My esteemed colleague and fancy-pants film auteur, Tom Chick, likes to make fun of me for liking grandpa movies. I admit I like a lot of black and white movies, especially horror. Well, let me rephrase that..
Now we're talking. The Haunting packs all of these cheapjack schlockathons you guys have been featuring onto a dinghy and blows it out the water. Don't get me wrong- I love some pretty dodgy horror pictures but I go in for shameless rubbish like Jess Franco and Paul Naschy over all that "straight to Netflix" junk.
But yes, The Haunting is definitely one of the best...such a subtle, suggestive picture. It's one of the few post-RKO films where Wise really shows his roots working with Val Lewton. That whole "unseen" horror thing borne out of minuscule budgets.
I like to watch The Haunting paired with John Hough's The Legend of Hell House. Even though it's based on a Richard Matheson novel, it's almost a direct "port" of The Haunting. It's even filmed in the same house. But it's not subtle at all. It's definitely an evil, very hostile spirit.
Jason, have you seen Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon? You really, really should if you haven't. The producers made them stick a visible monster in it, but there's a similar degree of subtlety an suggestion.
Then there's Rosemary's Baby, where the horror stuff us always occurring in another room, off camera.
I'm glad you suggested Night of the Demon! I'm going to go home and check that out tonight. I also found the subtitled "Let the Right One In" that I want to check out as well.
In the original book, I wouldn't have described the attraction between the two women as sexual. (Or symmetrical.) But there was definitely an attraction on both sides, twisted and damaged as it was.