The Corner Penthouse

House on Haunted Hill (1959) is a classic B-movie produced and directed by gimmick schlock master William Castle. Vincent Price stars as Frederick Loren, an eccentric millionaire who offers $10,000 to five people who agree to be locked in a large, spooky house overnight with him and his wife. The film is perhaps best known for its promotional gimmick "Emergo", which was a skeleton that would fly over audiences' heads in the theater.

Although originally released by Allied Artists, whose assets, including the masters for this film, are now owned by Warner Brothers, the film itself is in the public domain. As such, it has been released on home video by numerous companies over the decades. While I have zero interest in tracking down every single DVD release of this movie, I do have four of the (presumably) better ones in my possession, so I figured it might be helpful to do a comparison of them.

One of the earliest DVD releases was by Warner Brothers in 1999, likely to promote the remake that came out theatrically that year. It is assumed that the disc, which features transfers in both 4:3 open matte fullscreen (more image on top/bottom, less on sides) and 16:9 anamorphic matted widescreen (more image on sides, less on top/bottom), was sourced from a film print that Warner's acquired when it bought the Lorimar assets in 1988; Lorimar having bought the Allied Artists assets a decade earlier. It is probably safe to say that most, if not all, of the post-1999 DVDs use the Warner DVD as the film source. The Warner DVD is fantastic quality, so of course the lesser "budget" companies would rip it off instead of finding their own film prints.

With the backstory out of the way, let's look at the specs of these four DVDs in this nifty little table. (DD stands for Dolby Digital) Details for each release, all of which were released in the United States, follow the table. I do not know the copyright status of the film in other countries, and for the purposes of this article, that doesn't matter. Also, click on the cover thumbnails to buy that DVD at Amazon.


Before I get to the quick details on each release, here is the standard trailer for the movie, which appears on all of the DVDs (except Madacy).



[ NOTES - WARNER BROTHERS]

This is the only disc to be released by a major studio, and is the only one to come from an original studio-owned film print. It's also the only disc to offer two viewing formats: 4:3 open matte (Side A) and 16:9 matted widescreen (Side B). The menu is 16:9 on both sides, even with the 4:3 movie, and is four still images: Main, Scene Selections (two screens), and Languages (one screen).

EXTRAS
• Trailer (1:45) - Presented in 4:3 on Side A and 16:9 on Side B.


[ NOTES - MADACY]

This disc was clearly sourced from the 4:3 version on the Warner DVD. You can glimpse "Play" in the upper corner at the start of the movie, which means it was transferred "on the fly" (recorded as the original DVD was playing). That will cause a quality loss when compared to doing a lossless rip. The back cover incorrectly states that the "Original Movie Trailer" is included. The three trailers on the disc are for other films. Includes a chapter insert card. The menu is one 4:3 still image containing: Chapters, Trailers, Posters, Cast, and Trivia.

EXTRAS
• Trailers (6:13) - Trailers at 0:00 for Dementia 13 (1963), at 2:48 for The Devil's Hand (1961), and at 4:48 for The Devil's Partner (1960). No chapter marks at the start of each.
• Posters - Two still images of movie posters: this one and that one.
• Cast - One screen of text about William Castle.
• Trivia - A game, of sorts, consisting of five questions about the movie. You can not move on to the next question unless you get it right, so there is no way to lose. There is also no reward at the end, making it all completely pointless. Here is a list of the questions and their answers.
1. What was Lance Shroeder's profession. (A. Pilot)
2. How much money did Loren offer to the participants? (C. $10,000)
3. What gimmick did director William Castle use to scare his audience in theatres? (A. Skeletons flying over heads)
4. What were the names of the Lorens' servants? (C. Mr. and Mrs. Slydes)
5. According to Watson, how many people have been murdered in the Lorens' house? (A. 4 men and 3 women)


[ NOTES - LEGEND FILMS]

The movie has been "altered" in the sense that the "primary" version has been colorized (it runs 40 seconds longer due to colorization credits added at the end), but I'm considering the black and white version (in the special features section) as the main version. The menus are an animated CGI mansion that transitions between rooms for each submenu. There are some nice little touches, such as the Trailers menu, which not only has the little coffin boxes, but also after a lightning flash, a hanging body appears outside the window. Love and care was definitely put into this DVD.

Apparently, this DVD was originally released in 2005, distributed by Fox. The copy I have has a 2007 authoring date and has the Genius Entertainment logo on the back.

