rbadac (July 27, 1999)[rbadac is responding to unhappy reviews from the thread: The Haunting (new movie).](snip of expected review)
I KNEW this would suck. Soon as I saw the still of the bug legs coming out of the headboard, I went, 'Oh, brother, here we go again...' Thanks, Randy ! I'm saving my dough.
rbadac, going home to watch the original, which a generous friend taped off a CD in letterbox format...yeah !!
oOo
Chris Bolton (July 26, 1999)
Nope, I'm not gonna correct you, I'm not even going to try to draw a distinction between CD and DVD, I'm just going to let it lie. However...As scary as Robert Wise's original is (and I saw it before I read the book), does anyone else get really and truly annoyed by Eleanor? Her nattering insecurities didn't bother me so much in the book, perhaps because it was woven into the narrative -- so maybe it was Julie Harris's performance, but by the end I really and truly just wanted her to shut the hell up!
And speaking of the ending... did anyone else find the climax (virtually identical) in both the original film and the novel to be extremely abrupt and sort of arbitrary, not to mention unsatisfying? Just wondering.
Chris A. Bolton
oOo
rbadac (July 28, 1999)
Chris Bolton wrote:
> Nope, I'm not gonna correct you, I'm not even going to try to draw a
> distinction between CD and DVD, I'm just going to let it lie.Ha ha ha ! It's even worse than you thought, Chris ! What I *really* meant to say was "laser disc," the big ones packaged like vinyl LPs.
My friend taped it because he felt sorry for me. He simply couldn't stand watching me trying to play it on my record player.
The good news is, the tape came out great, and results in a review of mine to appear tomorrow of the film. If you call that good news.
rbadac
oOo
Randy Money (July 28, 1999)
> The good news is, the tape came out great, and results in a review of mine to
> appear tomorrow of the film. If you call that good news.
>
> rbadacOf the old movie? Great. I'll be happy to see what you have to say about it.
Randy
oOo
The 13th Floor (July 27, 1999)
Chris Bolton wrote:
>As scary as Robert Wise's original is (and I saw it before I read the book),
>does anyone else get really and truly annoyed by Eleanor?I don't find her annoying, just sad and pathetic.
>And speaking of the ending... did anyone else find the climax (virtually
>identical) in both the original film and the novel to be extremely abrupt
>and sort of arbitrary, not to mention unsatisfying? Just wondering.Actually, I find it ritually satisfying and logical. Eleanor belongs in the house, because she herself is sort of a ghost -- she's never really been alive.
oOo
Randy Money (July 27, 1999)
Chris Bolton wrote:
> >As scary as Robert Wise's original is (and I saw it before I read the book),
> >does anyone else get really and truly annoyed by Eleanor?Maybe a bit annoying for me, too, Chris, but I find Harris' performance amazing because it would be easy to go way overboard with such a character, and she doesn't. (Imagine Bette Davis in such a role.) Harris finds a place where I believe in Eleanor, believe that her life has been so badly restricted that her first face-to-face encounter with the outside world tips her over into insanity. No sturm und drang, just a quiet, gradual unbalancing until she falls over the edge.
> >And speaking of the ending... did anyone else find the climax (virtually
> >identical) in both the original film and the novel to be extremely abrupt
> >and sort of arbitrary, not to mention unsatisfying? Just wondering.Abrupt, yes, but not arbitrary or dissatisfying. I agree with T13F on this. Both the novel and Wise's movie were aiming at the moment when Eleanor, lonely and alone having exhausted the possibilities of connection with Luke, Theo and Dr. Montague, finally gave herself over to Hill House. But it couldn't be the house killing her directly, that wouldn't satisfy whatever is in Hill House -- or us as readers. When Eleanor dies we have to end in almost the same place we began: is the cause Hill House and its ghosts, or is the cause Eleanor and her insanity?
I would also contend that the movie and book differ significantly at the end. In the book, Mrs. Montague and her escort are unaffected, even unaware, of Hill House's malignant actions. At the end of the movie, Mrs. Montague has been moved out of the house without memory of how she got there until she saw the car. Thus the book leans toward seeing Eleanor's death as suicide, while the movie, leaning toward a supernatural explanation, makes Eleanor's death murder. (Poor Lois Maxwell, already distracted by two or three movies with Sean Connery, for holiday ends up at Hill House.)
I have a question: does Wise's movie look and feel to anyone else like some of the b&w British films of the '50s? For some reason there are parts that remind me of the feel of _The Curse of the Demon_.
