Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”
Right after Sena and finished the marathon Cribbage Rumble game last night, we watched the Svengoolie show 1959 movie, “House on Haunted Hill,” just like she said during the video. We’ve never seen the movie before, but Sena figured out whodunit pretty early.
I wanted to watch it because one of the stars played the part of a psychiatrist, Alan Marshall (Dr. Trent Long). Vincent Price played the heavy, a wealthy, sinister, and jealous husband, Vincent Price (Frederick Loren). Carol Ohmart plays his wife, Annabelle Loren.
Frederick arranges for 5 people who desperately need the $10,000 he offers each one if they survive the night in a haunted house full of ghosts and neurotic cribbage players.
The house itself is kind of a character, even though I don’t normally think of Frank Lloyd Wright as an architect who specialized in building haunted houses. It’s called the Ennis House and it’s in Los Angeles. It was also featured in the movie “Blade Runner.” It was built from precast, interlocked concrete blocks. It’s been bought and sold many times and I think it’s still owned by cannabis entrepreneurs. It’s perfect for the movie. The photo of the house demonstrates what happens to a place owned by pot salesmen.
By the way, Frank Lloyd Wright also designed several homes buildings in the downtown and Rock Glen areas of my hometown, Mason City, Iowa. I don’t think any of them are haunted.
The group of five money-hungry people includes, besides the psychiatrist, Dr. David Trent, played by Alan Marshal; Wilson Pritchard, a loser who believes in ghosts and booze, played by Elisha Cook Jr.; Lance Schroeder, played by Richard Long; the hysteric, Nora Manning, played by Carolyn Craig; and Ruth Bridges, played by Julie Mitchum. Special mention must go to the house caretakers: husband (Jonas, played by Howard Hoffman) and his mobile wife. She looks lie a zombie and she looked like she was riding a segway with her arms outstretched, apparently in order to stop herself from falling on what’s left of her face if she pitches forward off her segway (which is somehow delivered through a wormhole portal from 45 years in the future). Her name, of course, is Mrs. Slydes.
Annabelle and Frederick Loren are very unhappy with each other and she’s a little nervous about him because his last three wives all died under suspicious circumstances. Frederick is very jealous and thinks she’s unfaithful.
Dr. Trent is as physically imposing and dark as Frederick. He suggests that Nora take a sedative after she has several hysterical outbursts including seeing commonplace objects like severed heads in odd places—like her overnight bag.
Things ramp up in a hurry after Annabelle is discovered hanging and apparently dead. How she got that way is a mystery. It’s less mysterious in the scene in which her corpse is lying in bed and the close up shows her carotid pulse is clearly pulsating—which no one bothers to mention.
There’s scene in which a skeleton chases a very alive Annabelle around who screams her head off. Sena says strings were clearly visible attached to the skeleton. I didn’t see them, but the skeleton seemed to be as drunk as Pritchard, and clearly would never have passed a sobriety test.
The very generous Frederick Loren distributes guns to everybody which prompts Pritchard to insist they would be useless against ghosts, which in turn prompts Frederick to pistol whip him. Everyone just assumes that they all know how to handle a gun, even when Nora holds her pistol upside down and backward. Dr. Trent offers her a Valium, which she refuses and then kicks him in the groin, to which he responds by offering Freudian interpretations involving cigars. Mrs. Slydes then pops out of a sliding door in a wall on her souped-up segway and knocks everyone down as though they were bowling pins.
There’s not much to say that wouldn’t at least skirt the edge of being a spoiler. Sena calls Vincent Price “Vinny,” likes his acting and would give the movie a Shrilling Chicken Rating of 5/5. I would give it a 4/5, so we had to play rock, paper, scissors. I won so the rating is 4/5.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 