Abbott and Costello Horror Part One

HOLD THAT GHOST
(1941)
Dir - Arthur Lubin
Overall: GOOD

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello's well-oiled schtick was already in fine form on Hold That Ghost, the pair's forth film in two years for Universal and first of six horror comedies.  While some of the familiar gags might drag out a little too long due to their predictability, (both the candle and gambling-turned-bedroom scenes could have each been cut in half), there is plenty to laugh out loud with.  The dance sequence alone between Costello and Joan Davis is pure silliness and the opening scene where they act as replacement waiters who quickly get fired is just the kind of shenanigans that Bud and Lou would become famous for.  Unfortunately, Universal shoehorned The Andrew Sisters into a few completely unnecessary musical numbers having them under contract at the time and also featured in the duo's two proceeding movies.  While this would set the template for all of the future, "nobody believes anything Costello says/sees" horror-tinged outings from them, it is a solid such starting point nonetheless.  Plus, Shemp Howard shows up for one scene so you cannot possibly complain there.

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN
(1948)
Dir - Charles Barton
Overall: GOOD

Generally regarded as the duo's best overall film or if not, certainly their strongest horror comedy, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is a splendid experience for a multitude of reasons.  While the script and particular gags are as silly and expected as any from the pair's hefty cinematic catalog and it is the same old set up where Abbot is the annoyed straight man and Costello is a bumbling, childlike goof who cannot convince anyone of anything, to pair all of this with Universal's big three monster characters is highly appropriate.  At this point, Universal's monster movies were getting unintentionally ridiculous anyway,so to see them go for deliberate laughs for a change brought everybody in on the joke and it works quite beautifully.  Seeing Lugosi alone back in the official Dracula garb is a treat enough, but Lon Chaney Jr. also being along for the ride and both actors playing it straight and taking it seriously gives Meet Frankenstein a great respectability as a fun send-up.  Throw in Glenn Strange, (who allegedly was cracking up so much on set that numerous additional takes had to be made), and even Vincent Price's voice for a quick cameo and this really is an essential and funny companion piece to Universal's classic monster era.

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE KILLER, BORIS KARLOFF
(1949)
Dir - Charles Barton
Overall: MEH

A few things get in the way of making Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff one of the duo's better works.  An obvious one is that Karloff himself, (who is even mentioned in the title no less), gets limited to very little screen time.  That said, at least he is involved in the film's best scene where as a shady Swami, he tries in vain to hypnotize Costello into killing himself in his hotel room.  The script though by Howard Snyder and Hugh Wedlock Jr., (who also penned Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man), is so sloppy and inconsistent that it borders on aggravating.  The near ending set piece in a Lost Cavern seems to only be there because Universal had such an impressive set they wanted to use as its entire set up and execution are as illogical as it gets.  As the pair's twenty-fifth movie in only nine years, the usual routine of Costello running around himming and hawing as nobody believes anything he says was starting to get a little old hat and with such an asinine story to play off of, it ends up being a regrettably weak horror comedy follow-up to the quite superior Meets Frankenstein.

1940s Bela Lugosi Part Two

THE CORPSE VANISHES
(1942)
Dir - Wallace Fox
Overall: WOOF

Another collaboration of several between Bela Lugosi and Monogram Pictures, The Corpse Vanishes was bad enough to be featured on the first season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and that is basically where it belongs.  Loaded with one of the most asinine of scripts, nothing in the film remotely works.  At only sixty-three minutes, it is still staggeringly boring and every detail to the premise would make any elementary school student raise their hands with plenty of questions.  A doctor elaborately kidnaps only brides on their wedding day by sending them an anonymous orchid that of course they all wear, drop comatose at the alter wearing, get assumed to be dead, then after getting loaded in an ambulance, all end up easily stolen by Lugosi's dim-witted assistants.  This is all to extract neck cells or something from all of the girls to inject in his aging wife to keep her young.  Along the way, they sleep in coffins, Lugosi murders one of his servant's sons and she just puts up with it, they try to convince another woman that she dreamed everything, Lugosi's a hypnotist as well presumably, two characters who barely know each other get married, and then some asshole at the very end also faints from smelling an orchid because it is supposed to be cute and funny.

THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE
(1943)
Dir - Lew Landers
Overall: GOOD

Columbia Pictures scored Bela Lugosi for one last serious take at playing a distinguished vampire in the actor's final top-billed, major Hollywood film The Return of the Vampire.  Lugosi is certainly older looking here, but he still effortlessly portrays the undead Armand Tesla as close as can be expected to his iconic Count Dracula performance and it is very fitting to see him in such comfortable surroundings where he can easily excel.  Thankfully, the budget and production values for Vampire mostly complement the proceedings.  There is plenty of foggy cemeteries and some comic relief deliberately reminiscent of Universal's established classic monster movies and the script is generic yet ambitious enough, incorporating World War I and II bombings for one.  Matt Willis' werewolf makeup is well-done and it is an interesting enough tweak on the mythos to have him both speak and fill in as Reinfield, being Lugosi's unwilling slave.  Seeing Lugosi's face melt near the end is also a newer, cinematic addition for the times.  All of these details aside though, the movie is a fitting if bittersweet send-off to the actor being involved in the type of productions he better deserved and it is one of the more above average vampire films of horror's golden era.

THE APE MAN
(1943)
Dir - William Beaudine
Overall: MEH

Sadly, The Ape Man is very typical of the type of overly camp-heavy tripe that Bela Lugosi would get stuck with once he was forever typecast as that horror movie guy with a funny accent.  Directed by prolific hack William Beaudine, (who helmed upwards of nearly two-hundred such silly, no budget affairs throughout his career), The Ape Man has Lugosi doing his natural best, but even he cannot help but to nearly make a fool of himself with the material.  As the title character, he does manage to keep his body language appropriately in check and it is admirable that even in such a ludicrous affair as this, he still always took it seriously.  Yet why his character seems generally pleased to be murdering people to become human again, (long, stupid story), is one of the many ridiculous details to the whole movie.  The script is asinine, the pacing tedious, the direction uninspired, the music obnoxious, and the performances are lackluster and just barely competent.  This is not even taking into account the actor stuck in an ape costume the entire film who is impossible not to laugh at.  As cruddy as the movie is, it is a quick one and easily enjoyable in a "laugh at it" capacity, but it is also rather sad to see the mighty Lugosi simply collecting a paycheck with it.

1940s Bela Lugosi Part One

THE DEVIL BAT
(1940)
Dir - Jean Yarbrough
Overall: MEH

The first horror film of many that was produced by P.R.C., (Producers Releasing Company), was The Devil Bat, which kick-started a series of low-budget, cheapies for the Poverty Row studio.  Bela Lugosi is on board as of course a mad scientist, this time Dr. Paul Carruthers who unleashes a very silly scheme to get back at a bunch of people who he does business with that he feels screwed him out of money.  So for all of you Breaking Bad fans, it is basically as if Walter White decided to mutate a bunch of bats to kill Elliot and Gretchen after he sold his share of Gray Matter Tech instead of going into the meth business.  There are a few character actors who are pretty ludicrous here, but Lugosi is solid and smoothly diabolical as usual, calmly saying "goodbye" instead of "good night" once he marks his targets.  He tones down any cackling, crazy bad guy behavior, preferring to smirk at people and talk to his pet bats instead.  At sixty-eight minutes, the movie is exactly as long as it should be and it represents the type of typical, small scale production that Lugosi would make a living appearing in for the rest of his career.

INVISIBLE GHOST
(1941)
Dir - Joseph H. Lewis
Overall: MEH

The first of nine films that Bela Lugosi made with Monogram Pictures under producer Sam Katzman, Invisible Ghost is ruined by implausible plot holes and a pretty dull pace.  Spoilers, but for absolutely no logical reason whatsoever, a woman who was thought to be either dead or missing depending on the dialog is in fact living right next door to her husband's house for some undisclosed amount of time where a groundskeeper and his wife have been hiding her because, well exactly.  Instead of keeping her locked up though, she wanders out only at night to wait around until Bela Lugosi stares at her, at which point he begins killing people.  Why she only does this at utterly random times and primarily ones that are convenient to the plot, (like when other details can flimsily place Lugosi's murders on other people who happen to be around), and how the police never once suspect Lugosi when it is his house that people keep getting killed at with no explanation shows that the bare minimal effort was made in scripting this one.  Lugosi is fine of course, but the movie is just way too dumb and boring.

