The Haunting (1963)
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The Haunting is a 1963 British psychological horror film directed and produced by Robert Wise. It stars Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, and Russ Tamblyn. The film, about a small group of people invited by a paranormal investigator to stay at a haunted house that comes to life, is often cited as one of the most frightening films ever made.
During the shoot, Harris suffered from depression, and believed that her co-stars did not take the film as seriously as she did. At times, she would cry in her makeup chair prior to the day's shoot. Bloom did not speak to Harris while filming continued, which worsened her depression. Afterward, Bloom told Harris that the lack of interaction had helped her build her own performance and the two women reconciled. Harris incorporated her own depression into her performance.
Wise heightened the sense of character conflict by having the characters "step on one another's lines", allowing one character to begin talking before the other had finished. On occasion, the characters simply talk at the same time.
To enhance the actors' performances during scenes in which they react to off-stage voices or sounds, Wise and his sound editors created a "pre-scored" soundtrack of voices and noises. These were played back during filming, and Wise says they greatly enhanced the acting performances. Although some sounds were replaced during post-production, the "pre-scored" sounds were left on the soundtrack just as the actors heard them.
Many of the editing choices in the film are also used to heighten the audience's discomfort. There are a number of rapid cuts in the film that throw off the viewer's sense of spatial orientation, and Dutch angles are used to imply that reality is off-kilter. Cutting on action—showing the characters exiting a room to the right, only to show them entering the next room from the left—is often violated, so that the viewer cannot get a clear sense of which rooms and hallways are connected to one another.
The film's stature and following has grown steadily since its original release, and it now has cult movie status. Director Martin Scorsese placed The Haunting first on his list of the 11 scariest horror films of all time. Richard Johnson says that Steven Spielberg considers The Haunting one of the "seminal films" of his youth, and Robert Wise says that Spielberg told him The Haunting was "the scariest film ever made!" Richard Armstrong in Rough Guide to Film (2007) called it "one of the most frightening films ever made", and said Julie Harris' performance is played "with an intensity that is frightening in itself".