| The Monsters I Grew Up With |
| The Haunting of Hill House |
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| No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality, even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within, iut had stood so for 80 years and might stand for 80 more. |
| Home of Hugh Crain |
| This is it for me....the biggy! The one that stayed with me ALWAYS! The scariness from it never seemed to go away and in doing some research here for this very web site that I came across a lot on this old time classic. One site led me to an exert from the script. I'm ashamed to admit but honestly as I sat here reading it, the hair stood up on my arm.....thats how affected I still am by the scares of this movie. I saw it when I was pretty young and by 4th grade had such a fascination with it that I wrote an essay about it that I had to read out loud in front of the class. It was 4 pages long and was written on lime green notebook paper, sure some of you old timers remember when they came out with colored notebook papers. And guess what....now all these years later I still have that essay in my box of things I simply cannot throw away! |
| It has been discussed what a classic this old flick is and the way it was made and the fact that it was all in the sounds cause you never saw one monster or ghost. They set it up so your mind could just run wild and all you were given to work with was the sounds. Quite extraordinary if you ask me. It also was done in black and white and the story line was very good. All the years these movies stick with you I feel the hardest ones to put to rest are the ones that leave you with questions in the end. And its funny that over the years as I grew older I still could not come to any conclusions as when I was young and did not have a clue about a lot of things in this film....It seems sometimes they pride themselves on leaving you hanging. |
| I was always terrified by this house, its size, its sounds. A few weeks ago looking over things about this movie something dawned on me that I had not thought of before. In my 40's I seemed to be having a re-accurring dream, actually a nightmare that caused me to wake up in the middle of the night trembbling away. It was always in this huge huge mansion. In each nightmare there was an entity that would start to come. I could always feel it in my dreams. I would always be running around trying to get people out of the house through the front door and it never failed.....as I got to the door it always slammed shut and locked me in. Over the years of having this dream I was able to see alot of the house as it seemed the dreams took me to each room, still always ending at the front door. |
| The last dream I remember having was in the back of the house off the kitchen. There was a staircase that went up four flights and you could lean over the railing and see down to the main floor. At the base of the staircase was a table that kept a vase of flowers on a stiffly starched white cotten doile and a phone. In that last dream I remember trying to call for help as the house had already locked me in. I could feel the entity getting stronger and was absolutely terrified. As I looked up all I could see was this very large 4 drawer metal filing cabinet coming down to land on my head. Its strange I never had the dream again after that one. |
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| So here we skip ahead to 1996 and the remake of this movie. Well most of us are aware that when a remake is made the same story line is usually followed but in this case things were changed. Very strange to see them do this with a story. That is when I came across even more strange things. As a kid I atteneded all parochial schools and just the other day we were talking about a book written by Shirley Jackson called "The Lottery". Ya know in all the times I have seen this movie I still, up till last week never knew why we kept seeing it in religion class. First in grade school and then again in high school. |
| Eleanor in the original version on the wobbly staircase as the Doctor pleads for her to come down |
| It always puzzled me as to whats its meaning was in reference to my faith. Finally after all these years I came across the reason for this all going down. |
| It is mandatory reading in all of our school system.My question is "Why?". I'm still clueless to its meaning in regard to anything. Oh don't get me wrong, the movie itself shouts out with messages of how cultures that seem so progressed can be just as behind as cavemen....but don't we see that all over the world today, even tho its practically the birth of 2007? Progression is a funny thing even with the swifest of todays cultures. Still what was the real message that seemed hidden in this movie. |
| Imagine my pure astonishment in finding out that the author of my favorite "Hill House" was no other than the authoer of "The Lottery". Both of these movies left me puzzled with questions of meanings and outcomes. Then along with my ongoing nightmares of a hugh mansion that locks you injust like they were locked in - in the Haunting of Hill House makes me have even more wonder. |
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| The new Hill House |
| Shirley' Jackson's The haunting of Hill House has unnerved readers since its original publication in 1959. A tale of subtle, psychological terror, it has earned its place as one of the significant hauted house stories of the ages. |
| Eleanor Vance has always bee a loner, shy vulnerable and bitterly resentful of the 11 years she lost while nursing her Mother. " She had spent so long alone, with no one to love, that is was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self- consciousness and an awkward inability to find words." Eleanor has always sensed that one day something big would happen, and one day it does. She receives an unusal invitation from Dr. John Montague, a man fascinated by "supernational manifestations." He organizes a ghost watch, inviting people who have been touched by otherworldly events. A paranormal incident from Eleanor's childhood qualifies her to be a part of Montague's bizzare study - along with headstrong Theodora, his assistant and Luke, a well to do aristocrat. They meet at Hill House, a notorious estate in New England. Hill House is a foreboding structure of towers, buttresses, Gothic spires, gargoyles, strange angles and rooms within rooms - a place"without kindness, never meant to be lived in...." Although Eleanor's initial reaction is to flee, the house has a mesmerizing effect, and she begins to feel a strange kind of bliss that entices her to stay. Eleanor is a magnet for the supernatural - she hears deathly wails, feels terrible chills, and sees ghostly apparitions. Once again she feels isolated and alone - neither Theo or Luke attract so much eerie company. But the physical horror of Hill House is always subtle; more disturbing is the emtional toment Eleanor endures. Intense, literay and harrowing, The Haunting of Hill House belongs in the same dark league as Henry James's classic ghost story, "The Turning of the Screw". |
| Nell on her way to Hill House |
| Theo, Luke, Nell & Dr. Markway |
| Julie Harris Eleanor Vance "Nell" Claire Bloom Theodora "Theo" Richard Johnson Dr. John Markway Russ Tamblyn Luke Sanderson |
| Cast |
| Director: Robert Wise 1963 |
| I was absolutely thrilled to see the RE-MAKE come along! Could not wait to see it. A re- make of one of my favorite movies. There has been so much contraversy over the re-make, but for me I was happy because I had hoped it would answer some of the questions I still had. Many a folk are mad that "THEY" changed the story and feel that if Shirley Jackson was still alive, she would be furious. Some questions that arose were....Can they change copyrighted authors work? Well they did it in the movie "The Notebook", a lot changed, so I guess when the writer sells his work to Hollywood, somewhere in the long 100 page contract it gives them the right to re-write a few things to make it more movie sellable. Personally, I think that stinks, mainly because in "The Notebook" they should have followed the true story line and we could have had a follow up movie cause the author has written an additional story line to "The Notebook". The only way for a follow up now with the way the movie ended, is to have Noah return as a Vampire which would then find him a page on this site! |
| a House with a Sinister Personality |
| Writer: Jan de Bont 1999 |
| This Versions Plot |
| When Eleanor, Theo and Luke decide to take part in a sleep study at a hugh mansion, they get more than they bargained for when Dr. Marrow tells them of the houses ghostly past. |
| Cast |
| Lili Taylor Eleanor Vance "Nell" Catherine Zeta-Jones Theodora "Theo" Liam Neeson Dr. John Marrow Owen Wilson Luke Sanderson Bruce Dern Mr. Dudley Marion Seldes Mrs. Dudley |
| He was looking for fright..... and he found it! |
| Nell being lured to the Nursery that had been closed up for 130 years |
| The children telling Nell to set them free |
| Hugh Crain coming after Nell |
| Metamorphasis of Muffy |
| Outside the Mansion |
| Sweets To Die For |