Terror in the Haunted House | |
---|---|
![]() Theatrical poster | |
Directed by | Harold Daniels |
Screenplay by | Robert C. Dennis |
Produced by | William S. Edwards |
Starring | Gerald Mohr Cathy O'Donnell William Ching |
Cinematography | Frederick E. West |
Edited by | Tholen Gladden |
Music by | Darrell Calker |
Distributed by | Howco International Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 85 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Terror in the Haunted House (originally titled My World Dies Screaming) [2] is a 1958 American horror film produced by William S. Edwards and directed by Harold Daniels. The movie stars Gerald Mohr, Cathy O'Donnell, William Ching, and John Qualen. Its plot follows newlywed Sheila, who moves with her husband Philp into a rural Florida mansion which she is horrified to discover was the subject of a recurring nightmare for which she sought psychiatric care in Switzerland. The house is the key to events that have haunted her husband's family for a generation, and Philip's intent is to use her mind to unlock the mystery.
The film is notable for being one of only two movies shot in Psychorama, a stylistic gimmick which incorporated subliminal imaging onscreen. [3] [4] [5] Psychorama, also known as the Precon Process, is an example of the "pure hype and hucksterism" which was a component of the "effort to (...) cash in on the mid-1950s controversy over subliminal advertising." [6]
After living in Switzerland for 17 years, Sheila marries Philip Justin and begins having nightmares about a mansion owned by the Tierneys, a family she does not know.
Back in the US, after driving up to their destination in Florida, Sheila is horrified to see the nightmare mansion. Philip insists that her nightmares will end if they stay there. Caretaker Jonah Snell tells Sheila that the house was abandoned 17 years earlier and he has been waiting ever since for "the mad Tierneys" to come home.
Sheila begs Philip to take her away. He reluctantly agrees to leave, but the car will not start. Apparently someone has damaged the engine, forcing them to spend the night in the mansion.
Despite believing that she had never been there before, Sheila has vague memories of, as a little girl, falling in love with a boy who carved their initials on a tree trunk. Jonah denies the tree's existence.
That night, Sheila is awakened by screams, then sees a figure peering through her window. She tells Philip of what happened, and he decides it was Jonah trying to scare them away.
Come morning, Sheila finds a tree marked "SW + PT." SW are her old initials ("Sheila Wayne" was her maiden name) but cannot remember who PT is. Nevertheless, it proves that she had been there before.
Mark Snell, the mansion's owner, arrives and recognizes Philip each other. Confused about his presence, Mark decide to leave. Then he mistakenly calls Sheila "Mrs. Tierney", before quickly correcting himself. Sheila now understands the initials on the tree. PT is Philip Tierney – her husband's real name.
She asks Philip about his name and why he lied about the nightmare house. He admits everything and tells her that the two years she had spent in a Swiss sanatorium were not due to tuberculosis, as she thought, but because at age 7 she had had a nervous breakdown. The only way Sheila will be cured is to discover why she blanked out her memories. But to do so, she will have to go into the attic, the room that terrifies her. She will not go, so Philip stomps off in anger.
Jonah tells Sheila that at midnight, on the same day 17 years earlier, Matthew Tierney – Philip's grandfather – killed his sons Lawrence and Samuel in the attic with an axe. He then died. Samuel was Philip's father and Philip is the last of the Tierneys.
Mark convinces Sheila that Philip is trying to drive her mad. He says that he and Jonah will stand guard outside the bedroom. After being jolted awake by footsteps and screaming, she opens the door and sees Jonah fall from the stairs, to his death. Philip declares that Mark killed Jonah. Philip starts their car – which he himself had disabled – and tells Mark to head for the police station, as he is unfamiliar with the local roads. Mark leaves, and Sheila locks herself in the bedroom.
Philp bursts in and taunts Sheila to shoot him, to no avail. She loves him but believes he is becoming insane and asks to let her help him. He agrees, but only if she does whatever he says. He drags her to the attic, where she finally remembers witnessing the murders as a child. The recovered memory cures her on the spot. Sheila also suddenly knows that Jonah was the one who killed the Tierneys, insanely jealous of their wealth and wanting it all for his son, Mark.