NIGHT MONSTER
(1942)
Dir - Ford Beebe
Overall: MEH

An unofficial remake to 1932's Doctor X, Night Monster is not the most memorable of Universal's horror films from the era.  It is also deceitful in that both Bela Lugosi and Lionel Atwill are barely in it though each received upper billing.  A typical whodunit where a bunch of doctors, scared women, servants, and a police captain are all cooped up in a house simultaneously getting picked off and trying to find the murderer, who is of course the last person you would expect, in this case meaning the only person you expect the entire time.  While it is assuredly lacking in any true suspense or mystery, Ford Beebe, (who also acted as producer), does in fact stage the murders in an eerie manner, utilizing shadows and keeping his killer off screen until the last possible second.  Most of the cast are stereotypes, (the police chief is an old idiot who seems annoyed that he has to get up out of his chair and follow up on any clues, there is a chauffeur who acts inappropriately towards women, a cryptic house staff, a mystic, a paralyzed, wealthy doctor, a woman who everyone assumes is just hysterical and insane, a dashing hero and lady he wants to protect, etc), and especially with Lugosi left with only a few scenes and lines, Night Monster is not really worth ones time.

1940s American Horror Part Three

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
(1941)
Dir - Victor Flemming
Overall: MEH

Ten years after Paramount's superb Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde adaptation, (which is still the finest all these decades later), MGM adapted the famed Robert Louis Stevenson novel with Spencer Tracy in the title role and Ingrid Bergman as the doomed bar wench Ivy Pearson.  Both Bergman and Tracy do splendid jobs as they generally always did, but the film's nearly two-hour running time, the toned-down appearance of Hyde, and that fact that it was made once the Production Code was enforced, (as opposed to all of the previous film versions of the story), it cannot help but to come off as weak in comparison.  Prestigious director Victor Fleming was hot off of both The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind when he took on Jekyll and Hyde and he does embellish the the film with some flare.  Particularly during some of Hyde's transitions, where instead of using the excellent effect of color filters to reveal more hideous make-up before out eyes, Flemming utilizes lavish, surreal dream sequences, most notably when Hyde appears to be riding a carriage while whipping both Bergman and Lana Turner who act as the horses.

THE CANTERVILLE GHOST
(1944)
Dir - Jules Dassin/Norman Z. McLeod
Overall: MEH

While adapting Oscar Wilde's novella of the same name and taking great liberties in doing so, The Canterville Ghost is an innocent and absurd horror/comedy that is mostly worthwhile for the inclusion of major weights Charles Laughton and famed child star Margaret O'Brien.  The two actors do have a lovely chemistry and while Laughton is left with less screen time, O'Brien gets to charm her way through more of the film.  Story wise, Ghost is rather ridiculous, but its fairytale logic is suitable to how light the materiel is played.  The film switched both directors and cinematographers halfway through production, (supposedly on Laughton's insistence), but it is impossible to tell as it is simply constructed as a competent crowd-pleaser and little more.  There is some relatively successful, spooky dread conveyed early on, but being a comedy, it does not linger on the macabre end of things for very long.  Once the main characters are casually and playfully conversing with Laughton's title specter, there are no traces of horror left on the table at all, which is only slightly to the movie's disadvantage.