EXTRAS
• Audio Commentary - by Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000, who generally pokes fun at the characters, the storyline and dialogue, and gives the film a rather good ribbing. The commentary is available on both the color and black & white versions of the movie.
• Original Press Book (2:24) - A quick pan over pages from the press book.
• Original Trailer (1:41) - The same trailer from the Warner DVD.
• Color Trailer (1:41) - A newly-created trailer for the colorized version of the movie.
• Color Trailer: Carnival of Souls (2:28) - A newly-created trailer for the colorized version of the movie.
• Color Trailer: Night of the Living Dead (1:09) - A newly-created trailer for the colorized version of the movie.
• Color Trailer: Reefer Madness (2:04) - A newly-created trailer for the colorized version of the movie.
• Color Trailer: Three Stooges in Color (1:06) - A newly-created trailer for the colorized version of the Stooges shorts/movies.
• Colorization Demo (2:57) - A before-and-after look at different films that Legend Films has colorized.


[ NOTES - RAUNCHY TONK]

Labeled as the "50th Anniversary Special Edition", though it's far from special. The front cover blatantly LIES when it states "Brand New Widescreen Transfer!", and the back cover LIES about it being in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. I have no doubt that this is the Warner DVD's 16:9 (1.78:1) transfer, with text added to it and re-compressed to about half the size. Of the four versions I'm comparing, this one is the DIRT WORST! one. At the very start of the movie, the "Allied Artists Pictures Corporation Presents" text has been replaced with "Raunchy Tonk Presents". Skipping ahead to 3:51, the title screen now has "50th Anniversary Special" and "(c) 2009 Raunchy Tonk" added to it. There is no need for these alterations, except so Raunchy Tonk can falsely claim this movie as their own.

There are a lot of extras (most unrelated to the movie), but Raunchy Tonk only used a single-layer disc, so the movie has been compressed to about half of the size of the other DVDs so it can all fit onto the disc. As such, the picture quality is POOREST of all versions. Raunchy Tonk was too cheap to use a dual-layer disc, which has double the capacity. The extras are listed below, with descriptions that were partially written by Vinnie Rattolle in his Amazon review, though I added much more information to them. The DVD is "presented by Johnny Legend", some old dude I've never heard of. He is responsible for two of the extras, which Vinnie describes as "total crap filler". I can't say that Vinnie is wrong about that. None of the extras, some of which are compilations of trailers and other clips, are chapter coded. I have provided time codes for everything that needs it. Also, the menus are just two plain screens: Main and Bonus Features.

EXTRAS
• Original Theatrical Trailers (2:51) - Three trailers for House on Haunted Hill. The first is the widely seen trailer available on the Warner disc, likely taken from that DVD's widescreen side and reformatted to 4:3 letterbox. The second, at 1:39, is an original "Emergo" trailer, which features text and audio, but no footage from the film. The third, at 2:05, is the lesser-seen trailer that simply features Price superimposed over the house, enticing viewers to join him in the House on Haunted Hill. The last two are presented in 4:3 Fullscreen.
• Return to the House (3:45) - Described on the case as, "Johnny [Legend] visits the Haunted Hill and discusses the history of the house and his own William Castle-ish roadshow antics". It's four current (in 2009) still images of the house taken at an upwards angle from street level at the bottom of the hill with Johnny talking to the camera from the side of the road. The real-world location is Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House at 2607 Glendower Avenue in Los Angeles, California. The opposite side of the house from where Johnny is standing is what is seen under the main title in the film. Anyway, Johnny doesn't talk for the whole short duration. At 2:53 is the trailer for The Maniacs Are Loose! (aka The Thrill Killers) (1964) in Hallucinogenic Hypno-Vision! I don't understand why this is here.
• Castle and Price Previews (26:53) - A dozen trailers for various films the actor and director made, both separately and together. Most of these are available on DVDs of their respective films, but there are a few rarities thrown in. The full list with time codes:
00:00 - Macabre (1958)
00:32 - The Fly (1958)
01:23 - The Tingler (1959)
03:45 - Return of the Fly (1959)
05:18 - 13 Ghosts (1960) (DVD player icon in upper left corner at start)
07:43 - Homicidal (1961)
10:50 - Mr. Sardonicus (1961)
14:11 - Zotz! (1962)
16:49 - 13 Frightened Girls (1963)
19:17 - The Old Dark House (1963)
22:14 - Strait-Jacket (1964)
24:13 - Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965)
• William Castle TV Spot (1:58) - An excerpt from "The Plot Thickens", a game show pilot that Castle produced. I have no idea why it is mislabeled as a "William Castle TV Spot". It would've been nice to have the show in its entirety, though it is easily found online.
• Carol Ohmart Profile (3:40) - Johnny talks directly to the camera about Carol Ohmart, who played Annabelle Loren in the film. The Born Reckless (1958) movie trailer, starring Jayne Mansfield, is shown. At the Lloyd E. Rigler Theatre at the Egyptian (6712 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California), Johnny talks to director Jack Hill about Carol's film Spider Baby (1967), and a few clips are shown. Johnny then talks to Eric Caidin, owner of Hollywood Book and Poster Company, who is only casually identified at the end. As with "Return to the House", the Johnny footage is 4:3 and shot with a video camera without any professional lighting.
• Golden Age Price (49:17) - Appearances of Vincent Price on "The Jack Benny Show" and "The Red Skelton Show" (at 14:17), as well as an episode of "TV Reader's Digest" entitled "The Brainwashing of John Hayes" (at 24:25). Probably recorded with kinescope from a monitor as they were being broadcast, the quality of these three recordings isn't stellar, but they're probably the best available. Price rarely got to play straight comedy, but he did it quite well in the first two shows. This is the only special feature that makes this disc worthwhile, though sadly, it is partially watermarked (a "Golden Age Price" black box appears in the lower right corner from 11:05 to 24:26 and lower left corner from 48:26 to 48:30) and has no chapter marks.


