Skip to main content
The Haunting (1963)
Two years before Robert Wise directed The Sound of Music, the house was alive with the sound of spirits.
Wise’s The Haunting falls between his two timeless movie musicals—West Side Story being the other—and it arrived in a mini golden age for American Gothic horror alongside half a dozen Vincent Price Edgar Allan Poe adaptations and the vapors of Psycho (1960).
And in The Haunting’s case, what’s more American than a cursed old-money family, their murderous New England manor, and daring ghost hunters who claim to be doing it for science?
Luckily, the film also retains the core interest of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House—namely the tortuous psychological poetry of protagonist Eleanor (Julie Harris), who’s invited to the ghost-hunting team because of her childhood poltergeist experiences.
“I’m like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster,” goes one of Eleanor’s most eerie narrations about Hill House, “and the monster feels my tiny movements inside.”
The lasting star of this 63-year-old film, though, is the sound design.
More than once, the spectral pounding of the witching hour becomes all-consumingly loud, blurring the line between music and sound effect. From the director of The Sound of Music comes a brute-force atonal thrumming as metal as anything we’ve heard since. Cinema 21, Oct. 10.
Also Playing:
Academy: Child’s Play (1988), The Invisible Man (1933) and Messiah of Evil (1974), Oct. 7–8. Eyes Without a Face (1960), Scooby-Doo (2002) and The Sentinel (1977), Oct. 9–15. Chopping Mall (1986), Oct. 10. Cinemagic: The Fly (1986), Raw (2016) and Young Frankenstein (1974), Oct. 7. The Witch (2015), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Oct. 8. The Slumber Party Massacre (1982), Oct. 9. Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988), Oct. 9, 11 and 13. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Oct. 10. An American Werewolf in London (1981), Oct. 10, 11 and 12. Let the Right One In (2008), Oct. 10, 12 and 13. The Invisible Man (1933), Oct. 11–12. The Babadook (2014), Oct. 11 and 13. Clinton: Friday the 13th Part III (1982), Oct. 8. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984), Oct. 9. Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Oct. 10. Faust (1926) with live score, Oct. 11. Malpertuis (1971), Oct. 12. Hush (2016), Oct. 13. Hollywood: The Kiss (1988), Oct. 7. Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Oct. 8. Earth Girls Are Easy (1988), Oct. 9. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Oct. 9–11 and 13. The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Oct. 10–11. Seven Brothers Meet Dracula (1974), Oct. 13. Moreland: Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), Oct. 10–11. St. Johns Twin: Creepshow (1982), Oct. 9. Tomorrow: Batman & Robin (1997), Oct. 9. The Witches (1990) and Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Oct. 10. American Psycho (2000) and Practical Magic (1998), Oct. 11.
