The Haunting (1963)
Director: Robert Wise
Had I seen this before: No
First, I would like to point out that there is a fun-bad 1999 adaptation of this same novel that I saw in the theater starring Catherine Zeta-Jones as the arch and smoldering Theo and yet I chose not to revisit it here. Please clap. Second, said novel--Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House--is one that I enjoyed a great deal but do not remember every specific detail from at this point, so this will not be a comparison of novel to movie, but rather a look at this movie on its own terms. Being assigned Jackson's short story "The Lottery" in middle school probably shaped my eventual tastes more than I realized at the time, and I sort of doubt any visual adaptation can scratch the same itch for me as her prose, so it seems unfair to expect it to. Plus I am too lazy to re-read it, as I am already very busy not reading this month's book club book. At any rate, I was curious to check out the contemporary adaptation of the 1959 novel and especially curious to check out the movie that director Robert Wise made in between making a couple of tiny films that you've probably never heard of called West Side Story and The Sound of Music.
The movie opens with a voiceover from "scientist" Dr. Markway explaining the tragic history of a 90-year-old New England mansion known as Hill House with unsettling glee. I scare-quoted his credentials in the previous sentence because although I was excited for a round of "let's apply science to ghosts," I would find, to my disappointment, that his methods were decidedly imprecise and mostly consisted of saying "mmm, yes, interesting" and "just as I expected." I'm not saying I need a bunch of spectrometers everywhere, but I did think he should at least be taking notes. I noticed that the doctor's name was the only one changed from the novel, where it was Montague, and then was changed again in the 1999 film, where it was Marrow. All of the other main character's names stayed consistent, so I'm not sure what the deal is with everyone trying to pin down this slippery doctor. I did like that this version of him reminded me a bit of John Astin's Gomez Addams, although probably 80% of that can be attributed to the mustache. The best thing about the doctor is his wife, who shows up late in the movie and makes fun of everyone at Hill House for being scared.
The Mysterious Doctor M is assembling a team of paranormal investigators to get to the bottom of Hill House's alleged haunting, again using methods that I neither understand nor approve of, but I'm not the one running the show here. He ends up with three assistants: Luke Sanderson, who has no interest in the paranormal and is only there because he is in line to inherit the estate; Theodora, allegedly a psychic and subtly--1963 subtly--a lesbian; and our heroine Eleanor "Nell" Lance, an anxious, lonely woman whose life was dedicated to caring for her invalid mother until her very recent passing. This movie is about the relationship between the house and Eleanor's persistent grief and guilt and stress and yearning to belong somewhere, so although it is not one of those "everything is happening in her mind" situations--all the characters very much experience haunting--it is closely echoing the pre-existing issues in Eleanor's life. That doesn't explain why she was selected for this job, but I guess it worked out.
Now, here's the thing about this version of Eleanor--she is a tough hang. She is rude to the servants who work on the grounds (more on them in a second!), she lashes out at everyone around her in a childish way when she is upset or overwhelmed, she refers to Theo as a mistake of nature in the movie's least thinly-veiled reference to her sexuality, and is generally just pretty unpleasant. In case we didn't get what her hangup is about, she starts almost every sentence with "My mother..." and often that is the entirety of the sentence. It made it slightly difficult for me to be scared for her because she seemed very determined to become a part of the house and frankly as far as I was concerned, the house could have her.
I'm pretty sure that's how the Hill House staff felt about the situation, too. When she arrives at Hill House she encounters a locked front gate and an admittedly unhelpful Mr. Dudley, the groundskeeper, who informs her that no one else is there and she shouldn't be there either. Now, Eleanor has taken the car that she shares with her sister without permission and is all wound up and very desperate to embark on this independent project and I understand that this obstacle is a frustration; I also know that if Eleanor was born in 1925, as the actress playing her was, then the name Karen only accounted for 0.0004% of the population of women her age. But her reaction is very much "I am going to escalate this situation to your manager, how dare you" and Dudley is like "....fine." Once she's in, she encounters Mrs. Dudley, who keeps up the usually-empty house, and they have the following exchange, which I'm including in full because it was my favorite part of the movie (transcription courtesy of IMDb):
Mrs. Dudley: [Eleanor has just been shown her room after she arrives] I can't keep the rooms the way I'd like, but there's no one else they could get that would help me.
Eleanor Lance: How very nice.
Mrs. Dudley: I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. I clear up in the morning. I have breakfast for you at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after I set out the dinner, not after it begins to get dark. I leave before the dark.
Eleanor Lance: Your husband?
Mrs. Dudley: We live over in town, miles away.
Eleanor Lance: Yes.
Mrs. Dudley: So there won't be anyone around if you need help.
Eleanor Lance: I understand.
Mrs. Dudley: We couldn't hear you. In the night.
Eleanor Lance: Do you have any idea when Dr. Markway--
Mrs. Dudley: [cuts her off] No one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that.
Eleanor Lance: I know.
Mrs. Dudley: In the night. In the dark. [Mrs. Dudley grins and leaves]
Now that's a harbinger!
So, it's not like Eleanor didn't know what she was getting into. I did find some of the effects nicely spooky--loud banging in the middle of the night, for example, is incredibly scary! When a doorknob seems to twist a bit a the behest of some unknown but potentially malevolent hand, it helps that it already has a creepy face carved into it. A rickety staircase of questionable design makes for a tense set piece. The house having endless halls full of confusingly identical closed doors where everything is just slightly tilted is effectively disorienting. Being trapped with strangers who you feel are being mean to you is a true nightmare.
Overall, I'm not sure this is as iconic a work from Robert Wise as the two musicals bookending it, but it does have one thing those don't and that's Mrs. Dudley grinning and leaving.
Line I repeated quietly to myself: [cuts her off]
Is it under two hours: Yes
Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: Questionably pedigreed scientists
Hard-Boiled Eggs and Plum Jam from A Baker's House
Okay, I genuinely did try not to refer back to the novel too much in this post but when it came to food there was none that I noticed in the film and plenty that I remembered in the book. Fortunately, the most helpful website I've ever seen gave me a list and I just grabbed a couple of appealing items.
Up next: Over the garden wall we go
