House on Haunted Hill was the result of a chance encounter
William Castle and Vincent Price crossed paths in a surprisingly unplanned way!
Destiny, it seems, might be a big horror movie fan.
How often are lives changed by one simple choice? You go to one grocery store instead of another, and you meet someone who makes a lifelong impression. Or maybe you stop to tie your shoes, and later see a truck that definitely would've hit you had your commute been uninterrupted. Fate has a way of changing a person's path forever. It's up to us, though, whether we notice it happening at all.
Cinema buffs may not have noticed, for example, that one of Vincent Price's most acclaimed roles was the result of complete happenstance.
According to his daughter's biography of Price, the actor ended up in House on Haunted Hill just because both he and the movie's director were in the right place at the right time. The filmmaker behind that hit, William Castle, was hot off the success of his debut, Macabre, when pure chance set up his next big picture.
"Castle's meeting with his new leading man was a fortuitous one," wrote Victoria Price. "He ran across Vincent eating a slice of pie at a coffee shop near Goldwyn Studios and proceeded to pitch him his idea: A millionaire, Frederick Loren, invites five strangers to a 'haunted house party' and offers $10,000 to anyone who will stay in the house through the night— if they survive, that is, since in the hundred years of its existence seven people have been murdered in it. What ensues are a series of hauntings and spookings which reach fever pitch when Loren's wife tries to throw him into a vat of boiling acid."
Victoria Price also provided further insight into the relationship that developed between filmmaker William Castle and his new star performer, Vincent Price.
"Vincent liked William Castle, whom he described as 'one of the last great characters' in the movies. A witty man who loved a gimmick and knew how to make them work sometimes.'"
They can't all be winners, but House on Haunted Hill, and its patented "Emergo" technology, definitely belongs in the "successes" column in either artist's filmography.
Related
