“House On Haunted Hill” is a seriously disappointing mystery movie. This came out a few years before “The Haunting”. The two films are quite similar both in terms of content and in terms of the quality. Both also got remakes in the 90s. This movie just isn’t scary and the mystery is not interesting.

Frederick Loren (Vincent Price “The Fly”, “The Last Man On Earth”) is an eccentric millionaire, who has offered $10,000 to each member of a group of individuals tasked with staying in a large and spooky mansion. Is the place or haunted by ghosts or is something else going on? It will be a night of terror and death.

Vincent Price is as whacky as always. However, this is another movie where he’s stuck with a completely dud script. We have a collection of other characters but none of them are very interesting. Elisha Cook Jr. (“The Maltese Falcon”, “The Killing”) plays Watson Pritchard, a man convinced that there are ghosts in the mansion. Carol Craig (“Giant”) plays Nora Manning and she’s probably the best of the bunch. I just didn’t care about any of the characters and you need to care about the characters in a movie such as this.

“House On Haunted Hill” starts off like a generic ghost movie and ends with a rubbish twist that is clearly trying to be like a twist from a Hitchcock film such as “Vertigo”. Some of the special effects are absolutely awful; the severed head could not look more fake. If you like old ghost movies such as the original versions of “The Haunting” and “13 Ghosts” then maybe this is the movie for you. I just thought it was dreadfully dull. It’s frustrating because we know Price can be really entertaining when given good material to work with.