In the attic, Mark attacks Philip with an axe. As they fight, Philip throws him onto the axe's pick end, [7] impaling him on the point.
While leaving the mansion, Philip summarizes the situation for Sheila. A guilt-ridden Jonah paid for her to go to Switzerland after the murders. Mark killed Jonah before he could confess. They walk out the door and Sheila says of the mansion, "it was truly haunted."
Life magazine, in its 31 March 1958 issue, ran an article on the use of sublminals in movies. The article says that My World Dies Screaming was not shot as a "subliminal perception" film per se. Rather, producer Edwards met the developers of the Precon Process, liked the idea, and had them "dub in" the subliminal images after the film had been completed.
The film used a prologue and an epilogue as a framing device. In the prologue, Mohr, directly addressing the audience, explained what Psychorama is, and in the epilogue, how it works. However, both the prologue and the epilogue had been removed from the video of the film by the time it was issued. Also, according to the AFI, "in the [film] print viewed, the original subliminal frames were replaced by animated drawings created for the video release." [8]
Only two films were made using Psychorama. The second, A Date with Death , a modern-day crime drama filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, was released in June 1959, less than a year after My World Dies Screaming. It too was from Howco Productions, produced by Edwards, directed by Daniels, and starred Mohr. Exactly what subliminal images were used in the film is apparently unknown. In the print the AFI viewed, "No inserted words or images were detected (...) either at normal or slow speed." But in certain parts of the film, "white dots flashed momentarily on the screen, indicating the likely places where the subliminal messages originally appeared." [9] [10]
After My World Dies Screaming was completed, Edwards did a presentation of Psychorama to a film trade group, the FCC, and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), to whom he showed clips from two versions of the film. One version contained "subliminal messages" and the other "the exaggerated supraliminal symbols" which are visible to the naked eye and found in the film and video as they exist today. [6] As to the use of Psychorama in movies, the Motion Picture Herald favorably noted in its 8 November 1958 issue that "exploitationwise, the undertaking as distinct showmanship possibilities" [11] and "sarcastically predicted that it would soon be possible 'for a showman to tell his patrons that they are seeing a second-feature film unconsciously, at the same time they are seeing the top feature consciously.'" [12]
Afraid of the supposed power of subliminals, the NAB amended its Television Code to prohibit TV stations from using "subliminal projection" in the advertisements they broadcast. Breaking the prohibition meant that the station might lose its NAB "Seal of Good Practice." The three television networks – ABC, CBS, and NBC – followed suit, banning the use of sublminals in advertising shown on their affiliated stations. However, no action was taken by any US governmental agency or by Congress, so that "To the present day there is no law [in the US] dealing with the issue of subliminally presented material" in advertising or programming on radio, television, or in film. [13] In the UK, though, the use of subliminal imaging "as a persuasive technique" was banned "from 1962 onward (...) because of the effect of this mental-imprint on young children's minds." [14]
My World Dies Screaming was distributed to theatres in the US by Howco Productions [12] and in the UK by Eros Films. [15]
As Terror in the Haunted House, the film was syndicated to TV stations in the US in February 1962 as part of Allied Artist's "Sci-Fi for the 60s" package of 22 films. [12]
My World Dies Screaming was released theatrically in the United States on a double bill with Lost, Lonely and Vicious in 1958. [16] However, according to the AFI. it did not have its "official" premiere until 1961 in Los Angeles, by which time it had already been re-titled Terror in the Haunted House. [8] The movie also played on an American International Pictures double bill in May 1961 with Hammer Film Productions 1960 release The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (aka Jekyll's Inferno aka House of Fright), "but that didn't last long" and the film was withdrawn from further theatrical showings. [17] [18]
A X-certificate was issued for the film by the BBFC on 16 February 1959, which prevented it from being shown in the UK to theatre audience members under age 16. [15] [19] However, My World Dies Screaming only "made it onto the British circuits in late 1961. playing second feature to the King Brothers' monster movie Gorgo (1961)." [14] The Encyclopedia of Horror Movies also states a UK release date of 1961. [20]
