My mom loved this movie. She wouldn't love this version I'm watching, though, because she hated colorized movies. This movie is infamous among my family as "the movie that made uncle George jump," because there's a scene in the movie where a witch pops out and grabs someone in the arm, and that jump scene scared my uncle George so much he jumped and grabbed my mom's arm after letting out a shriek. Gotta love it. I try to watch this movie every few years, and it's been awhile, so it's about time I watched it again.
In this movie, the rich and eccentric millionaire Frederick Loren invites five guests to a supposedly haunted house, offering them a proposition: if they stay in the house all night long without dying of terror, they'll get ten thousand dollars each (ten thousand dollars was worth a lot more back then, with the rate of inflation it doesn't go as far as it once did). Loren promises them that his wife will join them soon. The terms of the offer say that they must spend the entire night without leaving in order to get the money, and the staff of the house will leave at midnight, locking them all in for the rest of the night alone. There are multiple plots and subplots going on here, but suffice it to say several people are lying about their true intentions, and as the night drags on, supernatural terrors happen over and over until the truth is revealed at the end.
The characters in this movie aren't very likeable. Well, I guess Nora is ok. She's the eye candy of the movie, the pretty young thing who functions as the damsel in distress. The infamous jump scare scene that scared my uncle so much happens fairly early on in the movie. Let's just say that the special effects in this movie don't hold up very well. I can usually be easily startled by sudden loud noises, but it didn't even make me jump. I still love the movie, though. Vincent Price plays the possibly crazy millionaire Frederick Loren, and he does a great job as always. His voice is mesmerizing. Plus I'm a sucker for movies where the bad people get their comeuppance in the end, like those old EC comics Tales from the Crypt stories where people commit murder only to have their victims return from the dead to exact revenge. If you like cheesy 50s and 60s horror flicks, you'll probably like this one.
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