Now would be a good time for some image comparisons. Let's start by looking at the difference between the 1.33:1 (4:3 fullscreen) and 1.78:1 (16:9 widescreen) aspect ratios, using this shot from 6:49 on both sides of the Warner DVD. As can be plainly seen, the 4:3 version shows more image on the top and bottoms and less on the sides, while the situation is reverse in 16:9. I do not know what the aspect ratio is of the original theatrical release, though it seems that the complete film frame is probably 1.66:1. Click on all images for full DVD-size enlargements.



Remember those alternations I mentioned for the Raunchy Tonk DVD? Here is a comparison of the first one, starting with the original shot (from the 16:9 Warner), then the altered shot.



For the other alteration, we can compare it with the title shot (at 3:52) from every version, which will also give us a look at the image quality of each version. I'm not including a shot from the Legend color version because the coloring in this shot is almost non-existent.






Finally, let's do an even better image quality comparison, this time using the shot at 39:01, which has nice colorization by Legend Films.








At this point you're probably wondering why I have been comparing a few DVD releases, but not any Blu-ray releases. Well, that's because there aren't any. Well, not of the film by itself. To my knowledge, the only major Blu-ray releases of the movie was as part of Shout Factory's The Vincent Price Collection II and the Australian (reportedly) region-free 7-disc The Vincent Price Collection from Shock Entertainment. Both releases, apparently, contain the 1.78:1 version of the movie; the same as the 16:9 side of the Warner DVD. Putting aside the fact that Shout's 2014 set is long out of print and going for high prices on the aftermarket, both sets have many films I don't want, and don't want to pay "box set prices" for in order to get this one film. I am really surprised that Warner Brothers never released House on Haunted Hill (1959) on Blu-ray. It would make a nice addition to their MOD "Warner Archive" collection.

A little research shows me that there were two individual Blu-ray releases; kinda, sorta. EyePop released the House on Haunted Hill 3D Blu-ray in 2023, which contains the 2D, 3D, and anaglyph 3D versions. I never even knew it existed, so I can't say how good it was, and it's now already sold out. There was also a Rifftrax Live! Blu-ray in 2011, but I read that it only features the "riffed" colorized version of the film, and does not include an additional "un-riffed" version of the original black and white film. That makes it useless.

So, which is the better version of these four DVDs? We can eliminate the Madacy DVD due to being an "on the fly" copy of the Warner DVD, which makes it a lossy copy. It also lacks the trailer, making it even more inferior. The movie on the Raunchy Tonk DVD has been altered, so that automatically eliminates it. That DVD is only worth owning for the Vincent Price "Golden Age" clips, which are public domain and may already be online. (If not, I'll upload it myself). That leaves Warner Brothers and Legend Films.

In terms of image quality, both appear to be exactly the same, and both have the same trailer. Legend has the addition of the colorized version and the quick look at the press book. Warner has the addition of the 16:9 widescreen version of the movie, though you gain very little extra on the sides, but lose a lot on the top and bottom. Plus the Warner DVD is a dual-sided (aka "flipper") disc and it's in a crappy snapper case. (To my knowledge, it was never re-released in a standard plastic case.)

So, with all of that in mind, I would have to say that the superior DVD is the Legend Films colorized/black & white DVD. If you still have a DVD burner, you can burn your own DVD-R of the movie and trailer (sourced from the Warner DVD) with these ISO files (3.4GB each): 4:3 Fullscreen and 16:9 Widescreen. Both contain optional English and French subtitles, and the same basic menus as the original DVD. If you just want to watch the movie, since it's in the public domain, you can watch it at many different places online. Below is one of many I found on Youtube.