When I was a little boy back in the mid-seventies, many things scared me; loud noises, spiders, deep water, some creepy guy that attended one of my older sister’s parties. But apparently, ghosts and haunted houses didn’t make the scare factor – at least not the ones that appeared on TV. As a “young man” in my single digit years, I remember watching haunted house movies with my sister (the hostess of the party with the creepy guy) on television and loving them. She introduced me to some memorable movies. Well, mostly memorable.  Somewhat memorable?  I’ll explain this ambivalence.

Years and years went by and certain scenes from two of these movies stayed with me. The larger plots were forgotten; the titles and other identifying specs remained unknown.  I described what I had remembered about these films to my sister but my descriptions did not help to jog her memory. (This same sister attended a Led Zeppelin concert and to this day cannot recall anything from the set list, so my attempts to mine her memory banks were doomed before the mining had started).  Unaided, all alone (poor, poor me), I set out to relocate these haunted houses and rediscover the chilling haunts that lurked within them. All I had to go on were the images and impressions of a seven-year old. Were they reliable? Let us see!

Images and Impressions from Mystery Haunted House Film #1

• There was a loud “BANG BANG BANG!” coming from behind a wall.
• Somewhere near the end of a film, I remembered one of the male characters saying something to the effect of “I’m going to see what that is”, only to be thwarted by another man who kept saying “Don’t go in there…don’t!”

For years I had wondered what was behind “that one wall”. Did the characters ever discover what lurked behind it?  I now believe that the movie in question is The Haunting.  The BANG BANG BANG occurs throughout the film from behind several of the house’s walls; it is not delegated to one specific barrier to some unknown location.  As for the two men arguing – this occurs but it is a minor exchange. My memory had blown the conflict out of proportion.

My first adult experience of The Haunting occurred in the mid-nineties. (I saw it again in 2015 and reviewed it then.) Finally I had found the “BANG BANG BANG” film. The mystery had gone unsolved for twenty years!  It would take another twenty years to solve Mystery #2 . Finally, in the early part of the summer of 2017 (just a few weeks ago!), I saw Mystery Haunted House Film #2

Images and Impressions from Mystery Haunted House Film #2

• I remembered that there were four characters; but I only recalled the appearances of two – a young woman with long hair brown hair and a young man with a black mustache.
• The young woman kept shaking and acting freaky. My sister explained, “There’s a ghost inside her!” Later in the film, the young man with the mostache would suddenly get violent. Whenever this happened, my sister would say, “Now there’s a ghost inside him!”

 

What film could this be? I had searched though lists of haunted house films of the 1960s and early 70s, breezed through many a synopsis and looked over movie stills. Finally I came upon something that seemed to capture the images from my memory. Wouldn’t you know it – the film is free on youtube!  After watching the film I decided with 88 percent certainty that this was the “There’s a ghost inside her/him” movie.  It’s called The House that Would Not Die.

Once again, my memory proved inaccurate. There are indeed four main characters in this film with one being a young woman with long hair and another being a young man with a mustache. However it isn’t the young man that has an aggression problem.  In addition to the two youngsters, there are two older characters, played by Richard Egan  and Barbara Stanwyck. It is Egan’s character “Pat McDougal” that turns violent whenever a ghost enters his body.

So, after all these years of yearning for clarification, is the film so remarkable as to be well worth the wait? No not really. It’s your average made-for-TV movie. That’s right my friends, this movie first premiered on ABC on Oct 27, 1970 – just in time for Halloween. It’s not a bad film. It is what it is, and what it is is (no I will not delete the repeated word!) a typical “woman inherits a haunted house” story.  Ruth Bennett (Barbara Stanwyck) is the inheritor, and she and her young niece Sara Dunning (the long haired woman played by Kitty Winn) move in to the huge house. Right away, Ruth hits it off with Professor Pat Mcdougal, who is constantly shadowed by his bright pupil Stan Whitman (the young dude with the mustache, who is played by Michael Anderson Jr.)  The film rushes to unite all these characters so that – yay! – it now has a cast to haunt. As previously noted, spirits frequently possess poor Sara and poor Pat, forcing them to adopt the personalities of their possessors. This is why Pat becomes violent at times. It’s not his fault, so let’s not judge him too harshly. The spirits have been hanging around the house since the days of The American Revolution. This is why the film is titled The House That Wouldn’t Die.

This film will not sway those that are indifferent to this genre.  But I submit that fans of old-skool haunted house flicks might feel at home in this film. However, I hesitate to call it a “classic” because that would but it on par with legendary haunted house films such as The Legend of Hell House and, yes, The Haunting (Gotta love those BANG BANG BANGs!). The House That Would Not Die just doesn’t hold its shingles when compared to these other films.  But it’s entertaining in a dramatic kind of way. The ghost story is somewhat chilling. And the acting is above average. Of course, Stanwyck is always great, which brings me to my last and final misconception.  I had told someone that Stanwyck’s final film was William Castle’s The Night Walker – 1964. I was half-right. The Night Walker was Stanwyck’s final film on the big screen. She made several made-for-TV movies throughout the 70s, including The House That Wouldn’t Die.

Images and Impressions – these are some of the ghosts that have haunted me throughout the years. And I welcome them, even when they materialize in ways that challenge my memory. If nothing else, I appreciate the scenes from “The House That Would Not Die that have stayed with me since I was a child. For that to have happened, the filmmakers had to have done something right. And they did. They made a fair/good movie.  That’s not too shabby!

Watch the Movie – Free on Youtube (While it lasts)