THE SPIDER WOMAN STRIKES BACK
(1946)
Dir - Arthur Lubin
Overall: MEH

Though it shares an actor, production studio, and a title that points clearly to it being a sequel to Universal's 1943 Sherlock Holmes film The Spider Woman, The Spider Woman Strikes Back is in fact an unrelated entry.  Gale Sondergaard receives top-billing here as a seemingly pleasant yet diabolical mad scientist who is using the blood of her female secretaries to make plants deadly or something.  Allegedly, this was planned to kick-off a fresh series of horror titles staring the Spider Woman character and though Sondergaard has an icy elegance that could have carried a few more titles through, (plus her hulking and silent henchman Rondo Hattan was born to be in horror movies and ended his brief career with three of them), this was not meant to be.  Such a fate is understandable upon viewing the results which never become ghastly, moody, or interesting enough.  Director Arthur Lubin cranked out a only a few horror titles before this and he went on record as saying that he hated the assignment, giving it the bare minimum of effort to collect his paycheck.  With some style and/or a quirkier script, this could have been a more memorable effort, but such movies were already losing their luster at this point and Universal as well as most studios would soon switch gears to science fiction thrillers in the coming years.

1940s American Horror Part Two

DR. CYCLOPS
(1940)
Dir - Ernest B. Schoedsack
Overall: MEH

Dr. Cyclops is a technically impressive, Hollywood-produced bit of sci-fi silliness which was the first American horror film to be made in three-strip Technicolor.  For 1940, it very successfully pulls off a multitude of convincing special effects.  Unfortunately that is all that the movie has going for it.  Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack, (King Kong), based off a short, pulp story by Henry Kuttner, and scripted here by Tom Kilpatrick, it is a generic, mad scientist set up and then reduces itself to a cat and mouse chase as the title character's enemies get reduced to doll-sized people and he continues to spout ridiculous dialog at them.  He also leisurely takes naps and kind of assumes that his prisoners are just going to cooperate with him as he does a couple of bad guy laughs and goes on and on about how important his "work" is.  So in other words, nothing to take seriously in the least.  The movie is rather dull though and besides Albert Dekker as Dr. "Cyclops" Thorkel, the cast is as unremarkable as the effects are solid.

PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
(1943)
Dir - Arthur Lubin
Overall: MEH

Universal Studio's only lackluster "classic monster" character movie, (and also the only one made in Technicolor and only one that did not get a sequel), was the remake of the 1925, iconic Phantom of the Opera staring Lon Chaney.  While Claude Rains is as fine a choice as any, (and had triumphed as Dr. Jack Griffin ten years previously in The Invisible Man and in a supporting role in The Wolf Man), this version of Phantom lacks all of the eerie, German Expressionism of the silent one and Rains is left with very little to do in his own staring vehicle.  The story is reworked considerably and though it is nice to see Rains' pre-Phantom stage in the first act, the rest of the movie feels both rushed and overly padded with musical numbers and weak, out of place comic relief revolving around Christine DeBois, (Susanna Foster) and her two suitors.  It barely works as a horror film until the last nine or so minutes and the finale gets undermined by not only an underwhelming de-masking, (nothing as memorable as Chaney's two decades earlier), but also a magical bullet that makes an entire, underground cavern collapse upon itself.

THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS
(1946)
Dir - Robert Florey
Overall: MEH

Though it stars Peter Lorre who is as exceptionally unsettling as always, was directed by Robert Florey, (Murders in the Rue Morgue), was scripted by Curt Siodmak, (The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man Returns, Black Friday, I Walked with a Zombie, and a whole lot more), and had a lasting impact on the horror genre with its killer hand motif, The Beast with Five Fingers comes off just shy of being a successful entry.  Things mostly fall apart at the ending, which oddly botches its attempt to rev up the tension.  While the music is blaring and Lorre is having a complete mental collapse before our eyes, the pacing is dreadfully boring and it seems more ridiculous than anything that he simply stares wildly and sweaty as the mutilated hand slowly, slowly crawls towards him.  There is a final, forth-wall breaking tag to the film as well that is absolutely clashing with the rest of the movie's tone and rather derails everything further.  Before all of that though, it has plenty of moody moments and nearly gets by with Lorrie, as well as on its familiar and ghastly premise.

