Via stalwart commentor Schroedinger’s Cat, your Halloween movie review from Mnemosyne, aka The Insufferable Movie Snob:
Every fan of The Haunting has at least one story about seeing it, and often more than one. Here’s one of mine:
Years ago, G (my now husband) and I went to see it on a triple bill at an old movie palace in downtown Los Angeles. The college kids sitting behind us mocked it at first: old-fashioned, black-and-white, Julie Harris’s oddball whispered voiceovers.
But then, as the film went on, they got quieter and quieter. Finally, about half an hour in, one of them turned to the other and whispered, “Is it just me, or is this movie kind of getting to you?” And then they shut up for the rest of the film.
That’s the kind of horror movie The Haunting is. It’s not a slam-bang special effects spectacle, or a gross-out endurance test. It sneaks up behind you and lays a cold hand on your neck, whispering to you, asking if you’re sure you know what that noise in the dark was that you just heard.
A quick technical note before we begin: when you see the film, make sure you get a letterboxed copy and not one of the older pan-and-scans. You will literally miss out on half the movie if you don’t get the full widescreen version.
Director Robert Wise got his start working for Val Lewton‘s B-movie unit at RKO in the 1940s, where Lewton produced (and usually wrote) subtle horror films that are still classics today: Cat People. I Walked With a Zombie. The Seventh Victim. One of my favorites is Wise’s third film as a director, The Body Snatcher, with Boris Karloff as an absolutely chilling remorseless killer. Wise’s films all show a great attention to sound, so it’s not surprising that he’s best known today for his two blockbuster musicals, West Side Story and The Sound of Music.
But Wise started as a horror guy with Lewton and, like his former colleague Jacques Tourneur, Wise decided to make a “Lewtonesque” horror film where the horror comes not from what the characters see, but from what they hear. In fact, you never see a single ghost in The Haunting. You hear them, the characters touch them, you see the physical effects of what they can do, but you never see one.
Except… it always seems like you’re about to see one just out of the corner of your eye, but the wandering camera never quite turns in the right direction. Watching it again, I noticed how the mirrors in the rooms are carefully placed so you can often see the actors in them, but only a part of them — their backs, their hands, their shoulders. Seeing the movement in the mirror distracts the viewer, drawing your attention (conscious or unconscious), and making you wonder if you’re finally going to see something. But you never do. I also noticed that the numerous potted palm trees placed in many of the rooms constantly sway in a slight breeze, again drawing the viewer’s attention and making us wonder just what is causing that motion.
As with most ghost stories, the outline of the plot doesn’t sound like much. The film opens with a sequence narrated by a man we will soon discover is Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson), an anthropologist and psychic researcher who is trying to convince the current owner of Hill House to allow him to bring a team in to do experiments. He narrates the sequence of events at Hill House that gained it its awful reputation, barely able to conceal his glee at the possibility of being able to investigate a real haunted house. The director shows us three mysterious deaths at Hill House: a woman’s carriage crashing in the driveway, a woman falling down the stairs, a woman hanging herself in the library…
For the rest of Mnemosyne’s review, click over to SC’s blog…
Mary G
I’ve boycotted horror movies since getting freaked out by “The Exorcist,” but I enjoyed the review, because you’re such an entertaining writer.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Sorry, but reality is too scary to subject myself to more scary – I’ve been binge watching Project Runway, football, cooking shows and DIY. Also, anyone who looking for something to binge watch with a HUGE payoff, NEEDS to watch Rectify. The first 3 seasons are on Netflix, and S4 just started. There aren’t enough words to describe the deeply felt, many layered, spiritually profound accomplishment that is this show.
Lizzy L
This and Nosferatu were my favorite horror movies for years. In the modern canon, I like The Shining. Otherwise, I pretty much don’t like horror movies.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m liking Matt Yglesias these days
MazeDancer
PSA: While Mnemosyne is always deeply valued for her expertise and so many other things, RED ALERT for people who know they don’t really do well with horror films but might be tempted by the BJ group fun. Don’t watch it.
Took me many, many years to get over it. Many years. Many. Not that I had watched many before, but was last horror film I ever watched. Ever. Actually, the last even vaguely scary thing I ever watched. It was that impactful. So it taught me something in that sense.
