The Haunting (1963)

Official trailer

The Haunting is Robert Wise’s 1963 American gothic horror film adapting Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House. The film depicts paranormal researcher Dr. John Markway inviting three subjects to spend a week at the supposedly haunted Hill House to investigate paranormal phenomena. Eleanor Vance, a fragile woman who has spent eleven years caring for her dying mother, becomes the central subject. Julie Harris plays Eleanor. Claire Bloom plays Theodora, a clairvoyant. Richard Johnson plays Markway. Russ Tamblyn plays Luke Sannerson, heir to the house.

Lois Maxwell plays Markway’s wife Grace. Fay Compton plays Mrs. Sannerson. Nelson Gidding wrote the screenplay. Argyle Enterprises and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer produced the film on a budget of approximately 1 million dollars. The work has aged into classic haunted-house cinema across later decades.

Few horror films have rattled me the way The Haunting does, and it barely shows me anything. I think Wise knew that a sound behind a door is worse than any ghost a makeup department could build, and Julie Harris makes Eleanor so lonely that I ache for her even as the house closes in. That mix of dread and heartbreak is why it gets a 9 from me.

The film is one of the defining haunted-house films and the strongest screen adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s novel. The Wise direction uses sound, suggestion, and Eleanor’s deteriorating mental state instead of visible apparitions or special effects. The camera depicts what Hill House does to its inhabitants instead of what supernatural beings might be doing within it. The Julie Harris performance carries the central role of a woman whose loneliness and psychological fragility make her perfect prey for whatever Hill House is.

The film treats the haunting as ambiguous in the same way The Innocents (1961) does, with the supernatural reading and the psychological reading remaining equally available throughout. The result is one of the few haunted-house films that works effectively through implication instead of display.

The Sound Design

Wise relied on sound instead of visual effects to construct dread. The film contains pounding noises that move through walls. Voices speak through closed doors. Eleanor hears whispers that name her. Doors breathe in and out as if something on the other side is alive. The audio design was considerably ahead of what 1963 horror filmmaking typically attempted.

The decision to suggest what it never shows became the model for later atmospheric horror. The director Robert Wise had previously edited Citizen Kane (1941) and directed The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). His technical understanding allowed him to construct sequences that worked through audio engineering instead of image. Later horror filmmakers have studied the pounding sequences in particular. The scene where Eleanor and Theodora hold hands while listening to the pounding moving down the corridor became one of the classic horror sequences.

The hand-holding scene is the reason I rank this so high. The pounding moves down the corridor, the two women cling to each other, and I sit there with my shoulders up around my ears waiting for whatever is out there to come through. I’ll take that over any rubber monster ever built.

Julie Harris as Eleanor

Harris plays Eleanor as a woman whose entire adult life has been care-giving for her dying mother.

She’s had no friends, no relationships, and no experiences beyond the sickroom. The trip to Hill House is the first event of her own life she’s chosen. The performance gives Eleanor the desperation of someone who has waited eleven years for permission to exist.

The performance establishes that Eleanor won’t return from Hill House. The audience sees her arrival as the beginning of her destruction instead of as a horror film victim’s setup. Harris plays Eleanor with the precise quality of someone seeking belonging in any form available, including becoming part of a haunted house that wants her. The film’s closing scene, where Eleanor’s voice joins the house’s narration, supports the reading. Hill House has been wanting someone for ninety years. Eleanor was looking for somewhere to belong. They found each other.

I find Harris almost unbearable to watch, in the best way. Eleanor’s hunger to belong somewhere is so raw that the ending plays like a homecoming, and that homecoming stays with me after the pounding stops.

The Theodora Subtext

Claire Bloom plays Theodora as a clairvoyant whose lesbian identity is suggested through 1963-permitted coding.

Theodora’s references to having left a relationship with another woman, her physical interest in Eleanor, and her sharp wit all signal the character’s sexuality through indirect means. The 1963 Production Code constrained how directly the film could depict Theodora. The constraints produced suggestion instead of statement.

Jackson’s source novel makes Theodora’s lesbian identity considerably clearer.

The film softens the content without eliminating it. Later productions including the 2018 Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House have addressed the character more directly. The 1963 film’s restrained approach has aged better than the explicit versions in later adaptations. The suggestion in the 1963 film works with more power than the direct treatment in later versions, because the audience completes the implication instead of receiving the information.

I’m with the film on this. Bloom’s Theodora is sharp, funny and a little dangerous, and I think the coding gives her a charge the more explicit versions lose. After Eleanor, she’s my favorite person in the house.

Does The Haunting still hold up?

The Haunting is the strongest screen adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s novel and the haunted-house film I’d point anyone toward first.

The sound design does what effects never could, Julie Harris makes Eleanor’s destruction feel inevitable, and the Theodora subtext hums under every scene. That’s why it’s a 9: it frightens me with almost nothing on screen, and I can’t think of higher praise for a horror film. Watch it with the lights off and the sound up.

Frequently Asked Questions