The Haunting
by Robert Wise
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DVD details
Actor: Claire Bloom, Fay Compton, Julie Harris, Richard Johnson, Russ TamblynDirector: Robert Wise
Brand: Warner Brothers
Cinematographer: Davis Boulton
Producer: Robert Wise
Editor: Ernest Walter
Producer: Denis Johnson
Writer: Nelson Gidding
Writer: Shirley Jackson
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 112 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-08-05
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of The Haunting
DVD Review: A Haunting Thriller
Summary: 4 Stars
Ok, this is a great edge of your seat, your imagination runs wild type of haunted house movie. This movie lets you take the plot where you would like it to go, although the film is horror genre, it is a great psychological thriller, much like the film Pyscho. The thrills are not the actual ghost, spooks, or ghouls which reside in the house, rather the atmpsohere the actors create playing their parts. The acting is solid and the direction is second to none with some big name stars of the time. The characters portrayed are of differnent life experiences and are bought together to prove the existance of the supernatural and throughout the movie you will see how the director brings them all together and interweaves them to make the movie very entertaining, suspensful and at times scary. Although not digitally remastered, the quality of the film is very good with only minor imperfections noted. DVD Review: The Best Haunted House Film Ever
Summary: 5 Stars
All the great things about this movie have been pointed out by those far more articulate than I. The fact that it was shot in black and white is one of the movies' most important assets. The musical score is brilliant - subtle and creepy like no other horror film. By far the best aspect is that none of the ghosts are seen, yet they - or whatever the presence is - are scarier than the ghosts of any other movie I've ever seen. Watching Luke's sneer (Russ Tamblyn) get smudged from his face is priceless. Eleanor's breakdown (Julie Harris) is inevitable from the first scene, but you follow along with morbid fascination. Theodore's (Claire Bloom) psychic abilities are overwhelmed, and her early `60s beatnik hipster fa?ade is broken. Poor, brilliant Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson), he's onto the real thing, but his evidence will never be accepted.
I watch it at least once a year - and am always set tingling.
DVD Review: THE GODFATHER OF HAUNTED HOUSE MOVIES
Summary: 5 Stars
THE INNOCENTS, and possibly THE OTHERS are the only movies I can think of that come close to the psychological chills that permeate the original, classic version of THE HAUNTING. The overblown remake doesn't come close. Wise makes such superb use of the camera, music, and dialogue that you can almost feel the house breathing. The acting is marvelous, and the mounting tension is palpable. Very tasty stuff.DVD Review: Just not my taste, I guess.
Summary: 1 Stars
I read a lot of a reviews of this movie, and I read a lot of comments from people jumping on the reviewers, but everyone should be allowed to have their own opinion. I must state at the outset that my favorite genre of movies is classics. I'm 27, and I was brought up to really love and appreciate "old" movies (my personal favorites fall between the 1930s-1950s, but I appreciate that there are really good ones made both before and after that time frame). And I really love suspenseful and "scary" classics, because I'm a true believer that what you don't see is usually scarier than what you do. One of my favorite movies of all time is The Uninvited (1944). Of course, there is a lot of what you don't see, but the terrifying ghost that you DO, and I absolutely love everything about it. I also adore House on Haunted Hill and most everything by Hitchcock.
All that being said, I recently watched The Haunting in its entirety on TCM, and I just failed to see what so many five-star reviewers saw in it. That's really all there is to it. So much can be done without special effects to thrill and chill a viewer, but I just found nothing scary about it. I guess I would have liked a little more explanation in the film, other than that the house was just "evil." I love some movies that others think are pretty dull or silly myself, so that's all I will say, and I think it's great that there are so many who love it and give it a good following. I was disappointed, as so many people love it so much. Maybe that's why I was disappointed, maybe my expectations were just a little too high.
DVD Review: No Slashers, Just the Unknown Comin' to Git Ya
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the original movie and I believe it is far creepier than the newer version. People are invited to an old mansion, reputed to be haunted, for an experiment. Most of the people are sophisticated, pragmatic, intrigued. But one woman (Julie Harris)has escaped to the house from her antagonistic family, her wretched life. She becomes a focus for whatever haunts the house. As she appears more and more emotionally vulnerable, the haunting intensifies.
Part of what makes this work so well, is the restraint shown. There are no visible ghosts, just sounds. The camera focuses on a pattern on the wall and suddenly it seems entirely sinister. The movie uses your imagination. You keep wondering "What is going on?" Then the doors start to bow inward. There's definitely something there. The ending makes me shudder.
I won't go there -- You'll have to watch it.
To get really creeped out for Halloween, try this with the BBC production of "The Woman in Black" and the old version of the "Wicker Man." Chills be yours!
Description of The Haunting
A group is introduced to the supernatural through a 90-year old New England haunted house. Be prepared for hair-raising results in this classic horror film!Certain to remain one of the greatest haunted-house movies ever made, Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963) is antithetical to all the gory horror films of subsequent decades, because its considerable frights remain implicitly rooted in the viewer's sensitivity to abject fear. A classic spook-fest based on Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House (which also inspired the 1999 remake directed by Jan de Bont), the film begins with a prologue that concisely establishes the dark history of Hill House, a massive New England mansion (actually filmed in England) that will play host to four daring guests determined to investigate--and hopefully debunk--the legacy of death and ghostly possession that has given the mansion its terrifying reputation.
Consumed by guilt and grief over her mother's recent death and driven to adventure by her belief in the supernatural, Eleanor Vance (Julie Harris) is the most unstable--and therefore the most vulnerable--visitor to Hill House. She's invited there by anthropologist Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson), along with the bohemian lesbian Theodora (Claire Bloom), who has acute extra-sensory abilities, and glib playboy Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn, from Wise's West Side Story), who will gladly inherit Hill House if it proves to be hospitable. Of course, the shadowy mansion is anything but welcoming to its unwanted intruders. Strange noises, from muffled wails to deafening pounding, set the stage for even scarier occurrences, including a door that appears to breathe (with a slowly turning doorknob that's almost unbearably suspenseful), unexplained writing on walls, and a delicate spiral staircase that seems to have a life of its own.
The genius of The Haunting lies in the restraint of Wise and screenwriter Nelson Gidding, who elicit almost all of the film's mounting terror from the psychology of its characters--particularly Eleanor, whose grip on sanity grows increasingly tenuous. The presence of lurking spirits relies heavily on the power of suggestion (likewise the cautious handling of Theodora's attraction to Eleanor) and the film's use of sound is more terrifying than anything Wise could have shown with his camera. Like Jack Clayton's 1961 chiller, The Innocents, The Haunting knows the value of planting the seeds of terror in the mind, as opposed to letting them blossom graphically on the screen. What you don't see is infinitely more frightening than what you do, and with nary a severed head or bloody corpse in sight, The Haunting is guaranteed to chill you to the bone. --Jeff Shannon
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