In 2001, Rhino Entertainment released the film on DVD. [16] The DVD's box, according to critic Clive Davies, claims erroneously that the film "was banned by the US Government." [21]
Reviews of My World Dies Screaming/Terror in the Haunted House appear to be scarce, and, of those, several are quite short and rather negative. For example. Davies calls the film a "b/w suspense bore" with "occasional, not at all scary subliminal images" [21] and Clive Gilmour in the 2 January 1960 issue of Maclean's ranks My World Dies Screaming as the second-worst movie of 1959, although no review accompanies the ranking. [22]
Likewise, British film scholar Phil Hardy's review is unfavorable, calling the film a "verbose slice of cut-price psychology devoted to the well-worn theme of the husband who tries to drive his wife mad. Or so it seems (...). Hardy also notes that "The sole interest of the film is that (...) the horror was supposedly enhanced by words or images subliminally superimposed on the screen." [20]
The subliminal superimpositions are described by academic critic Kevin Heffernan as "single frame, 'hidden' images such as skulls, knives, and spelled words like 'death' designed to trigger the audience's emotional responses." He goes on to say that these "subliminal imprints (...) remain below the level of consciousness of the viewer, supposedly causing a palpable but unexplainable dread and horror." [12]
In a similar vein, Atkinson describes the imprints as "a devil face, a bug-eyed face, a skull (in red), a cobra head and the message 'scream bloody murder'". But he gives the film a relatively favorable review, writing that it "is worth a look, if only to see how it was all done without the aide of copious amounts of Technicolour blood and gore that signified the psycho thrillers of the upcoming decades." [14]
"Significantly," writes Ackland, "the film reiterates the idea that the mind has a secret life, one that can be accessed with specifically designed procedures and techniques." Within the film, "induced dreams and hypnosis can recover deeply repressed memories, the associated horror being relived and re-experienced' by the characters and shared with the audience through the use of Psychorama. [14]
The film is most notable for popularizing the notion that certain films contain subliminal images, which continues to arise from time to time, with recent allegations of, for example, sexual images inserted into Disney's animated children's films [23] and "terrifying" images of corpses embedded in the Swedish-American horror film Midsommer (2019). [24]
The film was sampled by the rock band Evanescence in the song "Understanding" from the Evanescence EP and "Origin" on the demo CD Origin .[ citation needed ]
Wesley Earl Craven was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and editor. Amongst his prolific filmography, Craven was best known for his pioneering work in the horror genre, particularly slasher films, where he mixed horror cliches with humor and satire. Craven has commonly been recognized as one of the greatest masters of the horror genre due to the cultural impact and influence of his work.
Wes Craven's New Nightmare is a 1994 American meta supernatural horror film written and directed by Wes Craven, creator of 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street. A standalone film and the seventh installment in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, it is not part of the same continuity as previous films, instead portraying Freddy Krueger as a fictional movie villain who invades the real world and haunts the cast and crew involved in the making of the films about him. In the film, Freddy is depicted as closer to what Craven originally intended, being much more menacing and less comical, with an updated attire and appearance.
A scream queen is an actress who is prominent and influential in horror films, either through a notable appearance or recurring roles. A scream king is the male equivalent. Notable female examples include Barbara Steele, Sandra Peabody, Linda Blair, Olivia Hussey, Marilyn Burns, Neve Campbell, Daria Nicolodi, Dee Wallace, Jamie Lee Curtis, Heather Langenkamp, Shawnee Smith, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Linnea Quigley.
Robert Lawrence Stine, known by his pen name R.L. Stine, is an American novelist. He is the writer of Goosebumps, a horror fiction novel series which has sold over 400 million copies globally in 35 languages, becoming the second-best-selling book series in history. The series spawned a media franchise including two television series, a video game series, a comic series, and two feature films. Stine has been referred to as the "Stephen King of children's literature".