Unless you know you enjoy the genre, don’t watch it. Seriously.
And, yes, I recognize if you like horror, this alert makes you want to own a copy. Or will make you disappointed if you don’t have to sleep with the lights on every night for a month. But just trying to give a heads up to the sensitive.
Brachiator
The Haunting still counts as one of my favorite films. When I saw it as a kid it scared the bejeebus out of me (my mother let me read or watch just about anything. Looking back (and a quick unfinished research), I appreciate the character dynamics, that the movie does not feel like characters simply being picked off one by one by malevolent forces.
I did not understand all the undertones of the relationship of the characters played by Claire Bloom and Julie Harris, but I liked that it was atypical and that so much focuses on the women.
And the house is a character within itself, whose significance expands as the narrative unfolds. I normally like over the top visuals, but the restraint and the excellent deployment of sound is still the standout achievement of this film. I think that Wise may have learned much from his time with Orson Welles, and unlike the 1930s Dracula or Frankenstein, there’s nothing about the film that feels stage bound. The imagination that conceived the film is entirely rooted in cinema.
jacy
I’m an ultimate horror movie fan. This terrified me as a kid, and is still one of the scariest movies of all time. For a funhouse version of the same type of story, The Legend of Hell House is very good also. And you should definitely read the books, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and Hell House by Richard Matheson.
RSA
Great review. I came to The Haunting after having read Shirley Jackson’s novel (The Haunting of Hill House) several times, but the movie still had a great impact.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Also, regarding “hauntings”. I believe in spirits. There was a story on NPR this weekend – one of their storytelling shows – about a young Irish man who is a child advocate, who was asked to work with the family of a young boy who was isolated socially (they lived on the edge of a primeval forest on the westernmost point of Ireland) and having difficulties with him. The story the young man told about his experiences with the live boy and the spirit of a young boy who was “from the woods” and who physcally manifested himself in this family’s life and was witnessed by the child advocate and the local school principal, confirmed my belief that we don’t understand, and can’t understand, the non-binary nature of death and life.
Hillary Rettig
If I saw that, there wouldn’t be enough Ambien in the world to get me back to sleep.
coozledad
@Brachiator:In addition to being scary as shit, one of the movie’s succesful arcs was lesbian vampire camp. Claire Bloom and Julie Harris made that movie work.
Brachiator
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:I agree that there’s a lot we don’t understand, but the idea that there is much we cannot understand is nonsense, and certainly does not suggest that we should believe in spirits.
Along these lines, an increase in the interest in spiritualism came out of the horrible losses of the First World War. Mediums and séances were popping out all over the place. Conan Doyle was a believer, and respectable magazines such as The Atlantic and Scientific American provided coverage. Any number of books and articles about the famous spiritualists such Mina Crandon, who was exposed as a fraud by Houdini, are fun and useful reads.
And for movie fun, also check out A Chinese Ghost Story.
Steeplejack (phone)
DVR Alert!
TCM will be showing The Haunting at 6:00 p.m. EDT tomorrow (Monday). And it will be available on TCM’s streaming service for the next week or two.
coozledad
@Brachiator: The South is full of ghosts, and they keep crawling out of the woods and fields not only because people believe in the circumstances necessary for ghosts, but because we’re haunted by a kind of living dead.
Horror wore thin for me after I’d attended family dinners into my young adulthood, and finally grasped what crimes these idiots were capable of committing,
The Haunting is a splendid movie. Horror, at my age, is something else altogether. The looming specter of loss.
Pogonip
I will have to watch The Haunting again. Haven’t watched it in years.
Those who read the book: Theo and Eleanor are walking down a path. Colors reverse so everything looks like a negative, but for some reason they don’t turn back. The path suddenly ends in a cheerful picnic scene. NOW Theo suddenly screams in terror and yells “Run!”
So what finally scared her? Was it the picnic, and, if so, why? I have never understood that scene.
Pogonip
@jacy: I didn’t like Hell House at all. One of Matheson’s rare misfires. The characters did so much hissing it should have been called “Reptile House.” Didn’t see the movie.
Pogonip
@coozledad: Good gracious, is the boarding-house reach THAT scary??
Pogonip
@Brachiator: Wasn’t she Margery the Medium?