Randy
(By the way, Chris, if you're interested, I have an article on _The Haunting of Hill House_ over at www.conspire.org. Look up my latest article and scroll to the bottom. The links to previous articles are there.)oOo
[Compiler note: There is also a discussion of the book on the newsgroup (thread: "Reading 'round the edges: The Haunting of Hill House", started by Randy Money) for December 1 - 19, 1998. For some reason, rbadac did not take part in it.]
rbadac (July 29, 1999)
['The Haunting': The REAL One]Spoilers galore. Just wait outside.
This is more in the way of an appreciation than a review, intended for those who have already seen THE HAUNTING (1963, directed by Robert Wise), as it contains a fairly detailed synopsis of the original film. Surely you've seen it by now, it's been 36 years. If you haven't, slink out the back door there before anyone spots you. The rest of you make some popcorn, get comfortable, turn on your inner eye, and remember...
The premise: A doctor interested in supernatural phenomena selects two women from a special list to accompany him and the young man who is heir to Hill House, in the investigation of its haunting.
The women are chosen for their familiarity with unexplained forces: Theo, ambiguously Lesbian, has PSI ability; Eleanor experienced a rain of stones on her house when she was a child. The heir, Luke Sanderson, is along for the ride, supposedly to protect the family's interests, more so to protect his own.
Scriptwriter Nelson Gidding adapted Shirley Jackson's brilliant novel THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (Viking; NY, 1959) with minor changes: the outdoor sequences were omitted to maintain a suitably claustrophobic tone, the Crain family history simplified somewhat, the doctor's name changed from 'Montague' to 'Markway,' and the potentially disastrous humor element of the doctor's wife and her experiments with 'planchette' removed in favor of a reworking of her as a skeptic and previously unsuspected obstacle to Eleanor's crush on the doctor, transferred from the book's version involving Luke Sanderson.
(roll film)
In a marvelous opening sequence, the voice of Dr. Markway relates the history of Hill House, built by the sternly Puritan Hugh Crain, and bad from the very beginning. Crain's first wife dies in a carriage accident only moments before she is to see Hill House for the first time. Hugh remarries, but his second wife dies in a mysterious fall down the stairs. The daughter, Abigail, is raised motherless, lives in the nursery until she dies in old age, neglected by a paid companion who, while fooling around with a farmhand on the veranda, does not heed Abigail's beating on the wall.
The unnamed companion inherits the house, but does not enjoy it; driven mad, she is found hanging from the landing above the spiral iron steps in the library. Hill House passes to distant relatives, the Sandersons, and thus to Dr. Markway's investigation.
The four arrive at Hill House planning to stay for a period and record any events out of the ordinary. These are not long in making themselves manifest. Doors will not stay open; the house is constructed with deliberately imperfect angles, and rooms cannot readily be found. There are cold spots, noises, feelings of oppression and scrutiny. While Dr. Markway and Luke pursue what they think is a dog outside the house, Eleanor and Theo are beset with psychic attack, in the form of an alarming pounding on the doors of the rooms, a Someone searching for them, which finally stops at the room they are in.
The next morning there is a chalked message on the wall: 'HELP ELEANOR COME HOME.' Tensions rise and accusations fly. Eleanor, while drawn to Theo, finds her mocking attitude abrasive; Theo likewise is disgusted by Eleanor's maudlin sentiment and naivete. Dr. Markway appears to Eleanor to be a knight in shining armor, Luke merely an annoyance to everyone.
Marble statuary in the house allegedly depicting St. Francis healing the lepers seems more like a grotesque family portrait of the blighted Crains-- or is it the investigators themselves? The library has a smell that Eleanor dislikes, though no one else perceives it; it is the smell of the sickroom. Eleanor tended her own mother until she finally died, and feels guilty for her death. She and Theo take a room together for safety.
Weird, unintelligible speech is heard in the night, insane laughter, a child crying. The design on the wall resembles a horrid face. Eleanor holds Theo's hand in the darkness, but when her scream awakens Theo, she is across the room, nowhere near.
A book is found; Hugh Crain made it himself for his daughter Abigail. Pompous and dire pronouncements of morality are interspersed with the most terrifying pictures Hugh could find, all for the edification of his daughter. It is a nightmarish thing to give a child.
In yet another vicious argument, Eleanor calls Theo 'nature's mistake.' Theo relishes the unexpected arrival of Dr. Markway's hitherto unknown wife, and the shattering of Eleanor's romantic illusions. Grace Markway insists on staying in the worst room in the house, and Eleanor spitefully suggests the nursery. The formerly locked door is found standing open for Grace.
