Television is crazy about ghosts these days, from the still-popular Ghost Whisperer dramatic series — no, she doesn’t tame ghosts, like the The Horse Whisperer or the Dog Whisperer do their respective subjects, but she does give them a stern talking to — to the several series such as Ghost Hunters featuring paranormal investigators poking around haunted houses, deserted lunatic asylums and lonely lighthouses.  One of the best motion pictures ever to have the ghost-hunting theme — as opposed to the simply getting-scared-by-them plot — was director Robert Wise‘s 1963 horror classic The Haunting.  Its stark and elegant black-and-white terrors have been scaring the pants off audiences in movie theaters and on television airings over 40 years now, and the chills haven’t gotten any less effective.  In fact, it probably looks even better compared to similar tales, and of course next to the more hysterical 1999 remake.  The Haunting is the ghost tale to beat.

Based on novelist Shirley Jackson’s book The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting wastes no time in setting out the case. ”The dead are not quiet in Hill House,” says Mrs. Sanderson, the rich lady who owns the spooky old manse, to Dr. Markway, a British anthropologist who very much wants to rent the place to conduct some psychic experiments.  It’s less than ten minutes into the movie, but already we’ve been given some intensive backstory.  The movie opens with a voice-over by actor Richard Johnson, playing Markway, telling the story of Hill House, and the pattern of death that plagued it from the time of its construction.  Aided by British classical composer Humphrey Searle‘s unusual and um…haunting score, this short sequence is straightforward, creepy, and amusing (the narration is quite droll) and sets up the events to come.

The cast of The Haunting is small but effective, perfect for this tightly-made film that didn’t have loads of spare budget to throw around.  British actor Richard Johnson (who was once married to Kim Novak for a year) was cast as the amiable and attractive Dr. Markway, a rogue Englishman who dared to study ghosts instead of something more respectable.  The part of the cool and stylish (Mary Quant-attired) Theodora — Theo — the gifted psychic, went to Claire Bloom, an English-born classically trained stage actress who was making her mark in movies, too.  The multi-talented actor Russ Tamblyn, who played Riff in director Wise’s West Side Story a couple of years previously, was brought in to play the callow, fun-loving and slightly avaricious nephew Luke Sanderson, who’s next on the list to inherit Hill House.  Finally, as the emotionally fragile Eleanor ”Nell” Lance, Wise chose revered American stage and screen actress Julie Harris.  It’s Harris’ neurotic intensity that propels the action in The Haunting; clearly Nell is just what the mansion ordered, a perfect victim for its notorious appetite.

We get a glimpse of Nell’s horrible home life.  She sleeps on the couch in her sister and brother-in-law’s apartment, and they have a beastly little girl who picks on her aunt.  Nell was her elderly mother’s caretaker, and now that mother’s dead, Nell has no life.  When she receives Markway’s invitation to Hill House, she’s delighted, stealing/borrowing the family car and setting off on her one and only adventure.  Nell’s the first to arrive.  She’s welcomed to Hill House by the completely ghastly but probably just under-socialized Mrs. Dudley, who warns her she lives in the town and won’t be nearby to help them after sunset.   ”No one will come any nearer than that…in the night…in the dark,” she ominously emphasizes.  Well, okay.

Soon the others show up, and after getting tour from Markway, who points out the obvious creepy features he knows about, we settle in for the calm before the storm.  Personalities come out, alliances are formed, appetites revealed, and it’s not long before weirdness begins to happen.  We get the usual spooky but mild manifestations, like a genuine cold spot right outside the nursery, and strange smells that only bother Nell.  We also get more than a little evidence of Nell’s intoxication with the house, her fear mixed with a noticeable exhiliration.  Trust me, when a grown woman gets cutesy with a statue and pretends to ask it to dance, and goes solo-waltzing around — in front of people — she’s got it bad.  And the house reciprocates, scrawling a message to her on the wall.  It’s love, all right.

The most famous sequences in The Haunting are the full-on physical manifestations, and they are doozies.  Theo and Nell, just about tucked in bed, hear mysterious bangings down the hall, thumps which eventually come crashing against their door and the vulnerable transom above.  The noise is furious, vicious, bone-rattling, and naturally when it stops the doorknob starts to wiggle — something’s trying to get in.  The men have been off chasing a ghost dog, and haven’t heard a thing, of course.  And then there are the otherwordly whispers, maniacal mutterings, and the sounds of a whimpering child that Nell alone hears.

Nell’s become unhinged, Theo ( who in the book is a lesbian and we still get hints of it here in the movie) is jealous or upset or just a bit of a bitch and as cold as ice, Luke is getting progressively less cocky and more frightened, and Markway genuinely fears for Nell’s sanity.  Markway’s skeptical wife shows up — oops, Nell had a bit of a crush on Markway — and the house comes unhinged with another huge manifestation, including the famous doors that push inward under the mighty weight of something truly horrible and mercifully invisible.  Mrs. Markway disappears, Nell finds herself traipsing up the rickety spiral staircase, the same staircase from which an earlier Hill House inhabitant hung herself, and once at the top she alone sees a face staring at her from the ceiling.

That does it.  Nell has to go.  After many protestations and another waif-like solo dance, Nell finally is made to hit the road.  She doesn’t want to go, the house doesn’t want her to go, and it’s not going to lose her so easily.  As the rattled, disappointed and spurned Nell begins to drive off, the steering wheel is wrested from her hands.  She’s not doing the driving anymore.  The unquiet dead of Hill House are in the driver’s seat now, and before she reaches the gatehouse, her car slams into a tree, killing her instantly.  Nell gets to stay at Hill House after all.

I don’t mean to underplay the genuine thrills and scares in The Haunting.  The movie is stylish, the photography innovative, the tone consistently intelligent and mature, something that we always love to see in a horror movie but often don’t.  That intelligence ratchets up the stakes, makes even the skeptics among us ponder the eerie possibilities of the supernatural.  The creative verisimillitude that Robert Wise brought to The Haunting is what keeps it fresh and riveting after over forty-five years.  I’ve watched it countless times over the years, I’m sure first when it would play as a network primetime movie, and then many times after that, and it never fails to impress.  It’s a virtuoso piece of fright, and once seen, never forgotten.   

We’ve all been hitting the horror this week, but Halloween can be more than that.  To wish you a Happy and hilarious Halloween, I’m going to leave you with this extremely amusing movie-themed skit from last week’s Saturday Night Live.  I think it’s perfectly appropriate for Movie Morlocks, as it will mean even more to those of us who love classic movie personalities.  It’s just a bit naughty, and not exactly for the kiddies, so keep that in mind!  If you don’t laugh…well, Happy Halloween anyway!  (By the way, that’s TV’s Mad Men star Jon Hamm as James Mason, and SNL‘s Kirsten Wiig as Gloria Swanson, Bill Hader as Vincent Price, and Fred Armisen as Liberace.)