If a movie poster hasn’t stopped you in your tracks it’s failed at its first selling point to get you interested to see it. It’s like an ad, your first glimpse at what’s to come. Often the best posters use specific colour schemes and visuals to catch your eye. Sometimes they feature a character or illustrated film scene. Sometimes they are so plain, abstract or weird that in itself is intriguing enough to further more investigation.
The man with the velvety voice, actor Vincent Price (1911-1993) was best remembered as the king of Hollywood horror. He first established his reputation for macabre terror in the 1953 film, House of Wax. He would help define the genre by starring in iconic films like The Fly (1958) and Return of the Fly (1959), as well as House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and The Raven (1963).
Price once said, “I don’t play monsters, I play men besieged by fate and out for revenge.” This summation perfectly describes his role in William Castle’s House on Haunted Hill (1959), where he plays the eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren, who invites five strangers to survive a night in his haunted mansion. There is no doubt Price is the star of this classic horror. His opening monologue at the start of the film always come to mind as he introduces our foolhardy supporting cast desperate to collect $10,000 if they pull through the night. I especially love how the guests arrive in seperate funeral hearses as a sick twisted joke orchestrated by Loren’s estranged wife, Annabelle (Carol Ohmart). Interestingly, she has her own motives for putting five strangers together, in the hopes that one of them will be so frightened that they will shoot her husband by accident, so she can inherit his immense wealth. But Loren is no fool, he has long suspected a murder plot against him. To his credit and unbeknown to everyone he plans to outwit his wife at her own game.
On the movie poster for House on Haunted Hill, Vincent Price stands suspiciously holding a candle in one hand and a severed head in the other. Is it a scene from the film? Did Price exact his cruel revenge against his wife? Or is it a sleight of hand by the filmmakers to conceal the plot? While legendary artist Reynold Brown’s poster is a brilliant piece of horror marketing, the movie itself doesn’t quite live up to the high stake scares on the poster.
The pulp terror of the coloured House on Haunted Hill movie poster offers a lot an audience might hope to see in the film. But where do we start? I’ve already pointed out Vincent Price prominence on it as the film’s central character. So how about its larger than life ghoulish four-story Gothic-inspired mansion? This fanciful horror trope is truly menacing with its rust-coloured rickety gate. However the real-life Ennis House with its pre-cast blocks in Los Feliz, California is the exterior stand in for the film’s house of horror. While it’s not what we might expect as a haunted house its “exoticism” serves the film’s needs.
I also really like the posters menacing sky with killer bats. Moreover, there is a distinctly visible dead tree on the left of the poster which adds to the surreal horror of the poster. Often dead trees come to represent decay and death. It aligns perfectly with the image of a woman being hanged by a gigantic skeleton. It dominates the poster with a masterful blend of art and marketing. Here the skeleton acts as a genuine horror monster. It will come to play an important part in the climatic end of the film. (The skeleton is comically listed as playing “himself” in the closing credits.) While the woman with the noose around her neck is presumably Annabelle Loren. [Spoiler ahead] In the film she stages her death by hanging to advance her plot to kill her husband.
Finally, the small illustration on the left bottom of the poster shows off a bubbling acid pit. It too, plays an important role in the demise of several characters in the movie.
If you are in the mood to explore the House on Haunted Hill film further, be warned it relies heavily on cheesy, camp gimmicks. But that’s okay, I was personally never expecting this B-movie horror to be anything else but fun. [Spoiler ahead] Though I must admit the opening scream of the film set against a pitch-black screen took me by surprise on my first viewing. In truth, it’s still alarming every time I hear it.
Rearview Mirror 
What an utter classic