Tracy Winters
This is a good film. Anyone who disses it doesn't know jack about good horror movies.Cathy O'Donnell deserved a solid career. She was always an understudy of sorts. This was possibly her finest film as her performance is first-rate. Scares abound in this movie, though some reviewers stupidly refer to it as a low-budget failure.Probably the most interesting thing about this film is that it was photographed in 'Psycho-Rama', a process which involved subliminal images of scary faces that flashed on the screen periodically.Recommended for horror film aficionados.
zee
Adding the review because no one seems to have noted that this is a pure Gothic romance story: a relative-less, advocate-less female with what may or may not be mental illness, two men, one of whom is good and the other evil, but we can't tell which is which, all at an isolated old house, the hereditary curse, the oddball retainer, blah blah blah. Straight to the Gothic formula, only missing fog.This is not a very good treatment of the genre, however. We know all along which man is the nice one and which the evil. The female is so stupid and weak, I can't care if she dies or not (this is the most dated part of the movie--you couldn't get away with a female lead like that today). Lots of exposition disguised (but not well) as dialog and the ludicrous cartoon "subliminals." Taken seriously, the plot doesn't work at many levels. In particular, that psychiatrist needs to get disbarred. The casting is odd--the female and male hero played together as children, but the actors look 15 years or more different in ages. The woman screams far too often, and it's just irritating.Not so bad it's good for a laugh. Just bad. Want a decent Gothic movie? Rebecca or your choice of Wuthering Heights. Or read Barbara Michael's charming metagothic novel, Houses of Stone (a Gothic novel about hunting for an old Gothic novel manuscript). Want a bad 50's horror movie that makes you laugh at how bad it is? Lots to choose from. This is neither fish nor fowl.
johnc2141
Terror in the haunted house resembles a William Castle horror film it has gimmicks,subliminal messages during the film.they flash images of skulls and cartoon monsters and even the word scream in blood red colors,but this movie is pretty good without the subliminal messages.its creepy and pretty entertaining,it stars Gerald Mohr who a few years later starred in the great b movie the angry red planet.and Cathy O'Donnell(related to Rosie?)and William Ching.a new bride is having visions of a haunted house,well nightmares and is later on a trip with her new husband to America from Switzerland.to an old plantation mansion that turns out to be the house from her nightmares, its kind of like the screaming skull only much better.i seen this years ago on VHS from rhino video when they redid all the subliminal messages.and if you run it in slow motion you can clearly see these goofy and cartoonish subliminal images.as a fan of b movies and old horror movies i enjoyed terror in the haunted house,even though it is not as great as the infamous house on haunted hill.but alas it is better then the screaming skull and yes the really inept hillbillies in the haunted house.i recommend terror in the haunted house.7 out of 10.
andy11110
This is neither a scary, nor funny bad movie. It's just plain bad.That being said, I wanted to add something a little different than previous comments, a comparison. If you've seen The Screaming Skull on MST3K or, God forbid, by itself, then you have seen this movie in a way. Both movies deal with this supposed creepy house with this creepy girl (but not that hot kind of creepy girl). In both, somehow the newly married husband is the problem with the girl. Maybe they were ripping off Gaslight, who knows. Both are from 1958. Both have this caretaker in it (though I like the Torgo-esch one from Skull). However, this one doesn't have that worried/zoloft faced chic from Screaming Skull. I can only vaguely remember what the woman in this feature looked like. I rented this dull waste of time for the PsychoRama or whatever it was. Man... Though it has already been said, what a gyp! I stopped on some of them, and since I rented a Rhino release of it, one of these "subliminal" messages was to buy Rhino Videos. Rhino is going to have to release more CC era Msties if they want me to do that! Anyways, I saw this movie 2 years ago. So if some of this is off the mark, I'll blame it on that. However, I am not worried as no one should watch this piece.
AD
