Haunting, The (1963) (4K UHD Review)
Director
Robert WiseRelease Date(s)
1963 (May 26, 2026)Studio(s)
Argyle Enterprises/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (Shout! Studios/Scream Factory)- Film/Program Grade: A-
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: B
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
“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 the hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House opens with that extraordinarily evocative paragraph, establishing far more than just the setting in which her story will take place. In Stephen King’s 1981 horror survey Danse Macabre, he asserted that “there are few if any descriptive passages in the English language that are any finer than this; it is the sort of quiet epiphany that every writer hopes for: words that somehow transcend words, words that add up to a total greater than the sum of the parts.” This single, deceptively simple paragraph implies that Hill House is a conscious, living entity, but that its inability to find the release of dream states has left it unbalanced and insane. And yet it looks perfectly normal, while still hiding dark secrets within, secrets that have a long history. In a way, Jackson’s Hill House serves as a proxy for the story’s protagonist Eleanor Vance, a woman who struggles to maintain a façade of normality while hiding a dark secret inside: her inability to face her own absolute reality has resulted in her constructing waking dream states instead. Eleanor, not sane, is standing by herself and holding the darkness within.
Inevitably, the complexity of literary devices like this one gets lost in the transition from the printed page to the silver screen, and such is the case with Robert Wise’s 1963 adaptation The Haunting. Nelson Gidding’s script streamlines Jackson’s prose and introduces the device of voiceovers in order to convey her omniscient perspective—and so his condensed version of the opening paragraph is spoken aloud by paranormal investigator Dr. John Markway:
“An evil old house, the kind some people call haunted, is like an undiscovered country waiting to be explored. Hill House had stood for 90 years and might stand for 90 more. Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there... walked alone.”
That’s far simpler, more direct, and yet something has been lost in the translation. Mind you, that’s not a criticism of Wise’s adaptation, which is one of the finest horror films of the Sixties. It’s just an acknowledgment that books are books, film is film, and there can never be a perfect one-to-one correspondence between the two. Jackson’s group of paranormal investigators who willingly subject themselves to the insanities of Hill House aren’t quite the same as Wise’s group; for some reason, Dr. John Montague in the book has been rechristened as Dr. John Markway in the film, and even the spelling of Luke Sannerson has been subtly altered. But their functions remain identical: Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson) is the credulous believer; Luke (Russ Tamblyn) is the reluctant skeptic; Theodora (Claire Bloom) is the psychic who feels what others can’t; and Eleanor (Julie Harris) is the locus of the paranormal activities that happen within the darkness of Hill House.
That’s because Hill House recognizes a kindred spirit when it sees one, and it even sends a message to the group, written in chalk on the walls: “HELP ELEANOR COME HOME.” But did the house really write that message, or someone else? That question is the heart and soul of both The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting, although the way that it is resolves differs somewhat—once again, the book is the book, the film is the film, and however much that they may inform each other, never the twain shall meet.
And that’s because Wise’s approach was quite different than Jackson’s. Much has been made of the time that he spent working under Val Lewton at RKO during the Forties, but the reality is that The Haunting doesn’t display as much of the Lewton influence as it may appear to at first glance. Lewton specialized in psychological horror, leaving most of his terrors to the imagination, relying on subtlety and inference rather than overt displays of the supernatural (although he wasn’t entirely immune to the allure of a good jump scare). Wise directed two projects for Lewton, The Curse of the Cat People and The Body Snatchers, but while those films do share moments of commonality with The Haunting, the gulf between them is still quite wide.
That gap was filled in by the influence of another one of Wise’s mentors: Orson Welles. There’s far more of Welles at play in The Haunting than Val Lewton, from the deep-focus black and white photography to the nature of the montage (the flashbacks showing the history of Hill House almost play like a deleted scene from The Magnificent Ambersons). Wise and cinematographer Davis Boulton employed 28mm wide angle lenses to help maintain the focus and provide some intentional distortion to the image that suggests H.P Lovecraft’s non-Euclidian geometry. The walls of Wise’s Hill House don’t continue upright, the bricks don’t meet neatly, and the walls aren’t sensibly shut. He even employed a rotating anamorphic effect when the Presence is pounding on the walls in search of Eleanor near the end, one that Sam Raimi would end up borrowing for a similar scene in Evil Dead II. And when that pounding occurs, what causes it may remain unseen, but the effect is still about as subtle as a brick to the face.
Lewton relied on subtlety and suggestion; Welles painted his intentions with a broad brush. With The Haunting, Wise landed somewhere in the middle between the two extremes, but when push came to shove, he tilted more toward Welles. That also tilted him further away from Jackson, who never really resolves whether or not her apparitions are real or just an external manifestation of Eleanor’s psyche. And yet she closes the novel with a restatement of her opening paragraph, slightly reworded but otherwise nearly verbatim. Eleanor may (or may not) have allowed her waking dream states to act as a bulwark against absolute reality, but Hill House, not sane, still stands by itself against the hills. Wise’s film, on the other hand, leaves far less to the imagination. The final paragraph has been significantly reworded, and this time, it’s spoken aloud by Eleanor Vance:
“Hill House has stood for 90 years and might stand for 90 more. Within, walls continue upright, bricks meet, floors are firm, and doors are sensibly shut. Silence lies steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House. And we who walk here... walk alone.”
