The
Haunting (1963, dir: Robert Wise, scp: Nelson Gidding, based on the
novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, DP: David Boulton,
cast: Julie Harris, Richard Johnson, Claire Bloom, Russ Tamblyn, Lois Maxwell,
Rosalie Crutchley)
Shirley
Jackson's 1959 novel, The
Haunting of Hill House, excels on two levels. As a horror novel
about an evil house that is "born bad." And as a psychological novel
about an emotionally needy woman who is susceptible to suggestions of the
supernatural, real or imagined. These interwoven levels yield two
plausible interpretations of events. Either Hill House is haunted,
or the psychokinetic Eleanor is unconsciously causing the unseen hauntings. Short and literate, the novel is a pleasure to read as much for its prose
as for its story.
From this
source material, Robert Wise directed the quintessential haunted house
film, a horror masterpiece so sublime that remakes risk a poor comparison
(the fate of Jan De Bont's pointless and inferior 1999
remake). Wise's The
Haunting is faithful to the novel, with minor variations in name, emphasis,
and exposition.
Nelson
Gidding's efficient script opens with Dr. Markway's narration of Hill House's
history of fatal accidents, suicide, insanity, and murder. This immediately
introduces the viewer to Hill House, a character in its own right. (Jackson had claimed to believe that houses had personalities). Dr.
Markway (Richard Johnson) is an anthropologist seeking proof of the supernatural,
and Hill House's unsavory history and reputation convince him that it's
a good place to look. For assistance, he invites others with paranormal
experience or talents to join him at Hill House.
Nell (Julie
Harris) is chosen because, during her childhood, rocks rained on her house
for three days. Dr. Markway hopes her presence will attract genuine
paranormal phenomena, although he leaves open the possibility that Nell
is psychokinetic. His other guests are Theo (Claire Bloom), an artist
with ESP gifts, and Luke (Russ Tamblyn), the playboyish heir to Hill House.
Hill House's
hauntings quickly focus on Nell, a timid and embittered woman who's sacrificed
eleven years to nursing her sick and ungrateful mother. Although
naive and unsophisticated, Nell looks older than her years. In the
novel she is 32 yet claims to be 34, perhaps to spite herself. (Julie
Harris was 38 when she did the film). Nell has long comforted herself
with the belief that "someday, something will happen to her." When,
shortly after Nell's mother dies, Dr. Markway invites Nell to Hill House, she thinks her
turn at life has finally arrived.
The old
saw that the scariest things are those suggested but left unseen, because
no writer or filmmaker can surpass the audience's imagination, is often
untrue. However, it's true enough in The
Haunting, which is a paragon of bloodless horror. (What Stephen
King calls terror rather than horror.) No ghost or
gore is ever seen. Everything is suggested by light and shadow and
sound, creating an uncanny atmosphere that frays the characters' nerves
and aggravates their interpersonal tensions.
David
Boulton's black and white photography imbues those lights and shadows with
supernatural menace, but The
Haunting is especially noteworthy for its sound effects. Hill
House's worst terrors are heard but never seen. Film students have
long focused on conjuring scares with visual effects. The
Haunting is instructive in all that may be accomplished with sound
alone. Or at least, with sound and shadows.
Sound
and shadows collaborate in The
Haunting, but so do shadows and set decor. Shirley Jackson described
Hill House as looking so evil that guests were tempted to turn back. Yet all she says of Hill House's menacing countenance is that its angles
and proportions were "not quite right." All else is left to the reader's
imagination. (Jackson does mention that Hill House is encircled by
a veranda and made of wood, save for a stone tower containing a library,
but there's nothing especially menacing about that.)
But as a filmmaker,
Wise had to depict an evil-looking house visually. He cast Ettington Park for the role of Hill House (Ettington Hall, by some
reports), a 200-year-old hotel that some regard as quite pleasant. To transform Ettington Park into something menacing, Wise shot the house
with infrared film stock and a distorted 28mm lens. (Bryan Senn provides
an excellent production history in Cinematic
Hauntings.)
The
Haunting excels on all levels except background music, which is loud,
melodramatic, and intrusive. Its cast is first-rate. Julie
Harris effectively conveys Nell's timidity, her halting attempts to escape
her protective shell, her inexperience making her easily tipsy after a
little wine, her desperation to belong leading her to imagine love where
it does not exist.
Richard Johnson portrays a sincere and sympathetic
scientist with a wry sense of self-deprecation (who went on to play villains
in some of the finest B horror films of the late 1970s: Screamers, The
Great Alligator, Zombie). Rosalie Crutchley's housekeeper provides comic relief and menace, simultaneously.
Russ Tamblyn's playboy heir is callow and irreverent, and Claire Bloom's
lesbian artist is somewhat catty, yet neither is entirely unsympathetic.
Some critics
have made overmuch of Theo's lesbianism, making it the crux of their analysis.
Phil Hardy is that rare critic who pans The
Haunting, condemning the film as "a ponderous affair" (Overlook
Film Encyclopedia: Horror). Yet Hardy's broad dismissal seems
motivated by what he terms as the film's "bigoted" attitude toward
lesbianism (Nell rebuffs Theo's advances, calling her "unnatural").
Carol J. Clover goes
so far as to infer (from the juxtaposition of Theo's remarks to Nell) a
sublimated homosexuality between Dr. Markway and Luke (Men,
Woman, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film), a baseless
interpretation. Such analyses embrace the PC notion that Theo's lesbianism
must be deconstructed and adjudged before the film can be safely enjoyed;
one cannot regard Theo as an independent character with good and bad traits,
her lesbianism irrelevant, for to PC critics, issues of gender, class,
and race are always foremost.
Whatever
else it is, and despite Hardy's pan, The
Haunting (both the novel and the Wise film) is great entertainment
and a milestone in the history of horror art.
Review copyright by Thomas
M. Sipos
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