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United Kingdom, United States · 1963
Rated G · 1h 52m
Director Robert Wise
Starring Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn
Genre Horror
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Dr. Markway, doing research to prove the existence of ghosts, investigates Hill House, a large, eerie mansion with a lurid history of violent death and insanity.
In this movie version, directed by Robert Wise, the specter is slightly censored—what's left is just the usual commercial spirit. Whenever it appears, the violins on the sound track start to didder, doors open and shut by themselves, people stare about in terror and squeak: The house, it's alive! The picture, it's dead.
The New York Times by Bosley Crowther
So it looks as though this film simply makes more goose pimples than sense, which is rather surprising and disappointing for a picture with two such actresses, who are very good all the way through it, and produced and directed by the able Robert Wise.
It's one of the most highly-wrought (indeed, overwrought) films ever made, with art direction, editing, sound effects, weird camera angles and lighting orchestrated to fill every frame with hints of the unsettling.
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
Robert Wise's 1963 black-and-white 'Scope translation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House was pretty effective when it came out, aided by Wise's skill as an editor.
Sound effects, disorienting camera work, expert editing, and Humphrey Searle's discomfiting score all suggest, without showing, a horrible presence waiting in the wings. Though parts of The Haunting are talky, even that works in the film's favor, as Tamblyn's glib dismissals and Johnson's calm professorial tone are unable to clear up the mystery at its core. After all, the specters that can't be seen, classified, or otherwise contained are the scariest of all.
The New Yorker by Pauline Kael
An elegantly sinister scare movie, literate and expensive, with those two fine actresses Claire Bloom and Julie Harris.
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A striking work of psychological horror that constructs a chilling atmosphere within Hill House while still maintaining the terrifying sense of ambiguity that makes Shirley Jackson’s novel, its source text, so memorable.