DIRECTOR: Robert Wise
PRODUCER: Robert Wise
PRODUCTION CO: Metro Goldwyn Mayer
SCREENPLAY: Nelson Gidding, based on the novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
​PHOTOGRAPHY: Davis Boulton
EDITOR: Ernest Walker
MUSIC: Humphrey Searle
WITH: Julie Harris (Eleanor "Nell" Lance), Claire Bloom (Theodora "Theo"), Richard Johnson (Dr John Markway), Russ Tamblyn (Luke Sannerson), Fay Compton (Mrs Sannerson), Rosalie Crutchley (Mrs Dudley)
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REVIEWS

 “Declared the scariest film of all time by Martin Scorsese, Wise’s eerie tale of a gothic manor house whose massive wooden doors hide an unseen, but ever-present menace is a masterclass in the power of suggestion. Adapted from Shirley Jackson’s ornately literary ghost-infested gothic horror novel The Haunting of Hill House by frequent Wise collaborator Nelson Gidding, and starring Richard Johnson, Julie Harris and Claire Bloom, this chilling depiction of inner (and outer) disturbance casts a long, looming shadow over the history of horror cinema.”

– Melbourne Cinematheque

“A lengthy, narrated prologue establishes the evil history of a New England mansion built by mad patriarch Hugh Grain. Hill House has been the site of many tragedies over 80 years, but Jackson believes, and Wise suggests, the place isn't really haunted until Eleanor Vance (Julie Harris) moves in. Along with Theodora (Claire Bloom), a slinky psychic, and Luke (Russ Tamblyn, held over from Wise's West Side Story), who expects to inherit Hill House one day, Eleanor has been recruited by the suave-but-cranky parapsychologist Dr Markway (Richard Johnson) for a study project in the supernatural. Like Jack Nicholson in The Shining (1981), Eleanor is at once terrorised and seduced by the house… She is included in Markway's experimental party because of a Carrie-like adolescent burst of telekinesis, which bombarded her childhood home with pebbles — an event which she still hotly denies.”

– Ian Frear, Empire

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

​​​Whanganui
Monday, 17 March, 7.00pm

Auckland   
Monday, 28 April, 6.15pm

Dunedin
​Wednesday, 14 May, 7.30pm​

​Nelson 
Wednesday, 11 June, 6.00pm

Palmerston North   
Wednesday, 13 August, 6.00pm

Hamilton 
Monday, 13 October, 6.30pm

Canterbury
Monday, 20 October, 7.00pm

​Wellington   
Monday, 03 November, 6.15pm

​Wellington   
Monday, 03 November, 8.30pm
GHOST STORIES >>