Ghosts of Hanley House

There was potential in Ghosts of Hanley House. Some parts are truly creepy just because of the atmosphere and eerie tone of the film. It reminds me a little bit of a modern found footage film, except actually quite spooky until ...

Our cast is awakened at 1 or 2 am by ghostly banging and then all decided to get fully dressed including necklaces, hair clips and neck ties before holding a seance. I know people used to dress up in public but give me a break. Even in the 60s people had tee shirts or could sit upright without a suit coat or hair accessories. Then they get lost in what is obviously Griffith Park in broad daylight meant to look "dark" because the film is black and white and they play crickets chirping in the background.

This film is very interesting from a sociological angle or as an historical artifact and it certainly has some atmosphere but you'll be disappointed if you pay attention too closely. I highly recommend playing this in the background at a Halloween party or watching it late at night in the dark alone. It's too ridiculous otherwise.

This mediocre ghost story is made viable and creepy by a few subtle touches. The special effects are a mix of dry ice and what appears to be more dry ice, but the lighting is at times interesting. The cast members have stark and/or dark features, and the B&W medium in combination with dramatic lighting for scenes within the haunted mansion make for a very good effect. You usually come to 'like' a character in a movie, and in this movie there isn't anyone to like. It seems that everyone is a dumb creep with some kind of motive. Just how much that works to the film's advantage, however, is difficult to say because it might be lost on a more casual viewer, but I think that it makes the story interesting. There are a few sidelines to the plot which were either never developed or lost to editing, but they are minor enough to not affect the continuity of the film. The screams are great. Hollywood just doesn't have screamers like it used to. I would recommend this movie, if you can find it.

Five people are spending the night in a haunted house. Things get dicey when some of them start turning up decapitated.

Odd film that I had never heard of before watching it on Cult O Rama on my Roku. Filled with unknowns who had very limited film exposure before or after.

One of the actresses was married to Timothy Leary!

Another made a few soft core porns after this film.

The director acting in 2 films but never directed again.

I'm always fascinated about how these movies get made and why the people involved have such a limited career.

The movie is the typical ghost house fare and don't expect great acting. The sound is horrible. Tinny and echoing. Slow exposition. And be prepared for the car key questioning. It seems to go on for 20 minutes!

They all get drunk and play cards and then the record player comes out. Plenty of laffing for no reason and dancing. Then there is what I guess is a wolf only it sure sounds human. Oh, and the black widow spider episode! Hysterical.

It's not a very good film, so maybe I answered my own question about why these people had limited careers. The biggest problem with this film is that it just keeps going with nothing really happening.

This is a bad movie. Badly made, that is, and not 'so bad that it's good' bad. That being said, I did keep returning to it until I had seen the end. It appears to be made by someone who had been around movie sets but really didn't know what they were doing. As another reviewer mentioned, the camera lingers on face shots for a painfully long time for no apparent reason. Sound doesn't always sync up with the picture, and it's difficult to figure whether the sounds you're hearing are soundtrack or are being heard by the characters. A woman character screams bloody murder, and no one comes out of their rooms until a minute later.

For all that, it does have a perverse charm that kept me coming back 20 minutes at a time until the end. It's like watching the first student film of someone who later became a famous director. There's something there under the poor camera technique, editing and wooden acting. The total lack of humor - intended or otherwise - keeps this one out of the midnight movie/so bad that it's good genre, but if low budget haunted house movies appeal to you, this one might be worth a look. Don't pay for it - I downloaded it from the Internet Archive.

A home-grown $1.49 shocker that doesn't appear to have been released anywhere until it finally debuted on home video over 30 years after it was filmed. It's slow, repetitious and crudely assembled but it does at least make an honest effort to tell an actual story. It seems to have been partly inspired by THE HAUNTING (1963) and many parts have an authentically creepy dreamlike feel similar to that of CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962). Much of the original soundtrack seems to have been lost, as many stretches are scored with grating jazz music and the sound effects were obviously added much later. Foley work doesn't get any worse than this, with absurdly loud "ambient" noise thrown in and at least one very strange, loud gasp that doesn't seem to come from any particular character added to the more common print. Most of the (black and white) film is tinted a cold blue, creating an appropriate deathly mood, although a few sequences are dressed up with bright red solarized video effects for no good reason. On a bet, five people spend the night in the haunted mansion of the title. They experience the usual phenomena, including slamming doors, mysterious thumping sounds and isolated patches of freezing cold. Clock hands spin around crazily, a framed painting of a dead woman keeps moving, and an ominous old locked box is found. The haunting evidently causes continuity errors too, like when one girl's necklace keeps knotting and unknotting itself from shot to shot. One of the group is a medium (natch) who sets up an impromptu seance to try to sort things out. A big problem is that none of the main characters have any discernable personalities. There are two completely bland young men, two completely bland young women and one oddly out-of-place middle-aged guy with big ears and a suit and tie. The acting is near catatonic and most of the dialogue reads like it was written for children, but in spite of everything that goes wrong GHOSTS OF HANLEY HOUSE is spooky in a low-key kind of way. It's true that nothing is really happening through most of it, but it's good to see a haunted house story in which the characters are sensible enough to decide to leave when they start to fear for their safety. The plot actually makes sense and tells a good little ghost story, which is another nice bonus. Just don't expect action, stunts, character development or special effects. The crippling technical ineptitude makes it unlikely that GHOSTS OF HANLEY HOUSE will ever become anyone's favorite, but it's off-the-wall and eerie enough to be worth a look.