The Haunting
October 2003 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Most contemporary horror movies are not very scary. Good special effects have become affordable to all, so the temptation to portray the supernatural in explicit detail becomes too great for most producers and directors. Audiences are thus subjected to graphic gore by the pound, which is more disgusting and disturbing than frightening. An exception is young director M. Night Shyamalan, who seems to realize that what one senses, but cannot see, is what really sends chills up and down the spine. For the first 80 minutes, his Signs is a textbook study in terror; he creates the fear with rustlings, stirrings, and implication. Shyamalan cops out at the end, showing us what we might have feared, creating an ending that is not worthy of the movie to which it seems hastily attached.

Robert Wise made no such compromise in his 1961 filming of The Haunting, keeping the audience guessing right to the end. He based the movie on a best seller by Shirley Jackson, one that tells the story of an evil house. Spirits supposedly inhabit it, and a team of investigators set out to prove that the ghosts really exist. Using odd camera angles and close-ups of strange statues and household objects, Wise creates a sense of unease that immediately starts an audience member breathing more heavily. There is definitely something wrong with this mansion, but what?

After the sleuths are safely inside, the sounds begin. Humphrey Searle’s often atonal music score intensifies heavy thumpings and unidentifiable higher-frequency sound. The climax is a scene near the end, when everyone is inside the spooky house’s study. They hear banging and thuds that intensify in frequency and loudness until the locked door starts to bulge inward. What is behind it? The audience is never shown, and that is ten times more terrifying than if it were.

The movie was shot in sharply contrasted black-and-white Panavision. The previous releases of it pale beside this one, which is razor sharp. Every detail of the spooky edifice is clear, as are the minutest expressions of terror on the actors’ faces. Forty years ago, anamorphic widescreen was used to the max. Many scenes in this movie place actors on opposite sides of the screen, so this title is a good raison d’être for the new widescreen TV you might have just purchased.

The sound, alas, sucks. That is the only word for it. Even by mono optical-track standards, this is poor audio, garbled and indistinct at times, and produced at such a low level that I had to crank my master volume up 8dB higher than usual. Since sound is one of the main factors contributing to the terror depicted in this movie, the scares are somewhat reduced. Even so, it is still a very scary experience and highly recommended for Halloween haunting. I almost forgot the extras. There are two: a thoroughly enjoyable and informative commentary track with Wise, Claire Bloom, Julie Harris, Russ Tamblyn, and screenwriter Nelson Gidding; and a totally lame, disposable "Great Ghost Stories" essay, done in still frame.

Along with this DVD, Warner has released several additional "scary" flicks, stretching the definition in the process. One is Howard Hawks’ production of The Thing From Another World (***). This receives a good video transfer and a quite decent audio one, which proves that optical mono can sound good. But there are no extras at all. Considering the importance of this movie in the science-fiction world, the omission of any ancillary material is criminal. House of Wax (***), its color looking like it was minted yesterday, has one big extra, the original 1933 Mystery of the Wax Museum (**1/2), complete in its two-strip Technicolor glory, as well as a short newsreel of the remake’s premiere. The release is finished out with a so-so transfer of the so-so The Omega Man (**) and Wait Until Dark (***1/2).

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