The final girl is a trope in horror films. It refers to the last girl(s) or woman alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. The final girl has been observed in many films, including Psycho, Voices of Desire, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, Alien, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, and Train to Busan. The term was coined by Carol J. Clover in her article "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film" (1987). Clover suggested that in these films, the viewer began by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experienced a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film.
The Amityville Horror is a 2005 American supernatural horror film directed by Andrew Douglas and starring Ryan Reynolds, Melissa George, and Philip Baker Hall. It also featured the debut of actress Chloe Grace Moretz. Written by Scott Kosar, it is based on the novel The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson, which was previously adapted into the 1979 film of the same name, while also serving as the ninth film in the Amityville Horror film series, which documents the experiences of the Lutz family after they move into a house at 112 Ocean Avenue, Long Island. In 1974, real-life mass murderer Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed six members of his family at the same house in Amityville, New York.
Debbie Ann Rochon is a Canadian actress and former stage performer, best known for her work in independent horror films and counterculture films.
Burial Ground is an Italian grindhouse zombie movie directed by Andrea Bianchi. It is one of several films released under the alternative title of Zombie 3.
Psychorama, also called the precon process, is the act of communicating subliminal information through film by flashing images on the screen so quickly that they cannot be perceived by the conscious mind. It is a subset of subliminal messaging that is applied only through non-verbal messages in film. The name most commonly refers to a "gimmick" in commercial movie production.
The Screaming Skull is a 1958 independently made American black-and-white horror film, produced by John Kneubuhl and directed by Alex Nicol, starring John Hudson, Peggy Webber, Russ Conway, Tony Johnson, and Nicol. The Screaming Skull marked Nicol's directorial debut; he decided to try it because he felt that he was not acting in the roles which he wanted. The film was distributed by American International Pictures as a double feature in different markets with either Earth vs. the Spider or Terror from the Year 5000.
Lisa Morton is an American horror author and screenwriter.
The Haunted Bedroom is a lost 1919 American silent drama film directed by Fred Niblo and starring Enid Bennett and Dorcas Matthews. The film was also distributed under the title The Ghost of Whispering Oaks.
Die, Monster, Die! is a 1965 science fiction horror film directed by Daniel Haller, and starring Boris Karloff, Nick Adams, Freda Jackson and Suzan Farmer. A loose adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's story "The Colour Out of Space", its plot follows an American man who, while visiting his English fiancee's familial estate, uncovers a series of bizarre occurrences.
Bedevil, styled BeDevil, is a 1993 Australian horror film directed by Tracey Moffatt, the first feature directed by an Australian Aboriginal woman.
Haunted – 3D is a 2011 Indian Hindi-language supernatural action horror film directed by Vikram Bhatt and starring Mahaakshay Chakraborty, Tia Bajpai, Achint Kaur and Arif Zakaria. It is the first Indian stereoscopic 3D horror film.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge is a 1985 American supernatural slasher film directed by Jack Sholder and written by David Chaskin. It stars Mark Patton, Kim Myers, Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger, and Robert Rusler. It is the second installment in the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. The film follows Jesse Walsh, a teenager who begins having recurring nightmares about Freddy Krueger after moving into the former home of Nancy Thompson from the first film.
Twists of Terror, originally titled Primal Scream, is a 1997 Canadian made-for-television horror anthology film directed by Douglas Jackson and starring Jennifer Rubin, Françoise Robertson, Nick Mancuso and Joseph Ziegler.
The House That Would Not Die is a 1970 American made-for-television supernatural horror film starring Barbara Stanwyck, Richard Egan, Michael Anderson Jr. and Kitty Winn. It premiered as the ABC Movie of the Week on October 27, 1970.
The Amityville Terror is a 2016 American horror film directed by Michael Angelo, and written by Amanda Barton. It was released direct-to-video, and is the sixteenth film to be inspired by Jay Anson's 1977 novel The Amityville Horror. Nicole Tompkins stars as Hailey Jacobson, the daughter of a dysfunctional family that is terrorized by both evil spirits and malicious townspeople after moving into a haunted house in Amityville, New York.