1940s American Horror Part One

THE GHOST BREAKERS
(1940)
Dir - George Marshall
Overall: MEH

The third screen version of Paul Dickey and Charles W. Goddard's stage play The Ghost Breaker was done by George Marshall, (who would also remake it yet again thirteen years later as Scared Stiff with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis), the previous two silent versions now lost.  Once again teaming up Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard who were in the similarly goofy The Cat and the Canary the previous year, Ghost Breakers has somewhat of a convoluted and ultimately uninteresting plot, but plenty of quips from Hope and flirty romance between he and Goddard.  It is also just a tad racist, but in an eyeball-rolling, amusing way where it was common in the era to have the stereotyped, African American "yas'm boss" servant who is utterly terrified of his own shadow.  Hope continually jokes with him and their relationship does mpt appear to be unethical so it gets a pass for just being rather dated and unintentionally offensive.  A young Anthony Quinn also shows up for a few scenes for what it is worth, but the movie is not really funny or spooky enough to rank as a horror comedy classic the way others from the era have.

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
(1945)
Dir - Albert Lewin
Overall: GOOD

Though Oscar Wilde was not particularly known as a horror writer, his most famous novel The Picture of Dorian Gray very suitably fits the genre and certainly so here.  It had been adapted multiple times before and multiple times since the 1945 version staring George Sanders with Hurd Hatfield in the title role, but this one stands as perhaps the most still well renowned.  Besides his youthful appearance as Gray, Haftield perfectly encapsulates a man whose soul is no longer with him as he walks about the movie almost exclusively cold and emotionless.  The story is very sparse on horror and the film does indeed play out more as a period drama than anything.  Yet when we do get to see Gray's evil deeds affect the people around him, they are portrayed rather memorably.  The use of two color sequences that showcase the actual painting of Gray are rather pleasantly shocking, no doubt more so at the time that the movie was released.  Also for anyone in or visiting the Midwest, the original, more grotesque of the two portraits by Ivan Albright is currently on display at the Art Institute of Chicago.

THE ADVENTURES OF ICHABOD AND MR. TOAD
(1949)
Dir - Jack Kinney/Clyde Geronimi/James Algar
Overall: GOOD

Disney's final package film released in the 1940s, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad was the studio's eleventh feature overall and went through a solid rigamarole to get unleashed in its finished form.  Work on "The Wind and the Willows" had begun several years prior, but after the animator strike in 1941, further layoffs, and Walt Disney's original dissatisfaction with the finished product, it was shelved for a number of years, eventually getting paired up with "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" for a joint, anthology release which was common for the studio at the time.  While only a few actual minutes of the "Sleep Hollow" segment and absolutely none of the "Willows" one qualify as horror, once the actual Headless Horseman tale gets told, it is simply one of the best bits of animation the horror genre ever got.  Just as say The Grinch or Charlie Brown have become standard viewing during the Christmas season, Disney's version of "Sleepy Hollow" is just as legendary for Halloween.  Generally whenever the studio decided to tackle anything on the spooky and macabre end of things, (The Haunted Mansion attraction, per example), they knocked it out of the park.  Which is certainly proven here.

The Haunting of Hill House

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE
Season One
(2018)
Dir - Mike Flanagan
Overall: MEH

Mike Flanagan's joint venture with Netflix to reinterpret Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House as a ten-part miniseries was all about mixed emotions for me.  When first hearing of this program, I was 110% not on board.  The book has been adapted twice, (once exceptionally, once horrendously), and in an era where more and more properties are being dug up out of the grave to get a reboot or sequel or whatever, the idea of another version of this story in any kind of cinematic capacity did not appeal to me in the slightest.  After it aired though, got unanimous praise, and some people I know who watched it assured me that that it was not an adaptation at all, I dropped my "remake" expectations and took the show on.

Then from the very beginning of actually watching The Haunting of Hill House, the conflicting emotions continued.  Before getting into the details of what went wrong and also theoretically right, it is important to discuss Flanagan and the show's birth in general.  The writer/director was approached by Amblin Partners, (DreamWorks Studies), to adapt the novel as a television program.  Respectfully, Flanagan has gone on record multiple times, not only about how huge of a fan he is of both the book and Robert Wise's original film version, but how perfect each was and how illogical stretching that story out to miniseries length would be.  Given the opportunity and acting out The Haunting fanboy in him though, he envisioned a completely different way to go about it, meaning to not adapt the book at all and just make up his own thing while consistently referencing elements of it.

"In the night...in the dark" for one was used quite liberally.