Davis Boulton shot The Haunting on black-and-white 35mm film using anamorphic Panavision lenses, framed at 2.35:1 for its theatrical release. (The stark, high-contrast establishing shots of Hill House were shot with infrared stock instead, using red and orange filters to enhance the effect). This version is based on a 4K scan of the original camera negative, digitally remastered and graded for High Dynamic Range in Dolby Vision and HDR10. The results are a sight to behold, offering dramatic improvements over the previous Blu-ray—in more ways than one. Naturally, fine details are sharper and more refined, but The Haunting also appears to have been printed A/B roll rather than single strand, and all of the numerous optical transitions like dissolves and fades have been recreated digitally here from the negative—it doesn’t look like any dupe elements were used. The abundance of optical work in the film has always dragged it down a bit due to the generational loss involved, but everything looks pristine here. Densities, grayscale, contrast, and black levels all look flawless, too. In the immortal words of René Belloq, it’s beautiful.
Audio is offered in English 2.0 mono and 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English SDH subtitles. The Haunting was originally released in mono, and this new 5.1 remix is processed mono, with some synthesized stereo spread and light steering added, but nothing that takes away from the character of the original mix. It’s worth auditioning, but I ended up preferring the mono track. Either way, fidelity is somewhat limited, so don’t expect any real low frequency extension during the scenes with the pounding on the walls, and the dynamic range is limited as well. The best advice is to turn the volume up as loud as you can stand without doing damage to your hearing, and while that doesn’t necessarily add any dynamics, it does give the sound effects a bit more heft.
The Scream Factory/Shout! Studios 4K Ultra HD release of The Haunting is a two-disc set that includes a remastered Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film. It also includes a slipcover that duplicates the theatrical one-sheet poster artwork on the insert (and yes, Virginia, it is the original artwork, so don’t complain). The following extras are included:
DISC ONE: UHD
- Commentary with Tracy Letts and Sean Fennessey
- Commentary with Dr. Karen Stolznow, Matt Baxter, and Blake Smith
- Commentary with Robert Wise, Nelson Gidding, Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, and Russ Tamblyn
DISC TWO: BD
- Commentary with Tracy Letts and Sean Fennessey
- Commentary with Dr. Karen Stollznow, Matt Baxter, and Blake Smith
- Commentary with Robert Wise, Nelson Gidding, Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, and Russ Tamblyn
- Theatrical Trailer (SD – 2:30)
The extras are limited to commentary tracks and the theatrical trailer, but two of commentaries are new to this edition. The first is with actor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Letts, joined by Sean Fennessey from The Big Picture podcast. To his credit, Letts acknowledges up front that Pulitzer Prize or not, he’s not a historian or academic, and he’s only here as a fan. Fanboys or not, Letts and Fennessey did do their research, and it’s an interesting discussion. They analyze the story, identify the Welles and Lewton influences, and also discuss Robert Wise’s work, the cinematography, the cast, the sound, and the production design—and they even tell a few personal stories along the way.
The second new commentary reunites linguist and author Karen Stollznow with Blake Smith, both of whom host the MonsterTalk podcast, joined here by paranormal investigator Matthew Baxter. Unfortunately, it’s a little more problematic than the Letts/Fennessey track, because regardless of whether or not they’re experts on monsters and/or the paranormal, they’re not necessarily experts on film, and the cracks do show (for example, they repeatedly refer to Julie Harris as Claire Bloom). They also do a lot of unnecessary joking and reacting. As much as I appreciate Stollznow (her 2020 book On the Offensive: Prejudice in Language Past and Present is an invaluable resource), this is a disposable track.
The final commentary was originally produced for the 2003 DVD from Warner Home Video. It’s a curated track, featuring separate contributions from Robert Wise, Nelson Gidding, and the primary cast—Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, and Russ Tamblyn. It’s easily the best of the three commentaries, and a priceless collection of thoughts from the original participants, only two of whom (Bloom and Tamblyn) are still with us as of this writing. The actors naturally focus on their characters, but Wise and Gidding offer more technical and structural notes. There are quite a few gaps, but it’s still worth listening through to the end.
Despite any differences between the book and the film, The Haunting is a genuine classic, and it belongs in the library of every horror fan, every Robert Wise fan, every Shirley Jackson fan, and every fan of cinema in general. In other words, buy this UHD, no matter who you are, because you’ll never see The Haunting looking any better than it does here. Highly, highly recommended.
-Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).