THE HAUNTING

US, 1963, 112 minutes, Black and White.
Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn, Rosalie Crutchley.
Directed by Robert Wise.

The Haunting is an above average thriller about the occult. Set in the United States, it tells a story we usually associate with an English atmosphere. Two women, supposedly endowed with heightened extrasensory perception, join a scientist for an experiment to detect ghosts in an old mansion. one woman (Claire Bloom) is more common-sensed, the other (Julie Harris) is a repressed spinster, who has run away from her sister's family to do something with her life and to surrender it to someone or something, one of the principal characters in this film is the house itself and its eerie presence pervades the screen, its darkness, Gothic architecture, spiral staircases, its knockings and suggestions of ghosts.

As with the more successful occult films, The Haunting relies on the evocation of atmosphere rather than artificial and corny horrors or rational explanations. Quite a good film for discussion of the occult. It was remade in the late 90s by Jan de Bont with Liam Neeson.

1. The Haunting raises questions of earthly contact with those who have died. Do you think the story of this film could be true?

2. Did you enjoy the film? Why?

3. What was responsible for all the noises the principal characters heard and feared?

4. Who was responsible for Eleanor's death? The house? The others? Herself?

5. Is E.S.P., or something like it, sufficient explanation for these phenomena?

6. What is the role of the house itself in the film? Is it just a place where mysterious things happen? or has it a 'personality' of its own?

7. What does Eleanor's background have to do with what happens to her - the fact that she is a repressed spinster running away from home to assert herself?

8. Are recurring patterns of deaths and accidents sufficient reason for fear, or belief in the intervention of the dead?

9. Does this film's story, and the way it was made as a ghost story, presuppose that most people are actually superstitious and are uneasy about the occult?

10. Are people more superstitious about religion or about the stars, omens, coincidences?