The Haunting

Wednesday 14 May at 7.30pm

Robert Wise | USA | 1963 | 117 mins | R16

Celebrated as one of the scariest films of all time, this eerie tale about a gothic manor house which just may be haunted is a masterclass in the power of suggestion.

“A lengthy, narrated prologue establishes the evil history of a New England mansion built by mad patriarch Hugh Grain. Hill House has been the site of many tragedies over 80 years, but Jackson believes, and Wise suggests, the place isn’t really haunted until Eleanor Vance (Julie Harris) moves in. Along with Theodora (Claire Bloom), a slinky psychic, and Luke (Russ Tamblyn, held over from Wise’s West Side Story), who expects to inherit Hill House one day, Eleanor has been recruited by the suave-but-cranky parapsychologist Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson) for a study project in the supernatural. Like Jack Nicholson in The Shining (1981), Eleanor is at once terrorised and seduced by the house and, at the end, becomes its resident ghost.”—Ian Frear, Empire