The Haunting '63

                       
                              The Dead Are Not Quiet in Hill House.

The house with a history. A dark history. In the opening, I felt Robert Wise did a swell job of setting the ominous tone for all that would come after by telling us a little about the Hill House, the family associated with it, mostly grim as the master of it, his two wives, and much later, his daughter (and her "companion", a woman hired to look after her during her elder, bed-ridden years) all died less than happily. Freakish accidents, neglect leading to a death, and a suicide all share a place in the morbid portrait of Hill House's reputation.

The house "that was born bad", photographed with the dark foreboding so many have tried and failed to do with all the CGI and millions of dollars that a Hollywood studio could produce. Sometimes it just takes the skill of a master craftsman who doesn't just settle on providing a spook show but presenting characters gathered at that Hill House with details and given form, dialogue (narration giving us an indication of Julie Harris' fractured emotions, obviously askew from her having to endure her demanding, needy dead mother's horrible illness) that antiquates the collection of alternate personalities gathered at the "mansion of a millionaire misfit", how a clash of opinions regarding the supernatural and their own lives provide plenty of emotional fireworks and friction.

I leave before the dark comes. 

..in the night. ...in the dark.

The house. The house is calling you.

The "uncharted waste of Hill House", its off-kilter doors, creepy statues around every corner (as well as, mirrors), antiques and rooms, rooms that reach to great heights, a perception of innocence that finds its way in how the house is decorated, its design, but all a smokescreen. Nights where Harris hears the sound of a garbled man's voice and the sorrow of a weeping child just behind the walls of her bedroom for the week unveil the truth, how misery and sorrow were bedfellows of this house.

You haven't the ghost of a chance.

How true Claire Bloom's remark made in jest was more apt than she could realize. Bloom's "with it", hip, character, kind of a wise-ass, knows just how to rub Harris the wrong way, get under her skin and send her into fits of angry outbursts, doing so, I believe, to awaken her from a slumber that has never recuperated from the tyranny of a dying mother who expected her never to stray too far away and always be handy when called upon. Bloom has a hard edge about her, understands the world, uses her brand of humor (the kind that uses her psychic gifts to unearth truths perhaps best left hidden to those who have them) as a means to open the curtains, maybe hitting the raw nerve on too regular a basis. Perhaps her humor is a shield to hide behind her own difficulties with life.

Don't ask me to give a name to something that doesn't have a name.

Richard Johnson's fascination with psychic phenomena, with ghosts, is from a scientific (but passionate) standpoint, his curiosity piqued because of Hill House's notoriety. He has a flair for describing the Hill House with just the right bit of dramatic effect.

Everything's so ugly yet so comfortable...kind of like drowning, I guess.

What I love about the movie is that the sounds made by what lives within Hill House isn't just a trick for a jump scare but has its purpose (the cane pounding the wall as the "lady of the house" died without the help of her hired girl, now stronger, louder). It isn't just a tactic. There's a purpose in every noise and visual effect. Wise wants us to fully understand that this house contains something definitely sinister (the mad laughter that ignites after the door "speaks", along with the door knob slowly turning a bit, there's a presence and Wise uses his camera and specific sounds to establish its capabilities), with a definite goal.

The description of feeling "walled up alive on a deserted island" proposes a reminder of Abigail when Eleanor talks of her invalid mother. Such similarities to the Hill House old owner, Abigail's own life aren't just coincidence. Fate brought Eleanor to Hill House. She belongs at Hill House. They are one. This film shows how this union comes about.

When Eleanor has "fallen under the spell of the house", we are a participant in what she thinks and feels, the technique of the narrative voice from within her tormented mind shared with us; we have an active, intimate connection with her because on her "journey of discovery", the house's plans for her and how fate has brought her to the Hill House, from start to finish. It wanted her and she has arrived.

It knows my name!

