Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

The Haunting Blu-ray Movie Review

Do You Want to Believe?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 15, 2013

Sitting at number one on Martin Scorsese's list of the scariest movies of all time, the original 1963 version of The Haunting never shows any ghosts. Screenwriter Nelson Gidding was convinced that everything was happening inside the mind of one character, but when he proposed that theory to author Shirley Jackson, whose novel he was adapting, she told him his idea was interesting but not what she intended. The brilliance of Jackson's novel, The Haunting of Hill House, is that it leaves everyone unsure of what happened. The film that Robert Wise directed from Gidding's script achieved the same result (unlike the 1999 remake by Jan de Bont, which left no doubt at all).

The Haunting was one of Wise's favorites among his films, which says a lot, given the breadth of the body of work he left behind when he died in 2005 at the age of 91. The winner of four Oscars, two each for directing and producing The Sound of Music and West Side Story, Wise began his career as an editor, working on such classics as Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. His place in science fiction history is assured by The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Andromeda Strain and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, for which he oversaw a comprehensive re-edit and restoration that still awaits a Blu-ray release. And that doesn't even scratch the surface of his military pictures, comedies, dramas and bio-pics that await restoration and resurrection from various vaults.

The Haunting represents one of Wise's boldest experiments, which was to frighten viewers with nothing more than sound, odd camera angles and the reactions of actors. Of course, there had to be the equivalent of a dark tale told around a campfire, but the story's boogeyman would never appear. "Haven't you noticed how nothing in this house seems to move until you look away and then you just catch something out of the corner of your eye?" says one of the team investigating whether a Victorian mansion is haunted. Wise plays a similar trick as director. The scary stuff seems to happen between the frames, and you can't quite see it.

Hill House is a gothic Victorian mansion built in a remote part of New England in the 1870s by a misanthrope named Hugh Crain. In the film's opening, the tragic history of the Crain family is related in voiceover by Dr. John Markway, an anthropologist obsessed with the paranormal. Both Mrs. Crains died under mysterious circumstances, while Hugh's daughter, Abigail, by the first Mrs. Crain grew from a child to an old lady in the house's nursery, where she died one night, banging on the walls for her paid attendant, while the young woman trysted with a farmhand on the veranda. The attendant inherited the house, where she slowly went mad and hanged herself from the spiral staircase in the library.

For Dr. Markway, Hill House is a treasure island of the paranormal, and he persuades the current owner, Mrs. Sanderson (Fay Compton), to lease it to him for "research". She does so on condition that her nephew, Luke (Russ Tamblyn), accompany the expedition to monitor it, which seems fair since Luke expects to inherit the place someday. Mrs. Sanderson hopes Dr. Markway will find nothing, thereby dispelling Hill House's fearsome reputation and perhaps making the property valuable at last.

Most of Markway's team drops out once they learn about Hill House, leaving him with only two: Theodora or "Theo" (Claire Bloom), who was selected for her latent telepathic ability—which may be no more than an acute ability to "read" people; and Eleanor Lance (Julie Harris), who suffered a poltergeist incident when she was ten and was kept at home by her mother ever after. Her mother died recently after Elearnor nursed her through a long wasting illness, and now her sister and brother-in-law (Diane Clare and Paul Maxwell) don't want her to join Dr. Markway's team. But Eleanor sneaks away in her mother's old car, and she intends never to return. For her, Hill House is the adventure of a lifetime.

The weirdness begins almost as soon as the team arrives, with the Dudleys (Rosalie Crutchley and Valentine Dyall), a local couple paid by Mrs. Sanderson to act as caretakers. Mrs. Dudley's warnings about how the team will be all alone at night, in the dark, would be almost comical, if not for the death's head grin that creases her face at inappropriate moments. Mr. Dudley just tells them all to go home.

Hill House itself is a mass of crooked passages, doors that close by themselves, statues and figures that seem to be looking everywhere and nowhere, decor suitable for Roger Corman and Vincent Price, sudden chills and inexplicable noises. Both Eleanor and Theo immediately sense a presence, but perhaps they're just feeding off each other's fear. When something pounds at their door in the night, apparently trying to get in, no one else hears it.

Dr. Markway's opening voiceover is quickly replaced by Eleanor's interior monologue, as she reflects on her "adventure". She alternately fears Hill House and panics at the thought of being sent back to a home that, for her, no longer exists. It gradually dawns on Dr. Markway that a member of his team is being seduced by the house—or, to put it in screenwriter Gidding's preferred formulation, is having some sort of breakdown. No one can really say for sure. By the time the team has been joined by Dr. Markway's wife, Grace (Lois Maxwell, the original Miss Moneypenny), who has come to insist that her husband return to his teaching duties, and the odd events at Hill House have spiraled further out of control, the only thing anyone knows is that the house is no good. "Doc, I'll let you have the house cheap!" says Luke Sanderson. By then even the enthusiastic paranormal researcher has lost interest.

