House on Haunted Hill / The Bat

Vincent Price has one of his juiciest roles in 1958's HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL as millionaire playboy Frederick Loren, who invites five guests out to a genuine haunted house, offering them each $10,000 if they spend the night. Elisha Cook Jr. plays a nervous alcoholic who has been in this house before and witnessed some terrible things. Mr. Loren's beautiful but treacherous wife (Carol Ohmart) is also present--and might be out to kill Frederick during the course of the evening; then again, he might be out to kill her. Severed heads, a skeleton, an acid vat, ghostly screams, and a noose that creeps around on its own and strangles unsuspecting victims are just some of the treats in a film that has been spooking delighted audiences on late-night TV for decades. Producer-director William Castle claimed this was filmed in a process called Emergo, which meant that at a key moment a glow-in-the-dark skeleton on a wire was rigged to sail over the audience's heads. The skeleton is long since gone, but the goofy thrills remain in this classic tale, from a script by Robb White.

Price also stars in THE BAT (1959), another haunted house mystery, this one based on the Gothic novel by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Agnes Moorehead plays a mystery writer who has just moved into a spooky old mansion. Its former owner was recently killed--but not before hiding one million ill-gotten dollars somewhere in the house; now, a nefarious killer known only as "The Bat" is trying to find the money, and bodies and mysteries pile up in the strange old house.