While it is doubtlessly a wise move not to turn Jackson's novel into a padded, overly long series when the material totally does not call for such a thing, at the same token, why bother taking any elements from the book and titling your show after it at all if the story is absolutely unique from the source material?  Well the answer obviously is brand recognition and since a production company came to Flanagan first and not the other way around, basically it had to be The Haunting of Hill House in some way, (be it vague or explicit), or it probably was not going to get on the air.  We can speculate as to whether or not Flanagan or some other filmmaker would have responded with, "nah, how bout I just write my own thing and we'll call it something else?" and if it would have actually got made, but the way it happened, it was Hill House or nothing.

I can then understand the mere existence of this series, if not fully agreeing with it.  A paycheck is a paycheck and a career opportunity to work with something you love and make it a massive event like this is something no one can honestly fault Flanagan with taking.  Again, studios like to use things that people are already familiar with so yes, we all get it.  It is good to have no snobbish chips on one's shoulders about the program since then we can view it for what it is.  I wish it was not called The Haunting of Hill House and I wish Mike Flanagan just made his own haunted house miniseries with no inescapable ties to make to the novel, but I also wish I was Thanos sometimes so lets get on with it.

I mean seriously, just think of the traffic you could clear up.

I have seen every film Mike Flanagan has made to date and I like some of them while mildly to greatly disliking others.  I also recognize that the director definitely has a style and that style is to "play it safe".  Both the horror elements to Hill House and the dramatic ones very much are "playing it safe".  Safe and commercial.  Flanagan is knowingly taking cliches from everywhere and putting them into a framework where he can really dig into them for over ten-plus hours and he has also made it as user friendly as possible.  By the end of this program there are virtually no loose ends and everyone is made to leave with a sense of all of their tension having been released.  For the most part, every character overcomes all of their trauma to begin living the fairytale, "happily ever after" dream.  The final episode of this show is drenched in Disney flavored sap to the point of getting a stomach ache from it, but it also makes sense coming from Flanagan.  Ambiguity finds little to no place in most of his work and characters triumphing over the evil within and around them is what he likes his viewers to leave with.  Perhaps never more so than here.

The way the show is scripted is very specifically "scripty".  Meaning very, very, very wordy.  A buddy of mine described it as "The Monologuing of Hill House" and it is readily apparent why.  There is not a single character or a single episode where at least someone, (usually more than once), gets to indulge in an overtly word-heavy speech while all of the other characters act with inhuman patience and let them prattle on and on until they are finished.  There was one excellent scene between sisters Theo, (Kate Siegel), and Shirly, (Elizabeth Reaser), where they actually interrupt each other as they are arguing, but basically aside from this, all of the dialog interactions are remarkably unrealistic.  People do not let people talk like this, it is that simple.  You know when they do though?  In the movies...or in this case, in the TV show.

Truth in advertising.

The way that everything is scripted here, this is no doubt a deliberate move.  These actors were probably ecstatic about all of the dialog that they got.  It is more structured like a play than anything and the inner-thespian in most actors likely appreciated the pages upon pages of words they got to work with.  The reason it is so word-heavy outside of this is again to "play it safe".  No one can watch this show without being absolutely crystal clear as to what every single person in it is feeling.  The viewer is not left to ponder anything to themselves.  Certain plot details are left open for several episodes yes, but that is not what I mean.  I mean there is so much dialog and endless opportunities for the characters to speak their minds without any interference that you simply cannot ever be lost as to what they are experiencing.

What does this do to your brain as you are watching it?  Well, it essentially tricks you into caring for these characters and it works.  I kept really wanting to like The Haunting of Hill House for this very reason.  Honestly, all of the horror parts to the show were nonsense.  Flanagan really, really dove into his script and he and his writers took so much time conveying the severe dysfunction of this family that all of the would-be scary bits come off as a severe afterthought.  I will admit that this is the horror movie cynic in me talking but c'mon, boo scares, generic creepy music, every ghost made-up to look like they work at a haunted house every Halloween, and of course supernatural entities only doing the most dramatically scary thing the plot wants them to do with no logic attached to it at all?

See, it is horror because GET IT?

