After she flees, David slips in to dispose of Frederick's body in the vat of acid, and the lights go out.Īnnabelle walks to the basement to confirm her husband is dead. Nora, seeing Frederick enter the basement with a gun in his hand, does indeed shoot him. Secretly lovers, the two of them have orchestrated the various mishaps in order to manipulate Nora into killing Frederick. David instead meets with Annabelle, who had faked her death using a hanging harness and sedatives. Lance uncovers a secret room at the end of the second-floor hall, but once he enters, the door shuts behind him, trapping him. Aroused by the ghostly sounds, David concludes that the killer is about and proposes he and Frederick split up to search the house. Nora is chased from her room into the basement by Annabelle's ghost. To survive the night, Lance and David propose that everyone stay in their rooms and shoot anyone who enters, thus the innocents will have no reason to leave their rooms and the killer must stay put or admit his guilt. He tells her to remain out of sight so that her attacker will still think she's dead. In light of Annabelle's warnings, they both suspect Frederick. Lance is confronted by Nora, who tells him an unseen assailant strangled her and left her for dead. Hearing a scream, Lance and David find Annabelle's corpse, suspended to suggest she hanged herself, but the absence of a perch immediately arouses suspicions of murder.
Having encountered further apparitions, Nora decides against staying the night but the caretakers lock the doors five minutes early, taking that option out of the guests' hands. Gathering downstairs, the guests are told the rules of the party, and each is given a. When Lance and Nora remain behind to further explore the basement, Lance is locked in an empty room and struck on the head, while Nora is confronted by a menacing ghost.Īnnabelle privately warns Lance that her husband is scheming something, and that she suspects him of murdering his second and third wives after his first wife disappeared. He gives a tour of the house, including a vat of acid in the basement which was used by a previous resident to kill his wife. Watson believes the house is genuinely haunted by the ghosts of those murdered there, including his own brother he claims to have spent one night there before and that he "was almost dead" when found the next morning. The Lorens have a tense relationship since Frederick is convinced Annabelle tried to poison him in order to acquire his wealth, which Annabelle, somewhat, evasively denies, attributing his suspicions to paranoia and jealousy. All are strangers to both the Lorens and each other, with their only commonality being their lust for money.
David Trent ( Alan Marshal) who specializes in hysteria, Nora Manning ( Carolyn Craig) who works for one of Loren's companies, and the house's owner Watson Pritchard ( Elisha Cook). The guests are test pilot Lance Schroeder ( Richard Long), newspaper columnist Ruth Bridges ( Julie Mitchum), psychiatrist Dr. But when things go bump in the night the group realizes no one is safe.Frederick Loren ( Vincent Price), an eccentric millionaire, invites five people to a party he is throwing for his fourth wife Annabelle ( Carol Ohmart) in an allegedly haunted house he has rented, promising to give each $10,000 with the stipulation that they stay the entire night in the house after the doors are locked at midnight. The strangers are promised a large amount of money if they can survive the night in the titled house on haunted hill.
#House on haunted hill vincent price movie#
The Plot : Each movie follows the same premise involving a millionaire who invites five strangers to a birthday party for his wife. So how do both hold up 60 and 20 years later, respectively? Let's dive into a dueling edition of Classically Contemporary. The 1999 remake of House on Haunted Hill boasted an impressive cast and a liberal use of late-'90s CGI. Dark Castle Entertainment was a studio initially created to solely remake Castle's films and they started with his best. Forty years later, Hollywood came calling to redo Castle's films. A throwback to the old dark house thrillers of the 1930s with a devilish performance by '50s horror icon, Vincent Price, House on Haunted Hill is the gold standard when it comes to Castle's work. In 1959 director William Castle, horror huckster and impresario, released House on Haunted Hill.
#House on haunted hill vincent price series#
(Welcome to Classically Contemporary, a series where we explore the ways in which new releases echo classic Hollywood or how classic Hollywood continues to influence modern filmmaking.)