Synopsis
Dr. Markway, doing research to prove the existence of ghosts, investigates Hill House, a large, eerie mansion with a lurid history of violent death and insanity.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Julie HarrisEleanor Lance
- Claire BloomTheodora
- Richard JohnsonDr. John Markway
- Russ TamblynLuke Sanderson
- Fay ComptonMrs. Sanderson
- Rosalie CrutchleyMrs. Dudley
- Lois MaxwellGrace Markway
- Valentine DyallMr. Dudley
- Diane ClareCarrie Fredericks
- Ronald AdamEldridge Harper
Recommendations
- 100
Empire
It's one of the most highly-wrought (indeed, overwrought) films ever made, with art direction, editing, sound effects, weird camera angles and lighting orchestrated to fill every frame with hints of the unsettling. - 90
The Guardian
From a potentially creaky, cliche-filled premise (a gaggle of stereotypes are invited to a spooky old house where all is not as it seems), director Robert Wise leads us on a brilliantly unsettling journey. - 80
The A.V. Club
Sound effects, disorienting camera work, expert editing, and Humphrey Searle's discomfiting score all suggest, without showing, a horrible presence waiting in the wings. Though parts of The Haunting are talky, even that works in the film's favor, as Tamblyn's glib dismissals and Johnson's calm professorial tone are unable to clear up the mystery at its core. After all, the specters that can't be seen, classified, or otherwise contained are the scariest of all. - 80
Time Out London
What makes the film so effective is not so much the slightly sinister characterisation of the generally neurotic group, but the fact that Wise makes the house itself the central character, a beautifully designed and highly atmospheric entity which, despite the often annoyingly angled camerawork, becomes genuinely frightening. - 80
The New Yorker
An elegantly sinister scare movie, literate and expensive, with those two fine actresses Claire Bloom and Julie Harris. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
An undeniably effective adaptation of the Shirley Jackson novel and one of the best haunted-house movies. - 70
Chicago Reader
Robert Wise's 1963 black-and-white 'Scope translation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House was pretty effective when it came out, aided by Wise's skill as an editor. - 60
The New York Times
So it looks as though this film simply makes more goose pimples than sense, which is rather surprising and disappointing for a picture with two such actresses, who are very good all the way through it, and produced and directed by the able Robert Wise.