Why do ghosts generally tilt their heads and open their mouths wide to scream at you?  Why do they like to play pranks on people like gradually banging on their doors and windows until a crucial moment when the characters are intensely dialoging?  Why would a "good" ghost only show up to stop a "bad" ghost from doing something bad after they gave us enough dialog to know what we needed to know and not early enough to get the person they are trying to protect out of danger immediately?  How come some ghosts who did not die at Hill House still show up there when it is pretty directly stated that you have to die there to stay there?  There is a lot of this stuff and I do not even really classify them as plot-holes so much as just the usual, lazy supernatural horror movie cliches that get used ad nauseam and never critically looked at as making no sense and potentially taking the viewer out of the experience.  There was one moment where Theo actually says "aren't we gonna tell them what we saw?" addressing another annoying cliche where people in horror movies keep seeing terrifying shit and keep it to themselves.  Everyone still does exactly that in this show, but I at least got a chuckle that they acknowledged how unnatural it is to do so.

Really though, most people who watch movies enjoy this kinda stuff.  Horror fans like to be scared the way they always are.  They like to jump.  They like to know something is creepy by how it looks and sounds.  They like when scary things happen that they know are scary because they are watching a horror movie.  Essentially, they like familiarity.  It is always a very difficult undertaking to put enough horror movie things in your horror movie, (or TV show), that qualify it as such yet at the same time trying to make them somewhat unique.  Flanagan completely fails in this "unique" regard here, but for sure he made people yelp at their TV and get tricked into getting scared the way they are supposed to.  So, job well done I guess?

See, it is horror because GET IT?

What I really kept rooting for was what this show was about on paper.  Which is an examination of how a haunting can make a family dysfunctional.  This is an incredibly good idea.  What is the worst way that living in a haunted house could traumatize a group of people for years afterwards?  Every member of the Crain household who spent a mere few weeks in Hill House grows up and suffers from a barrage of issues.  This makes the house itself intimidating as an evil presence and something to take seriously.  It also makes the mystery and confusion of what happened on their last night there as well as then how their father handled it and how it trickled down to all of them as they grew up a wonderful avenue to dramatically get into.  Flanagan definitely did get into it, no mistaking that.

It is HOW he got into it though that is still just as opposing as everything else I discussed.  Flanagan uses the age old, sturdy and true, "safe" troupes to assign to his family here.  There is a lesbian, a heroin addict, a lunatic, a guilty control freak, a hack, an abandoning father who means well, and a mother terrified of letting her children loose in the real world.  Everyone in the family has to be dysfunctional, but they also have to have defining, exclusive, and commonplace quirks to themselves.  There is grey area to all of them, but then again not really.  Not realistically at least.  Go ahead try and show me a family in real life where every member of it is a part-stereotype to this degree, (who again hardly ever interrupt each other when they are yelling at them), but I am pretty sure that you will come up with no such family.

Mommy tried to poison him so now he poisons himself with drugs because GET IT?

Now does all of this make for good television?  Well the general consensus is a bellowing "yes".  The show is a hit and despite of or because of all the issues that it has, it is clear why it is a hit.  Flanagan played it safe.  It is all so familiar beyond just fans of the novel and the original film who recognize some of the names and lines of dialog.  We are conditioned to feel what we are supposed to, get spooked when we are supposed to, we all know exactly what happened by the end of it, and we are all happy that everyone's problems 100% went away once it was over.  It is very crowd pleasing.  In its own ways it is as realistic and convincing as a Looney Tunes cartoon though and that is really what I at least could not enjoy about it.

A more hard-boiled approach to such an interesting premise would have been so much nicer.  The dialog could have flowed more naturally, the characters personal issues could have been far less on-the-nose, we could have been left to psychologically contemplate more, the horror elements could have been anything but what they were, (maybe showing us zero supernatural entities at all like Robert Wise did for a start?), etc.  This is all my problem though.  The Haunting of Hill House does what most people want it to do.  It is very competent, very well made, very well acted, and completely devoid of risks and uncertainty.  It is a ten part miniseries about a haunted house with characters in it.  Yup, it sure is.

Now lets all forget our troubles with a big bowl of strawberry ice cream!