31 Days of Halloween 2013: The Haunting (October 26th and 27th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[THE HAUNTING screens Saturday October 26th at 7:25 pm and Sunday October 27th at 8:50 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]


Review by Bob Ignizio

Are you the sort of person who craves a genuinely scary movie, but without all the blood and gore? Then look no further than Robert Wise's THE HAUNTING from 1963, based on Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House. THE HAUNTING is shot in rich, silvery black and white and generally suggests its horrors rather than showing them. By this time Hammer films had already changed the face of horror films by reviving the classic movie monsters like Frankenstein and Dracula with a greater emphasis on sex and violence, and independent films like H. G. Lewis' BLOOD FEAST went even further. Compared to such contemporaries THE HAUNTING may seem old fashioned on the surface, but in its themes and ideas are actually far more modern and adult.