Review – The House on Haunted Hill (1958)

Rare indeed are movies where the re-make is better than the original. Even rarer are such cases when the original was a Vincent Price vehicle and the re-make was for the most part an effects-intensive parade of cheap thrills. However, there’s just no getting around the main problem here: the fifties version of this story is just downright boring. It features a little of legendary gimmick-meister William Castle’s gift for showmanship, but it’s also weighed down by a heapin’ helpin’ of his awful misuse of character, plot, production values, and just about everything else that Price might have been able to work with. The final product is good for a few unintentional laughs but not much more. Mildly amusing