The others decide to spend the night in the parlor together, but the pounding resumes. The parlor door bulges inward. Dr. Markway is prevented by Luke from going out to see to his wife, alone in the nursery, but Eleanor slips out by another door in the confusion.
Under the spell of Hill House, which calls her to become a part of it, Eleanor dances through the halls, in a reverie of memories she cannot claim. She reaches the nursery just before Dr. Markway does. It is empty. Grace has disappeared.
While the others search for her, Eleanor goes to the library and ascends the perilously ricketty spiral iron staircase. She is intercepted before she reaches the top, but does not hear the warnings of Luke, Theo, and Dr. Markway, who eventually has to climb up after her, barely saving her from a fall. Eleanor faints when a trapdoor above her opens, and a frightening face looks down upon her.
It is too much, and Dr. Markway tells Eleanor she must leave Hill House; she is disrupting the investigation with her mental imbalance, or the focus of the evil has centered around her, the reasons being moot. They are seeing her off in her car when Luke goes back for the gate key; Eleanor seizes the opportunity to drive off without him, and glimpses a white figure in the road before crashing fatally into a tree.
Julie Harris is unnerving as the fragile and disintegrating Eleanor; Claire Bloom's Theo is lithe and acerbic, yet vulnerable in her fashion; Richard Johnson is fine as the stuffy Dr. Markway. Russ Tamblyn is hopelessly miscast as Luke Sanderson, but his role is fortunately unimportant, being merely a series of wisecracks from a ne'er-do-well character.
Robert Wise was also responsible for CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944) for Val Lewton, THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951), also THE SAND PEBBLES (1966) and THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965). Underrated by those who call him overrated, he directs with his usual very capable hand, setting the protagonists against each other and the House against all in grand, delirious contretemps that maintains the suspense throughout and masks the ultimate, very un-Usherlike victory of possibly the nastiest house in literature.
rbadac
oOo
Robert Suggs (July 29, 1999)
rbadac wrote:
>This is more in the way of an appreciation than a review . . .Allow me to add my own appreciation in the form of random observations about Wise's "The Haunting" (and may I suggest we do this again with "Dead of Night"!):
1. Simply hearing that the remake is in COLOR is sufficient warning not to bother with the new one. Wise's "Haunting" is proof positive that black-and-white is the ultimate medium for cinematizing the creeps.
2. Robert Wise hit his peak in a distinguished career with this film; Julie Harris did the same in an example of ideal casting. Script adaptation should not be overlooked, and cinematography is equally flawless.
3. Frightening moments, in order of impact: a. When the pounding on the doors suddenly halts after the scream, and Eleanor says, "It wanted to know which room we're in." b. The face through the trap-door--in that brief second before you identify it. As a kid I had nightmares from this one. c. Weird nighttime laughter. d. Finding the message on the wall. e. The figure running across the road. . . .And yet the film is ultimately much scarier than the sum of its parts. The unrelenting dark mood stays with you long after the closing credits.
4. Richard Matheson's pulpishly cruder riff on this story ("Hell House") is not without its merits, but in general he should have been ashamed of how closely he imitated it.
5. The greatest line in all ghost fiction belongs to Shirley Jackson and it bookends her narrative: "Whatever walks there, walks alone."
6. The film satisfyingly matches the novel's perfect tightrope-walk between supernatural and psychological haunting. In the end we're equally convinced that it's both an evil house and a disturbed woman; we have no idea where one ends and the other begins; and we perceive a strange, predestined marriage between the sad bride and her long- waited "groom." What is it she likes to say? "Journeys end in lovers meeting"? Manse and romance. Eleanor's journey's end offers us no reassurance or closure. Where is Eleanor now? Is it really a journey's end? Has she been absorbed by the evil of the abode?
7. Jackson's most terrifying point is that what was an unspeakable nightmare for three more ordinary people was for Eleanor a dream worth fighting for, for it was the only adventure in her pathetic life. On the fantasy level, the haunting was the house's way of calling to a kindred spirit. On the psychological level, the true nightmare is ultimately not the most disordered of houses, but the most disordered of minds. Something walks alone within Eleanor, to put it another way, that is more terrifying than Hugh Crain's chamber of horrors.
When it comes to haunted house flicks, I don't really see how this one can ever be matched. The culture of special effects won't even let us try.
Rob
oOo
rbadac (July 30, 1999)
Robert Suggs wrote:
> Allow me to add my own appreciation in the form of random observations
> about Wise's "The Haunting"...(you saw 'em)
Yeah, what he said !!
Damn, Rob, that was pretty good, even for YOU.
rbadac, passing the popcorn. No, the bag, the bag ! No, wait, that won't work either... aww, nuts...
ooOoo