House on Haunted Hill is both a murder mystery while also poking fun at the cliched haunted house genre that was already getting tired out by that point in time. As far as it's murder mystery aspect goes it's pretty underwhelming in its plot development. There's no clues or hardly any buildup to keep the story very engaging & your left feeling alienated from it most the time. All leading to an ending the doesn't feel too impactful.
However where it does succeed is it's spooky charm and camp factor. Some viewers may watch it and take it too seriously at first but it's meant to be playing around with the old school haunted house tropes. One example is two ghostly looking beings popping out of nowhere and scaring the character Nora to death. But it later turns out to just be the house's caretakers and they're never seen again. Vincent Price is the star of the film & like always he's excellent. His intro to inviting the guests really feels like he's talking directly to us as if we're one of them along for this ride. The scenes with him and his wife talking about murdering each other are the best parts & it's pretty interesting to hear such dark macabre humor in an early horror film like this.
The film is essentially like classic Halloween decorations. They're not that scary but theyre traditional & very amusing to look at. A fun spooky time as long as you don't expect too much from the story.
However where it does succeed is it's spooky charm and camp factor. Some viewers may watch it and take it too seriously at first but it's meant to be playing around with the old school haunted house tropes. One example is two ghostly looking beings popping out of nowhere and scaring the character Nora to death. But it later turns out to just be the house's caretakers and they're never seen again. Vincent Price is the star of the film & like always he's excellent. His intro to inviting the guests really feels like he's talking directly to us as if we're one of them along for this ride. The scenes with him and his wife talking about murdering each other are the best parts & it's pretty interesting to hear such dark macabre humor in an early horror film like this.
The film is essentially like classic Halloween decorations. They're not that scary but theyre traditional & very amusing to look at. A fun spooky time as long as you don't expect too much from the story.