 Welcome to today's edition of Frightfully Forgotten. But to start things off, what are we drinking today? We're drinking Spivey Point Steemail. Mmm. Today we're going to be talking about a classic, probably one of the more influential horror movies that come out of the 60s I think. Yeah, it's almost like a blueprint for a lot of movies. Yeah. 1963's The Haunting, based off of the novel Haunting of Hill House. This has kind of been like a bit of a resurrection because now there's a Netflix show called The Haunting of Hill House. So this movie was the first adaptation of that material. It was directed by Robert Wise. He directed The Day the Earth Stood Still, West Side Story, The Andromeda Strain, and The Sound of Music. So, like, man, there's four, plus this one that we're doing, that's five like iconic movies. Yeah. Julie Harris is in this. She was in the dark half. Richard Johnson was in this, and he was Dr. Menard in the zombie. Russ Tamblin is in this. And he was also in West Side Story, and he's in the new Haunting of Hill House. Lois Maxwell is in this, too. She was Money Penny in all of the original James Bond's, all the way up to A View to a Kill. The movie starts off with a simple narration explaining the history of Hill House. The house is constructed 90 years ago by Hugh Crane. On his wife's way there to see the house for the first time, she died in a carriage crash. This is back in the days of horse and buggy. Hugh Crane then remarries, and his second wife ends up dying in the house this time by falling down the stairs. Then, Hugh Crane's daughter, Abigail, ends up inheriting the house, and she becomes a weird recluse. She hires this nurse to take care of her. She dies at night calling out to this nurse, but the nurse is busy making out with some young guy. This nurse companion is now inherited the house from Abigail. And she ends up hanging herself from the stairs in the library. So that's kind of the haunted history behind this house. Present time, Dr. Markway is looking to investigate the paranormal activities in this famously haunted place called Hill House. He's speaking to the current owner about spending time there, and she lets him, but with one caveat. He has to include the next heir to the house, Luke, in his investigations. Markway puts out invitations to several people to be included on this investigation team, and he is kind of targeting people who have had paranormal experiences in the past. So we're introduced to Eleanor, and she kind of lives a bit of a sad existence, sleeps on the couch at her sister's place. She helped pay for half of the car, but she has to beg them to use this car to go to do this investigation. She gets to the house, she's the first person there. In the house the rest of the people meet up, Theo, a woman who has kind of had some psychic abilities. And then of course there's Luke, who's going to be inheriting the house at some point. The doctor also explains that the house is built at weird angles, so doors will close and open by themselves, so it's not necessarily ghosts. The first night, the girls, Eleanor and Theo, they're trying to sleep. All of a sudden they hear bangs outside of their bedroom door. Boom! Boom! They keep getting louder and louder as it gets closer to the door. Then all of a sudden everything stops. They open the door. It's Luke and Dr. Markway. They had run off to go chase this dog, and they were outside of the house, and they ran back in. We start to hear Eleanor's thoughts. She kind of also feels like she doesn't belong anywhere, and now suddenly she's starting to feel like this is home. They feel a cold spot by the nursery. They also see writing on the wall. Laura starts to blame Theo that she's maybe picking on her and stuff like that. One night while they're trying to sleep, Eleanor thinks that she's holding Theo's hand as she wakes up, and there's nothing there, and she opens up her hand, and it's like, well, whose hand was I holding? Dr. Markway's wife ends up showing up, ends up being a real skeptic. She goes and stays in the nursery. All of a sudden they start to hear these bangs. At this point, everybody except Eleanor has been kind of skeptical about what's been going on. Now everybody's starting to hear it, and the door actually starts to bow. The doorknob starts to turn again. My wife's out there. I gotta go out there. No, you're not going out there. You don't know what's out there, and it starts to get really intense. Well, I'll show you the house real cheap, doc. He's even starting to believe what's going on. The next day, his wife is gone. Or gets sort of this feeling that she's gotta climb the staircase, and it's all fucking rickety too and everything. Dr. Markway starts to work his way up to try and coax her down. It's like it's all rickety, and the bolts are all coming out of the wall, and it's going to collapse at any moment, and that's where we're going to stop it. So if you want to see what's going to happen with Eleanor and Theodore, and Dr. Markway and Luke, keep watching the haunting. It's more than a classic horror. I think it's set the blueprint for a lot of things going forward. The first thing I noticed when I watched this movie was Evil Dead. Sam Raimi must have been a huge fan of this movie because the camera work, all the zooming in on things, it's so Evil Dead, or Evil Dead is so the haunting. And Evil Dead too, because there's that scene, and all those sounds and the beams and everything. Yeah, it's like that's purely right out of this movie. And the, why are you holding my hand so tight? That's Evil Dead too. I ain't holding your hand. Bobby! Super influential. Came at a time too where horror movies were starting to get hokey, and this movie is so classy. So you don't see any ghosts, you don't see any goblins, it's all camera work and it's implied in all sounds. Amazing sound work in this movie. It's kind of ahead of its time in the way it uses sound, I think. Yeah. It also uses the characters to their fullest potential. The story is driven by all of these characters. There's the doctor in this that grounds everything and always brings it back down to reality. What kind of revolves around Eleanor? Very tragic figure in this movie. She can be influenced very easily. Yeah. Which is why you kind of question what happens to her. Is this all going on up here? That's just it. Everybody's seeing what she's seeing. Yeah. Because you don't really know. The movie almost seems like a metaphor, though, for Eleanor's suffering. It's not only the haunting of Hill House, it's the haunting of herself. Another neat thing is this movie was shot in black and white at a time where color movies was pretty much a mainstay at this point. Decision made by both the studio and the director. The black and white for this movie works perfectly. I don't think it would be nearly as effective if shot in color. This movie for an hour and 51 minutes is not boring. It goes by pretty quick and there is a lot of dialogue, but it's all relevant to the story and you have to pay attention to it, right? It's like a 70's slow burn movie, you know? And this movie kind of really uses all your senses to its full advantage. The sound design of the loud bangs and stuff, visuals of all the camera work. It takes all your senses and really kind of uses them to scare you, which is perfect filmmaking for a horror movie. Not only do you hear it, the camera zooms into the door, right? And you hear the bangs and the girls are like, they're shit scared. It just shows these quick shots, like door the girls, door the girls. Then they're like, the sound is coming from above the door and it shows above the door. Then it shows the girls again. Then it's like, then it goes quiet. Then you see the little doorknob and it zooms right in on the doorknob and you see the doorknob start to turn and as the viewer you're like, what's going on? You have to check out the haunting. It basically set the standard, I think, for horror movies going forward as far as how to effectively achieve scaring somebody using a camera and sound. This movie was remade in the 90s. I remember seeing it in the theaters and hating it. It was terrible. Super over the top. It went against everything this movie stood for as far as holding back and not showing too much. Complete opposite way. Yeah, just threw everything out the window. If you're a fan of any haunting movies, of course, Andy Velhor. Movies like The Changeling 2? Please check out The Haunting from 1963. If you haven't seen it, it's not so much a forgotten movie. It's been overshadowed by other things that have been known to do things that this movie kind of did first. Yeah, and there's a remake of it. There's a TV show of it, so maybe not too many people know that there was an original movie to it. Yeah. Oh man. Check it out. And... Keep drinking.