The Haunting Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

As Wise describes in the commentary, The Haunting had to be shot in England because of financing, and English cameraman Davis Boulton was recommended to him as a cinematographer. The Haunting relies on precise and unsettling compositions, low angles and unexpected camera moves. Wise shot very little additional coverage, editing in his head and checking dailies as he went, a life-long habit retained from his early days as a film editor.

Warner's 2003 DVD of this MGM film wasn't bad, but this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray improves on it in every respect. The fine detail of Hill House's elaborately spooky decor is resolved to a degree not seen since (probably) the original film prints, and the many scenes where Wise and Boulton have carefully arranged the actors in deep focus, often with a well-concealed split diopter, can be appreciated in a whole new way. Hill House's rooms are full of sinister bric-a-brac that either lingers in the background, insinuating itself into the frame, or suddenly emerges from shadow, frightening one of the characters (usually Eleanor). The Blu-ray's image provides just the right degree of visibility for each such effect, aided by the excellent reproduction of blacks, whites and shades of gray. (The Haunting is one of the best arguments I know for the proposition that gothic horror should always be shot in black-and-white.) The Blu-ray's image also picks up elaborate fine detail in the wardrobe that distinguishes each main character, from Dr. Markway's professorial English checks and tweeds, to Luke's preppy collegiate attire, to Theo's hipster look of the early Sixties (contributed by then-trendy designer Mary Quant), to Eleanor's frumpy spinster duds.

The image has a film-like texture and a natural but unobtrusive grain pattern, except for a handful of shots that looks softer and grainier. Some of these are the product of a then-experimental lens from Panavision that provided a wider image than any anamorphic lens currently available; as Wise relates in the commentary, he had to sign a disclaimer before Panavision would allow him to use it, and he didn't mind that the image was distorted (for an example, see screenshot 18). The exterior shots of Hill House, for which Ettington House in Warwickshire was used, were photographed with infrared film, which gave both the stone and the clouds a surreal quality but also softened the edges. An occasional "regular" shot betrays a slight softness, which may simply be the result of an aggressive camera move (as, e.g., when Eleanor nearly falls off the upper veranda).

With the letterbox bars accompanying an aspect ratio of 2.40:1, and the inclusion of several long dialogue scenes, Warner has managed to get away with an average bitrate of 21.96 Mbps.

The Haunting Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's original mono soundtrack has been encoded as lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0, and it sounds quite good. The dialogue is clear, and all the strange noises that lurk in Hill House (or maybe not) are reproduced with just the right level of clarity required for their impact, which is to say that things that go bump in the night do so loudly, whereas odd sounds that might be the voices of the dead are never quite distinct enough to be intelligible. Creaks, footstep-like falls, the strain of rusted metal and one particular effect that would be a spoiler to specify ring through with clarity, and the dynamic range is surprisingly wide. The score by British composer Humphrey Searle, who worked on the original Dr. Who TV series, has no identifiable themes or melodies; it's all atmosphere and shock—and very effective.

The Haunting Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2003 DVD of The Haunting. Omitted are the still galleries (which include excerpts from director Wise's shooting script with his handwritten notes) and the essay "Great Ghost Stories".

• Commentary with Actors Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn, Director Robert Wise and Screenwriter Nelson Gidding: Each commentator was recorded separately, and the comments were excerpted and edited together. Johnson and Wise have the most air time. Wise and Gidding provide useful information on the adaptation from Shirley Jackson's novel, and Wise supplies valuable insight into the visual style. Bloom, Harris and Tamblyn recall the filming experience, while Johnson attempts to play film historian and occasionally verges into self-parody.



• Theatrical Trailer (480i; 2.35:1, enhanced; 2:30): Narrated by "Dr. Markway", the trailer makes good use of some of Wise's disorienting camera angles.

The Haunting Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

An interesting comparison for The Haunting is the The Legend of Hell House (1979), with a screenplay by Richard Matheson based on his novel. Although Matheson disputed that his novel was based on Shirley Jackson's, it too concerned a notorious haunted house where a paranormal researcher assembled a team and tried to solve the mystery. The film, directed by Richard Hough, contains clear and incontrovertible manifestations of the supernatural and explicit gore effects (though tame by contemporary standards) and in the end the ghost(s) are identified. Hell House is an effective horror thriller, but it doesn't linger in the mind as The Haunting does, precisely because it wraps up its mystery so neatly. The Haunting never explains anything. Like Hill House, it keeps its secrets. Perhaps it's just a story about a sheltered young woman looking for adventure who got in over her head—but no one who reaches the end of the movie really believes that. Highly recommended.