AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS (1973) in which Beacham marries into a wealthy family and immediately starts having bizarre hallucinations, soon realizing that the estate is cursed.
Well, duh.
At 25, gorgeous Stephanie Beacham is already full-on Sable Colby. So far, there's not much of a script, the dialogue minimal, and it's all a bunch of sight-shocks, shrieks and unsubtle visual tricks. But the cast is good, and the movie looks great -- proving again my oft-made point that that shrouded, moody, deeply atmospheric, color-noir style of direction and camerawork from the early-'70s are marvelously focusing, even when the plot is parchment-thin.
I never lost my taste for it. But that style soon went out of vogue in the movie business, it never really came back.
Directed by Roy Ward Baker, who thought the title was silly (the alternative titled is, reportedly, BRIDE OF FENGRIFFEN).
Well, duh.
At 25, gorgeous Stephanie Beacham is already full-on Sable Colby. So far, there's not much of a script, the dialogue minimal, and it's all a bunch of sight-shocks, shrieks and unsubtle visual tricks. But the cast is good, and the movie looks great -- proving again my oft-made point that that shrouded, moody, deeply atmospheric, color-noir style of direction and camerawork from the early-'70s are marvelously focusing, even when the plot is parchment-thin.
I never lost my taste for it. But that style soon went out of vogue in the movie business, it never really came back.
Directed by Roy Ward Baker, who thought the title was silly (the alternative titled is, reportedly, BRIDE OF FENGRIFFEN).
Last edited:
- Awards
- 27
Starting with the good part: everything that happens in the story matters, it doesn't waste the viewer's time with inconsequential dream sequences or "cat jump scares".
And then there's the rest of the film.
While I wouldn't call it a comedy (it's never funny anyway), its clean-cut "Sunday matinee" frivolity is impossible to ignore.
Initially I hoped that it was meant to lull me into a false sense of cosiness which would then make the eerie "haunted" part all the more surprising and effective.
But, nope.
The characters are boring and they have no idea if it should be taken seriously or not. It swings between hard-nosed rationalism and fully embracing the impossible, and always with that comical undertone.
It's more like the episode of a whimsical murder mystery TV series, sort of what Hart To Hart was to crime stories.
The only entertaining character is the dubious Dr. Holloway who almost channels Rebecca's Mrs. Danvers.
And is Dr. Julia Hoffman based on Dr. Holloway?
Because, oh yes, The Uninvited is very much that bloody "Josette Collins" storyline from the famous vampire soap.
The reveal of what-really-happened is interesting enough - except that it diminishes Dr. Holloway to a mere witness - but why not showing it instead of summing it up in three sentences?
It's amazing that this long hard slog felt so rushed in its final moments.
- Awards
- 21
TWO ON A GUILLOTINE (1964) with Connie Stevens just came across my TV without asking my permission. And it reminds me instantly of DEAD RINGER (1964) with Bette Davis, in that the opening scene of DEAD RINGER and the first post-opening credits scene in GUILLOTINE occur at a funeral in a cemetery.
What's striking is that both scenes could be from the same movie, a crisp, lushly-stark black-and-white clarity from 1964 only five seconds before black-and-white went away -- pretty much forever. It's like a funeral among funerals, just after JFK died, and moments before the culture changed irrevocably.
Not to read too much into it, naturally. But stuff resonates and there are last vestiges, and whatever.
It's a zeitgeisty thing.
They're both kind of B-movies but polished ones.
Last edited:
- Awards
- 21
Is this a haunted house movie? I thought it was a pretty good film -- but nearly ruined by a lousy music score which sounds like a composition for trailer. (Obviously not the hoodoo/voodoo music, but the incidental score).
It's so awful, the score, and so destructive to the picture, that they should re-score it, even now.
It's so awful, the score, and so destructive to the picture, that they should re-score it, even now.
- Awards
- 21
Eleanor was wrong:
Sleeping on your left side is the best position for your heart.
Sleeping on your left side is the best position for your heart.