Movies - House on Haunted Hill

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	Movies - House on Haunted Hill

The House on Haunted Hill is a fictional house featured in two horror films of the same name.

The first version, an Allied Artists Picture from 1959, directed by William Castle and starred Vincent Price as eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren. He and his 4th wife, Annabelle, have invited 5 people to the house for a "Haunted House" party. Whoever stays in the house for one night will earn ten thousand dollars. As the night progresses, all the guests are trapped inside the house with ghosts, murderers, and other terrors.

The film used the gimmick "Emergo" during its original theatrical release: William Castle placed an elaborate pulley system in each theater showing the film; allowing a skeleton to be flown over the audience at the appropriate time.

Thanks to Castle's gimmicky theatrical run, the film became a huge success. Alfred Hitchcock took notice of the low-budget film's performance at the box office, and set out to make his own low-budget horror film, which became the critically-acclaimed hit Psycho (Ironically, Castle himself was a Hitchcock fan, and tried to imitate his work).

The House on Haunted Hill has since fallen into the public domain. Warner Brothers, who distributed the remake, issued a "bare-bones" DVD release of the original when the remake came out, and 20th Century Fox later distributed a colorized Special Edition of the film, which featured an audio commentary track by comedian Mike Nelson.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for House on Haunted Hill ]

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