movies

Yesterday, I took a break. I went on an errand, before returning home and doing my own exercises. Later Monday night, at around 9PM, I decided to watch an old movie, on the independent channel. It was interesting to watch an old black and white version of a colored remake. As I watched I compared the old version with the new version, and I noticed a different plot.

The Haunting (1963) and (1999) movie versions review: Comparison, Contrasts & Similarities

The Haunting is a 1963 black and white supernatural horror film about a doctor who goes to a haunted house with three people to conduct an experiment on supernatural entities controlling the house. Directed by Robert Wise, written by Nelson Gidding and Shirley Jackson, it starts Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, and Russ Tamblyn.

The movie starts out with a narrator explaining this haunting house, which reminded me of old movies about ghost stories I used to watch when I was a kid in the seventies. Throughout the movies, there was also voiceover of the main character’s thoughts. Eleanor is the main character who feels the house is calling her to stay and become its caretaker, mostly because she has no home of her own when her mother recently died and she was her mother’s caretaker. Theodora is a sophisticated witch and Luke is the third person staying at the house.

Luke seems more fearless and a risk-taker. They each explore the house, and Eleanor is the only one that connects with the spirits in the house, feeling a strong need to stay there. As the doctor observes the three people and analyzes their experience, his wife. Grace, drops by in a taxi because she wants her husband to return home with her. He refuses and she ends up staying in the house with them because she wants to debunk the supernatural nonsense. She seems fearless and strong, preferring to sleep by herself inside the haunted nursery.

This movie ends differently from the 1999 movie remake because Eleanor ends up driving off after the doctor persuades her to leave. But the spirits from the house don’t want her to leave. They control her driving skills until they force her to crash into a tree and die. The doctor’s wife, Grace, goes missing inside the house because she becomes lost walking inside the house, dealing with the negative energies controlling her mind. At the end of the movie, Grace finds her way to the car accident, where they all stand around discussing Eleanor’s sudden death.

In the 1999 movie version, the plot seems different as well as the doctor’s experiment is different. But the characters Eleanor and Theodora are similar, and Luke seems mellow. I don’t remember the old caretakers of the house, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley in either movie version, probably because I was concentrating on the main characters. The Dudleys probably had a small role in the film. There were more characters in the 1999 version, but they had small roles. The doctor in this version had two assistants with him, and the doctor’s wife never came to the haunted house.

In this remake, Eleanor ends up dying in the house because she refuses to leave the ghosts of children. Luke becomes decapitated. The rest of the group stand outside, watching the house devour Eleanor, as her soul frees the children. The 1999 remake is directed by Jan de Bont, written by David Self, and produced by Donna Arkoff Roth, Colin Wilson, and Susan Arnold. It stars Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lily Taylor, and Owen Wilson. The movie was based on a 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House, written by Shirley Jackson.

Both movies were interesting but different versions. I am not sure what the novel is like. I am assuming the 1963 movie was probably more authentic to the novel because the novel’s author, Shirley Jackson, was involved in writing the screenplay.