THE HAUNTING

Director: Robert Wise
1963

The scariest ghost story ever filmed in black and white began as a 1959 novel by acclaimed author Shirley Jackson. Robert Wise, the film's director, read the novel and optioned it for MGM, and used the skills he honed from his Val Lewton days to create a good old-fashioned ghost story where the unknown is more frightening than what is known.

With a cast headed by Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn, and Rosalie Crutchley (gotta love that name!), THE HAUNTING tells the story of Eleanor Lance (Harris), a lonely woman looking for her place in the world after caring for her ailing invalid mother for eleven years.
As a result of Eleanora´s past dabbling with the supernatural, she is invited by psychic researcher and haunted house analyst Dr. Please call me John Markway (Richard Johnson) to stay at Hill House and make observations. This becomes her ticket out of a stifling existence with her sister, brother-in-law, and niece.

THE HAUNTING broke a lot of ground for motion pictures in the early 1960`s: the film begins with a wonderfully creepy montage sequence that explains the back story of Hill House; lesbianism is hinted at throughout the film and this compliments the film`s restrained style of implicitness; the film was a breakthrough for its use of the Panavision lens which yielded a much wider image and due to elements inherent in the not-yet-perfected lens it produced some distorted images; the eerie opening shot of Hill House against the night sky was shot using infra-red film. Humphrey Searle has provided a brilliant score that, sadly, has not seen the light of day as a soundtrack album. It does for this film was Hermann's score did for PSYCHO.

The film was remade in 1998 as THE HAUNTING and was released the following summer. The only reason to sit through that travesty is to watch Catherine Zeta-Jones (as Theo the lesbian!) parade around the monstrous set looking painfully beautiful.