zalena | Vincent Price, Vincent Price

Since

frostmorn and I accidently watched William Castle's House on Haunted Hill with the deliciously creepy Vincent Price, I thought a link to Dave Kehr's DVD coverage of classic horror releases on DVD might be appropriate.

We thought we were going to be watching The Haunting, (based on Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House which is one of those movies that is more disturbing than creepy, but I will admit to getting our titles mixed-up and too easily falling under the sway of Price's mellifluous tones. However, I am not sure that, "Any male ghost would love to haunt you!" falls under the category of successful pick-up lines.

I also think it's interesting that I mentioned Magnificent Ambersons last night, picking up, I suppose, on the atmospheric lighting. This isn't a horror so much as it's a drama about the fall of a family empire. But I had never thought of it in terms of horror or haunting; this really opens up the film. In my book it's just as (if not more) interesting than Citizen Kane and Joseph Cotton's monologue on the ways automobiles will change the country is prophetic, not just from the character's time, or the movie's time, but for ours.