The House on Haunted Hill & Let's Kill Uncle, Before Uncle Kills Us

January 13
The Master of Gimmickry: William Castle, Part 2
House on Haunted Hill
(NR, 1959, 75 min)
William Castle's thril a funhouse come to life. Vincent Price stars as a silky millionaire married to a greedy gold digger who refuses to divorce him. When he offers $10,000 to whoever will spend the night in "the only truly haunted house in the world", it seems he may have found an alternative to divorce. Five strangers gather to test their stamina, and the spook show begins.

Let’s Kill Uncle, Before Uncle Kills Us
(NR, 1966, 92 min)
12 year-old Barnaby has lost his parents and stands to inherit a $5 million fortune.  He goes to live with his uncle on an isolated Caribbean island…but “Uncle” has plans to inherit Barnaby’s estate, even if it means killing him!  Realizing uncle’s plot, Barnaby decides that the best way to save his own life is to kill his uncle first. Don’t miss poison mushrooms, fire, tarantulas, and a shark-infested murky swimming pool.

What Jim says…
Retrofantasma Classics was born in July 2010 with a William Castle double feature of 13 Ghosts and Homicidal.  Originally, House on Haunted Hill was supposed to screen in place of Homicidal, but there were problems obtaining a 35mm print.  No such problems this time.  When selecting a second Castle film, I seriously considered Mr. Sardonicus and Strait-Jacket, two films which appear quite often in our surveys, and which will undoubtedly appear sometime in the future.  I instead chose his lesser-known, Let’s Kill Uncle, a film I recall seeing as a child on late-night TV, but never again since.  Why this particular film?  Universal struck a new 35mm print in 2000 and it has never been played in the United States. In fact, to the best of Universal’s knowledge, Let’s Kill Uncle hasn’t screened in a theatre anywhere for more than two decades.  It’s an opportunity to give Retro audiences a truly rare movie-going experience, and one that I hope exemplifies how unique this film series is becoming.