One year after winning the Oscar for best director and best picture for West Side Story (1961) and three before getting the statuettes in the same categories for Smiles and tears (1965), Robert Wise signed The Haunting (The mansion enchanted), the horror film preferred by Martin Scorsese. Julie Harris, Claire Bloom y Richard Johnson they starred in the intense story shot in black and white at the express wish of the filmmaker, who sought to provide his film with an atmosphere and an oppressive psychological state, typical of the genre.
The script was signed by Nelson Giddingwho was inspired by the novel The haunting of Hill House (The Haunting of Hill House) of Shirley Jacksonthe classic of gothic literature that came to light in 1959 and has been described by Stephen King as one of the best horror novels of the 20th century. The text of the American narrator was again taken to the cinema in 1999, in The Haunting con Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lili Taylor y Owen Wilsonand more recently in a television miniseries format through The Haunting of Hill House (2018) of Mike Flanagan.
The Haunted Mansion
But in turn, some scenes from the tape of Robert Wise of 1963 inspired one of the most popular amusement park rides Disney, The Haunted Mansion (The Haunted Mansion), which opened its doors in 1969. And also, in a concatenation of good ideas, in 2003 the first film based on this successful “house of terror” was released, a family comedy directed by Rob Minkoff and starring Eddie Murphy, Terence Stamp, Marsha Thomason y Nathaniel Parker. The also “super detective in Hollywood” was on this occasion a real estate agent who, together with his wife and his children, entered a valuable mansion in New Orleans, where, in addition to dust and cobwebs, up to 999 macabre ghosts lived.
The new haunted mansion
To close the circle, 60 years after the original and two decades after the one just mentioned, Disney premieres a remake whose first advance promises fun and terror in equal parts. It is directed by justin simonresponsible for comedy dear white people (2014) and the horror film Bad Hair (2020), and writer of the series in development Landoabout the character of Star Wars. simon He has declared himself a die-hard fan of the iconic attraction and has declared that he is happy to share the trailer for this new adaptation, which tells the story of a woman and her son, who recruit a diverse group of spiritual experts to help them liberate their home from supernatural occupants.
The new version also comes with an all-star cast that includes Lakeith Stanfield (daggers in the back) y Tiffany Haddish (girls plan), in the shoes of the leading couple, together with Danny DeVito, Jamie Lee Curtis, Rosario Dawson, Chase Dillon, Dan Levi, Owen Wilson (who is not afraid of returning to a haunted house) and Jared Leto, like the Hatbox Ghost, one of the most emblematic characters of the Haunted Mansion. And in this first display of sensations that the trailer of Haunted Mansion The song that serves as the soundtrack also stands out: House without windowsof Roy Orbisonwhich takes us back to 1963, when he published his magical album ‘In dreams’.