"HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL"......INSIDE WILLIAM CASTLE'S CIRCUS TENT.....

House On Haunted Hill (1959)   Aw come on......who doesn't love William Castle, the poverty-row producer-director who turned himself into a horror movie carnival barker shlockmeister?

            Castle was the equivalent of the guys in the striped jackets and straw hats in front of the tents at the state fair........the guys who tricked you out of a dollar to step inside the tent and see the amazing half-woman half-snake.......

             Sure, once you got inside you realized it was only a gum chewing teenage girl wearing a halloween snake costume around her legs.......but somehow, knowing you'd been suckered was part of the fun.......

              Castle's film-directing expertise extended only to understanding which end of the camera to point at the actors.......but as a drum-beating, trumpet-blasting publicity hound, he had no equal. Once he stumbled into horror films, he promoted the hell out of his rickety, spitball little shockers with outrageously funny stunts........insurance policies for anyone who died of fright during the movie, skeletons floating through the theaters.....and his masterpiece gimmick, rigging the theater seats with joy buzzers to give simulated electric shocks to the audience.......

               "House On Haunted Hill" remains, 59 years later, enormously cheesy fun and a perfect example of William Castle's circus-tent filmmaking......

                 In true reel-in-the-suckers fashion, the movie promises you a haunted house with 9 murderous ghosts.......but not a single one of 'em ever shows up. Gotcha!

                 What you do get........a loopy, lumpy cross between an Agatha Christie whodunit and one of those Chamber-Of-Commerce Halloween funhouses, where people in crummy costumes wait to jump out at you and go "Boo!"

                Vincent Price stays incredibly subdued (for Price, anyway) as a tycoon who promises 5 random strangers 10 grand each if they'll spend the night locked in a famously haunted house....along with Price and his greedy, hateful fourth wife.

                For true lovers of low budget, unintentionally funny crap (like the BQ) that's all you need to know.......as lots of stuff goes bump in the night - dripping blood, fake severed heads, a basement acid bath,  walking skeletons......and an elderly housekeeper who's permanently frozen into a cheapjack fright mask.....and who rolls around on wheels.

                A ghostly singer warbles on the soundtrack and on the outside, the haunted house is a Frank Lloyd Wright mansion.......on the inside, it's decorated with whatever junk William Castle found from other movies. (Take it from us, the inside of a Frank Lloyd Wright house looks nothing like this....)

               Everyone's essential Halloween viewing schedule should throw this one in........for the corny plot, the laughs and Vincent Price.......(but for anyone who hasn't seen it, don't be surprised or ashamed if it manages to make you jump a few times.......if it does, that ghostly sound you hear must be William Castle, chuckling from his heavenly front row seat, joy buzzer in hand.....)  3 stars (***).