Most mediums seem to be frauds. On the other hand, I’ve seen one ghost myself. Shrug.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Brachiator:
We the living exist in a tiny part of the space time and who knows what else spectrum. We have no idea of what exists outside of our ability to sense it or measure it. You’re the one being arrogant in denying that we can’t understand it. Not being able to understand it defines being alive- trapped in a biochemical meat suit – in this time and place in the universe. Until humans actually are able to create life in a lab – sentient life, that is self-aware – I don’t think we can dismiss any possibility because humans are finite and limited by their physicality, by definition. Unless you’re a lama or other spiritual adept, who have things to teach us if we’d listen.
coozledad
@Pogonip: My grandaddy would spear your hand with a fork for the last jiffy steak. And that’s not even getting in to his Klan associations.
coozledad
I got a couple of ghost stories, but they’re both related to the living person’s available blood flow to the brain. The best one is my friend’s grandmother, who volunteered to help me learn how to use a sphygmomanometer in the field (her systolic pressure was 200).
She complained about her dead husband always visiting her, and asking her to hurry up. She told him to fuck off.
debit
@Pogonip: Theo never says what she saw so we are left to wonder forever.
I just re-read The Haunting of Hill House this weekend and am a little ashamed of my younger self for skimming it. Truly, it’s one of the best written novels I’ve ever read.
Brachiator
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
OK. Call me arrogant. I don’t mind. I’ve always preferred it to the pointless and thoroughly phony faux humility of the “we know so little, we must bow down and supplicate ourselves to the gods of eternal and perpetual ignorance.”
It is obviously a matter of personal philosophy, but I admire those who seek to understand and expand human knowledge, admitting that we will stumble and make huge mistakes along the way. But that to me is preferable to sitting in the darkness of your own timid ignorance, patting yourself on the back because you are so humble.
But that’s just me. As always, your mileage may vary.
Brachiator
@Pogonip:
Yep.
All mediums are frauds. Some are well done.
Pogonip
@debit: Well, even though I have quite a queue, I’ll re-resd it and see if I can figure out that one scene. She does say what, or at least part of ehat, she saw. She says something like “There was a picnic! And a puppy’l. And then breaks down.
How’s Walter?
TooManyJens
Here is the relevant passage from the novel:
The first thing that comes to mind is that there’s something horrific about the mother. Possibly she’s the mother who was originally supposed to come live in Hill House but died on the way, and Theodora sees her horribly mangled from her accident.
Pogonip
@TooManyJens: That’s a better guess than mine! (My guess was “? Huh? What on earth-/?”
debit
@Pogonip: Walter is a bell hung in my heart that rings with every beat. Less poetically: Walter is fine and i love him very much.
Mnemosyne
@MazeDancer:
Yes, there’s a reason I chose to use an image of the poster that has a big “NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN” tag on it. It may be rated “G,” but it’s definitely the hard stuff.
If you want to see something a little spooky that won’t give you nightmares, watch Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein instead. It’s a fun monster movie that also includes some good comedy.
Mnemosyne
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
@Brachiator:
My personal theory (and I am not a scientist) is that, like many human abilities, only a small number of people can see ghosts/spirits/whatever, and a lot more people like to pretend they can (for fun and profit) than actually can. It’s as though 95 percent of humans were red/green colorblind and we had 5 percent of the population trying to tell us that they could see colors beyond what everyone else could see.
A movie along those lines is the very excellent Stir of Echoes (also based on a Matheson book), where Kevin Bacon plays a new homeowner who can feel a ghost in his new house, but everyone else thinks he’s crazy. This shouldn’t be too spoilery, but there’s a great scene where Bacon’s wife is getting ready to take a bath with the ghost lurking nearby, but she can’t see or feel the ghost, so the only effect the ghost can have is turning her bathwater cold right when she’s about to get in.
jacy
@Mnemosyne:
Oh my goodness, Stir of Echoes is a fine movie. A very good ghost story. The ending is terrific.
Mnemosyne
@jacy:
It didn’t get a lot of attention at the time because it came out at the same time as The Sixth Sense and a lot of people were like, Eh, who needs to see two movies about kids who can see ghosts? (which is a subplot of Stir of Echoes). It’s a good movie, though, and only slightly disconcerting to see two actresses who would later be best known for their roles on “The Gilmore Girls” and “House” playing sisters.