Recently, there's been something of a "ghost story" boom in the great, grand world of horror. More often than not, it's also been accompanied by the Blair Witch-inspired shaki cam of doom and a gimmicky tag at the beginning that attempts to convince us that everything we're watching is real. Well, once upon a time, it didn't use to be that way - back then [curmudgeonly old man], we had a script, actors, a director, a linear story, and that's the way we liked it, dammit! And to be sure, Robert Wise's 1963 film "The Haunting" is one of the very best haunted house/ghost movies of all time.You know, going through some of my past reviews, I rarely talk about directors. This is one movie that demands the director be given tons of credit - Wise himself is practically the star of this movie. Shirley Jackson's novel "The Haunting of Hill House" was a book entirely about mood - an ominous, foreboding air very difficult to pull off on film. Shooting in black-and-white and with a crew of respected but relatively unknown actors, Wise accomplished this SPLENDIDLY, shooting at odd angles, giving the camera a voyeuristic eye to its cast, and making the house into a living being. With a fraction of the special effects, Wise turns in a movie that is effectively 10,000 times as a creepy as the slick (and utterly forgettable) 1999 Jan De Bont film of the same name, which also culled from the same source material.
So now, the movie. The main character of sorts is Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson in a fantastic performance), an anthropologist who chose his profession due to the opportunity it would give him to study ghosts and the supernatural. Since Markway occupies the traditional "somewhat mad scientist" role, we soon meet his guinea pigs in this particular experiment: prototypical nice girl Eleanor Lance (Julie Harris), who also provides a steady narration for the film; bisexual Theodora (Claire Bloom, who, to use one of my favorite overused words, is ACES in the role), who has slightly more than friendly designs on Eleanor; and playboy Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn). Dr. Markway seems to give others that these people are colleagues; in reality, they're an experiment."The Haunting" was one of the first movies to truly feature the science of ghost phenomena (at least as best as the phenomena was known at the time of its release), and the film gives us plenty of happenings throughout its running time. Banging doors, voices, cold spots and the like are all given the royal theatrical treatment. For a movie damn near 50 years old, it's true that this movie won't leave you pissing yourself in terror; plenty of stuff that was terrifying to audiences back in the day are merely ho-hum to audiences of today used to the over-the-top gore and grue of Jigsaw. If you're like me, however, and like to place yourself in the situations of horror movie protagonists, you'll find plenty to like here with its slow burning build and interesting characters.
Which brings me to yet another example of something I've been harping on recently - this is definitely a movie that is superior to its source novel. Jackson's novel is full of woebegotten dialogue and has what is, in my humble opinion, a very unsatisfying conclusion. While the Nelson Gidding screenplay also has somewhat suspect spoken word at times, it's toned down and delivered in shorter bursts. The central arc that the Eleanor character goes through - both repulsed and flattered at the attention she gets from not only Theodora, but also the ghosts in the house - is played out to perfection, serving as a fascinating undercurrent to the ghost action. This dynamic, interestingly enough, wasn't a factor in the novel. Lastly, the climax that the movie builds to is INFINITELY stronger than the very weak denounment that Jackson gives us. In fact, I'll go even further - it's "Twilight Zone" worthy. Awesome, awesome stuff.
More than being a movie about spectacular ghost scenes or blood, "The Haunting" is really the classic "less is more" approach applied to the nth degree. Introduce characters, get the audience to care about them, pay it off. As such, it's a movie that MANY screenwriters and directors of today could learn from, and one that is still discussed today in horror circles as one of the very finest that the genre has ever had to offer. If you haven't already, and ESPECIALLY if you've seen the Liam Neeson/Lili Taylor/Catherine Zeta-Jones version, give this movie a watch, because it's Ghost Story 101.
