Horror Classics, Vol. 3: The Bat/House on Haunted Hill
InThe Bat, top-billed Vincent Price brings his silky sinister elegance to the second remake of the hoary "old dark house" stage play, but the real star of the show is Agnes Moorehead as an eccentric mystery writer who decides to pull off the million-dollar bank heist and the steel-clawed killer known only as "The Bat." Price's devious doctor is but one of a rogues gallery of suspects that include a Johnny-on-the-spot police detective, a chauffeur turned butler with a checkered past, and a housekeeper with echoes ofRebecca's Mrs. Danvers. Moorehead is a kick as the spirited author and makes the most of her expanded role, but fans of the early film productions (1926'sThe Batand 1930'sThe Bat Whispers, both directed by Roland West) will be less forgiving of other changes, especially writer-director Crane Wilbur's decision to draw the story out over a succession of nights. Wilbur loses the tension and claustrophobia of the originals with handsome but airy photography, more appropriate to an episode ofPerry Mason, and a rambling pace. Moorehead and Price bring a little spirit to the otherwise bland film, but not quite enough.William Castle's gimmick-laden comic thrillerHouse on Haunted Hillis not so much a horror movie as a fairground fun house come to life. Vincent Price stars as a deliciously silky millionaire married to a greedy gold digger (Carol Ohmart) who refuses to divorce him. When he turns his wife's idea for a haunted-house party into a contest--$10,000 to whoever can spend the night in "the only truly haunted house in the world"--it seems he may have found an alternative to divorce. Five strangers gather to test their stamina, Price hands each of them most delightfully twisted party favors ever imagined (loaded handguns, delivered in their own tiny coffins), and the spook show begins. Blood drips from the ceiling, zombielike apparitions float through rooms, severed heads and skeletons suddenly appear, and then a guest is found hanging in the stairwell. Full of screams and shocks and things that go bump in the night,House on Haunted Hillisn't particularly scary and often makes little sense, but, like a Halloween haunted house, the gag-laden spectacle of spook-show clichés is quite entertaining and Price makes a sardonic master of ceremonies. The original theatrical presentations featured a typically outrageous Castle-engineered gimmick: Emergo, which was nothing more than a skeleton that appeared to fly out of the screen and over the audience on a guide wire.--Sean Axmaker