#10 - House on Haunted Hill (1959)
This classic haunted house movie comes across a little silly by today's standards, but it's still very entertaining. Vincent Price steals the show, as always, as the host of a "ghost party" that he holds for his wife. Five strangers are invited and offered $10,000 to stay... if they manage to live until morning. While there is a lot of spooky stuff going on, the plot is more about the drama between the characters, and the plotting and paranoia gets pretty convoluted by the end. It actually ends up not making much sense, but who cares because there is a giant vat of acid and a walking skeleton!
Fun trivia - the director of this film, William Castle, was known for theater gimmicks. The gimmick for this film was called "Emergo", which involved a glowing plastic skeleton that was flown over the audience during the film's climax. In another of his films called The Tingler, electric buzzers were placed under random seats in the audience, and they would go off during certain scenes to scary the audience members unlucky enough to be in those seats. I kind of wish that this sort of thing still happened (outside of Disney World I mean).
Anyway, there's really not much to say about this movie. It's basically a dumb popcorn flick that has become a classic because of Vincent Price. At some point I'll revisit the 1999 remake - it has a bad rap, but I have positive memories of seeing it in theaters back in high school. At the very least, it can't be as bad as the Prom Night remake.
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