Before ever arriving at Hill House, Eleanor was psychologically damaged goods. The early scene with her nasty sister, who has probably made it commonplace to irritate Eleanor for their entire lives, just poking at her, a facial expression of a smarmy bullying child. Along with having to care for the mother, Eleanor didn't need a sister antagonizing her further. So when Eleanor arrives at Hill House, her psyche wasn't exactly strong; if anything, she was quite fragile.

Vile...hideous.

Robert Wise's visual style of how he presented the Hill House to us is key, I felt, to the film's success. It must look evil to us; not an easy task, but thankfully Wise was up to it. We immediately see that this is a place you might not want to spend a great deal of time...or at least not at night...

Am I the public dump for everybody's fear?

Eleanor insists she's not trying to vie for all the attention, although Theo (short for Bloom's Theodora), ribs her about always being the center of conversation, particularly pestering the poor woman when her name is found chalked on the wall after the terrible night that the walls made pounding sounds. She has feelings for Richard Johnson's Dr. Markway, not knowing he's married, as Theo openly calls such adoration out into the open with little remarks used to get a rise out of the both of them. Tamblyn's Luke is set the inherit the house, the cynic who thinks all of the hullabaloo about the property is hurting its purchase value (he wants to sell it and is along to see if the rumors and rep about the estate are true, learning all too well that sometimes the past haunts), not taken in by Markway's "way with words" in articulating how haunted it is.

The cold breath of Russ Tamblyn's skeptic was a nice touch in selling the cold spot, the "heart of Hill house" near the nursery where Abigail grew up...and died. This really is just another effective way for Wise to tell us that something indeed is wrong with Hill House.

Who's hand was I holding?
 
The night my mother died. She knocked on the wall. I didn't come.

"Nature's mistakes"...oh my goodness! When Theo's "lifestyle" is under attack (a way for Theo's "Nelly Nell" to turn the barbs back at her), it really provokes a response, probably even more so today. I'm not sure this was as much a shot at homosexuality as it was a means for Eleanor to strike a blow back at Theo.

The open door to the nursery...it welcomes the snarky smart aleck, Mrs. Markway. "I know who your fiend of Hill House is...the interior decorator." The cold rotten heart of the house will be Mrs. Markway's introduction to the supernatural she pokes such fun at. Mrs. Markway kind of intrudes on the festivities, as Eleanor is starting to mentally/emotionally deteriorate, and really it is upon her arrival that the downward spiral (a slight pun, referencing the spiral staircase that plays a major part that calls Nell and Mrs. Markway into a turnpoint in the movie) truly commences.

"Oh, God, it knows I'm here!" The door's "breathing" is sheer awesomeness. "Doc, I'll let you have the house cheap." When Tamblyn said this it must have brought the house down. I have watched a ton of Haunted House movies where characters are in the same room, as the main haunt occurs and it is all played to perfection here. It is all around them, the house letting them know it has intentions.

The house is coming down around me. The house is destroying itself.
 
I'm coming apart a little at a time. A little at a time. I am disappearing inch by inch into this house.
 
I want to stay here. I want to stay here always.
 
I've broken the spell of Hill House. I'm home. I'm home.

Definitely a visual dynamo (and it's a dandy bit of suspense, to boot!) is the ascent of the rickety metal spiral staircase in the library, how Eleanor, under the house's spell, climbs up it to the attic seemingly to possibly commit suicide as Abigail's companion did (replication of past events seems to be a constant for Eleanor as she narrowly escapes the staircase, yet a tree on the grounds where the first wife of Hugh Crane was killed might be her next eventual outcome). When Markway follows after her, it only ratchets up the tense situation, especially when we see the wall giving up the staircase, having it wobble free.

The house belongs to her now, too.
 
The house has what it wants...for a while.

This is all a major theme of the film. The house seems attracted to "lost souls" in need of a home. Eleanor had nowhere else to go (mentioned by Theo who had felt the Hill House was perhaps were her Nelly Nell belonged) and now has a home and she "walks alone". Better her than I condemned to haunt the halls of Hill House.