‘The Haunting’: A Stunning And Tense Black-And-White Horror Classic

There have been plenty of films about haunted houses, but only one has truly stood the test of the time. The Haunting is an incredibly tense and unsettling film, one that’s notable for one major aspect: at no point during its 114-minute running time do we see a ghost, a ghoul, or a goblin. But The Haunting hits a sweet spot somewhere between your run-of-the-mill haunted house story and psychological thriller, and a technical feat that creates a general unease from the first reel to the last.

Based on The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, who is most notable for her canonized short story “The Lottery,” The Haunting stars theater legend Julie Harris as the timid and fragile Eleanor Lance, who is invited by Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson) for a weekend at Hill House, a large, sprawling manse that is known for its dark history and the rumored supernatural occurrences within the house’s walls. Joining Eleanor and Markway are the sexy and mysterious Theodora (Claire Bloom) as well as Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn), Hill House’s heir who plans to survey the property in order to sell it. Markway reveals that he chose the women for their experiences with the supernatural: Theodora is a known clairvoyant, while Eleanor is metaphorically haunted by the death of her invalid mother (and was present in her childhood home when stones fell on it from the sky).

Markway tells his guests about the history of Hill House, which was constructed by a man named Hugh Crain, whose wives both died on the property. His daughter, Abigail, never left the home, spending her life in the nursery until she died while calling for her nurse (who also later hung herself in the library). There’s an incredible eeriness about the home: the perspective of the walls and corners is off, drafts run rampant, and doors seem to open and close on their own. And then there are the noises at night, the loud banging that terrorizes Nell and Theo, as the women call each other, and seems to stalk up and down the halls.

Eleanor is a bit displaced following the death of her mother; before arriving at Hill House, she was sleeping on her sister and brother-in-law’s couch. Despite the moody atmosphere, there’s something about the Hill House that feels welcoming. She experiences that the house is calling toward her, inviting her in; on the second morning, a message in chalk mysteriously appears on a wall, reading “Help, Eleanor, come home.” She begins to hear voices — the stern, authoritative sound of an older man, as well as the laughter and cries of children.

That we never see who — or what — is causing all of these disturbances makes it that much more frightening. There’s no motive, no explanation, and that’s exactly what is so scary. As Markway tells Eleanor, the fear of the unknown is what drives most of our worldviews. “When people believed the Earth was flat, the idea of a round world scared them silly,” Markway says. “Then they found out how the round world works. It’s the same with the world of the supernatural. Until we know how it works, we’ll continue to carry around this unnecessary burden of fear.”

But there is certainly something sinister at play, which is heightened by Robert Wise‘s superb direction and Davis Boulton’s cinematography. Filmed on a brand-new 30mm Panavision lens, which was not yet ready for filming, The Haunting has a particular sensibility that comes from camera distortions. And then there are the fantastic quick-cuts and fast pans throughout the film that heighten the tension, rivaling the famous camera work in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

The stark, high-contrast black-and-white photography also plays a heavy role in establishing the film’s mood. Wise had worked in color before — most famously, two years prior, with West Side Story. Going with black-and-white film was a deliberate choice, and one can’t imagine The Haunting having the same effects in color. The film is extremely dark, its production design very claustrophobic and cluttered, and it feels as though the audience is trapped inside the maze-like mansion with Markway’s group.

It’s crucial that we never see the ghosts in the home, because it’s the home itself that preys on its inhabitants rather than the spirits contained within it. Wise and screenwriter Nelson Gidding strived to leave things unseen and unsaid (it should be noted that Theodora was the first lesbian character in a mainstream film to be depicted as feminine and not as a predator, although her sexuality is never explicitly shown.) With the black-and-white photography, too, Wise leaves a lot to the viewer’s imagination: the color of the paintings in the home, the details in the wallpaper, the patterns on the characters’ clothes. The central theme of The Haunting is the terror that comes from the unknown, and it perfectly nails that notion by keeping the audience from the danger in concrete forms. Instead, the threat exists inside our minds, crafted from a wide array of images collected together in order to influence our own paranoia and unease.

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Photos: MGM