"Mr. Price, fate has brought us together this rainy night. I'm starting a picture in a few weeks -- The House on Haunted Hill -- it's a ghost story." (Castle. Step Right Up!: ...I'm Gonna Scare the Pants Off Of America) From that point on, Vincent Price was sold during this chance encounter at the diner near the Goldwyn Studio with director William Castle. In playing Frederick Loren, Price would receive a two picture deal along with "The Tingler" (1959).
"House on Haunted Hill" was mostly shot at Allied Artists, but exteriors were shot at Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House on Los Feliz. Robb White explains that the home was "built during his Egyptian period. We were not allowed in there, but the guy who owned it let us look inside. And it was a weird house - the ceilings were 22 feet high! In one room there was a closet door that was 22 feet high and two feet wide with nothing in closet to hold up clothes or anything else. The man who owned the house had furnished only one of the many rooms with a bed, a chair, a nightstand and, in the kitchen, a card table. He complained that the famous glass walls, which joined each other at the corner with only edges of the glass panes meeting, leaked when it rained and made a weird screaming noise when the wind blew. And there was nothing you could do about it! The swimming pool was three feet deep; ten feet wide; a hundred feet long; and in the middle was a statue of a horse! It was just god-damned ridiculous!" (Weaver. Science Fiction Stars and Horror Heroes)
It wouldn't be a William Castle film without a gimmick, and the gimmick in this film involved something called "Emergo." Vincent Price remembers and explains the effect on "the opening night [...] I was in a little theatre in Baltimore. In the movie, I reeled this skeleton in using a winch, and then there'd be a real skeleton in the theatre that would shoot over the audience. Well, I was in this theatre with a great many young people in it - and they panicked! and they knocked all the seats out of the theatre!" (Weaver. Attack of the Monster Movie Makers)
"House on Haunted Hill" will be on TCM October 31st, 1:00 AM EST/12 AM CST
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