The Haunting (1963)
This has to be up there with the best of black-and-white supernatural
films, neck-and-neck with the classic Frankenstein.
It’s based one of the all-time great novellas, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, about
researchers who study whether a notoriously haunted house has anything true to
its legends. Jackson inspired Matheson, King, and an army of other Horror
writers to write similar stories, yet hers holds up thanks to fierce
psychology. The movie focuses on Eleanor, a psychically susceptible woman
carrying misplaced guilt over the death of her mother, who was always demanded
too much of her time and stifled her growth – and who died the one time Eleanor
ignored her.
It’s a slow burn that is well worth the time you put in.
Everyone has a strong personality that the house is going to bend. The mansion
itself is gorgeous, and only feels more old-fashioned and unwelcome in 2018. It
doesn’t need cobwebs and dungeons. It has excessive signs of wealth that nobody
wants anymore, and they’re all freshly cleaned. And when we get our special
effects, they are remarkable for their time. There’s an effect where a door
pulses inward as though it’s a giant heart beating with the life of a ghostly
building, that frankly is one of the coolest practical effects I’ve ever seen.
