31 Days of Horror: Day 1- The Haunting (1963)

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Despite the gruesome creatures, flying limbs and buckets of blood, horror as a genre can feel pretty stale. For every excellent film there is a dozen forgettable or terrible ones. And there are so many that it takes a lot of wading through the rubbish to get to the interesting stuff. For each day in October I’m going to recommend a different horror film or film about horror. For the most part they won’t be the accepted classics. My selections range from the genuinely excellent to the delightfully strange with a few that are more fascinating than they are great. Hopefully there will be something for everyone and you’ll find something new to give you a scare or maybe a laugh. This is my 31 days of Horror and today I’m talking about The Haunting.

The 1963 Robert Wise film The Haunting is probably the closest thing to a classic out of the 31 films I’ll be writing about but it’s one that I don’t think is as appreciated as it should be. Many horror films use their story as the tracks to a haunted house ride; it’s just there to take the audience from scare to scare. But some of the best horror films use their story as a vehicle to explore an idea or theme. The Haunting is a ghost story where the fear doesn’t just come from spirits but from the idea that our past could literally come back to haunt us. The main character Eleanor, played by Julie Harris, has been psychologically and emotionally damaged by her past and the prospect of confronting that is scarier than any spectre.

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Robert Wise had a fascinating career from his editing work on films such as Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons to his years as a director where he jumped from genre to genre with an unparalleled deftness. He made two of the defining science fiction films of their respective eras with 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still and 1971’s The Andromeda Strain, as well as two of the defining musicals with West Side Story and The Sound of Music. He was comfortable telling any story and showed a reverence and understanding of each genre he worked in. But he was not afraid of innovation or experimentation and this is no more evident than in The Haunting. Although they are very different filmmakers, I cannot help but compare his work in The Haunting to that of Stanley Kubrick. Like Kubrick’s uses of experimental cameras in films such as Barry Lyndon, Wise used an untested wide-angle lens camera to create a unique visual distortion in The Haunting. As Kubrick used the architecture of The Overlook Hotel in The Shining to imbue the film with an unnatural and impossible feeling, Wise used editing and the architecture of his films manor to create claustrophobia and a similar sense of unease. The films influence is also felt in the work of Sam Raimi particularly in his Evil Dead trilogy. Raimi is known for his energetic visual style, epitomised by the long shots in the Evil Dead films of a demonic force’s POV flying through the forest. Those shots are clearly inspired by very similar shots in The Haunting as well as some creepy auditory tricks that Raimi also lifted from the Wise film. Wise is not talked about as often as the likes of Raimi or Kubrick but he laid the groundwork for filmmakers like them and his film The Haunting played a big part in that.

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The film opens with a voice-over detailing the grisly history of Hill House, a house that has seen lots of unhappiness and death. As it now lays empty a doctor interested in the paranormal decides to investigate the old home. Dr John Markaway asks for help in his exploration and is answered by a young psychic Theodora and the aforementioned Eleanor desperate to get out of her own house, as well as one of the heirs to the old manor. They are all somewhat doubtful at first but the strangeness of the place is overwhelming. Too overwhelming for poor Eleanor whose psychological descent begins to be a bigger worry than the possibility of apparitions.

There are some older horror films that have slightly lost their edge as time has passed. They might still work as great films but their effectiveness of scaring has waned. Of course The Haunting shows its age but it has not lost its bite and continues to be one of the creepiest haunted house films ever made. Many of the creepiest moments in the film have been repurposed by later ghost stories but they are never quite as affecting as they are here. Part of their success is because they are not only scary in the sense that ghosts are spooky but also because they are wearing down the mind of the meek Eleanor. After her abusive and constraining mother died she has stepped out of her comfort zone to aid the charming doctor and all her anxieties are forcefully brought out by her time in Hill House. The alluring men of the house as well as Theodora, whose open lesbianism makes Eleanor uncomfortable, bring out her social insecurities. She makes slow progress in acclimating to social interactions until the house begins to seem less dormant than it initially appeared. The ethereal happenings are like a literalisation of her current state of mind, she feels like she is being attacked from every angle. Her confrontations with her housemates as well as her confrontations with her past merge into a complete psychological breakdown. The line between ghostly presence’s and psychological manifestations blur for Eleanor as much as they do for us. A lot of horror films play with the idea of “is it all in their head or is it real?” but this film does it better than most. Eleanor ‘s character is so well written and acted that it never feels like we are being tricked into being scared by her mental downturn. Our fear for her wellbeing is equal to our fear for ourselves; we’re pulled into her shoes and it makes for an intense experience.

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What makes horror special is that it is a genre dedicated to making us feel. All films in a sense aim to engage the audience on some level but horror hits us in a uniquely visceral place as it attempts to induce fear. That fear can make us more forcefully connect with a character or pull us into a world we desperately hope is different from our own. But most importantly when that fear is alleviated we are reminded that we are alive. That feeling is unlike any other and when the film ends we’re returned with it to reality with new ideas and thoughts on our mind. The Haunting evokes all of these feelings and does so with beauty, thoughtfulness and a compassion for its characters that is often not present in horror films today. Not only is it a film worth seeing but also it’s one that deserves to be in the canon of horror classics.

James MacLeod


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