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Originally Posted by Iron Maiden  I like every film he listed, but I'm not the biggest fan of The Uninvited. It does have a solid atmosphere, but it just doesn't compare with The Haunting.
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Ostensibly they're both old, B&W haunted house movies and as Scorsese says both are rich in atmosphere (and interestingly enough both contain subtle lesbian undertones), but really
The Uninvited is a quite different film, from a different era. It's a consummate ghost story with some standout hair-raising moments, but tempered by a lush, romantic Victor Young score, and debonair Ray Milland almost always in lighthearted trifle mode, dropping mother in law jokes and throwing objects at ghosts to get them to fuck off. The film is as much about the mystery as it is about scares, the cliffside setting veers more towards beautiful than creepy, and the ghosts aren't all that frightening or malicious (definitely not the kind of hardcore movie ghosts that make you sleep with all the lights on and a Louisville slugger blessed with holy water underneath the bed... don't look at me like I'm the only one who's ever done that). The fairer comparison would probably be with spooky-but-sedate contemporaries like
A Place of One's Own or even earlier stuff from the Old Dark House genre, rather than
The Haunting, because Robert Wise doesn't fuck around, his is the one to turn to when looking for intensity of experience, when you want that knob turned up to eleven.
The Uninvited is a great film though, and the "wailing woman" scene alone makes it essential viewing. It sucks about the DVD situation but if anyone does want to check it out, they sometimes have it on Turner Classic.
And Elvis, seek out
Dead of Night when you're in the mood for some classic anthology horror. Scorcese mentions the brilliant way the film builds to a "crescendo of madness", but the main attraction is Hugo the ventriloquist's dummy (SPOILER he's evil and dangerous and makes you wish someone gifted him to that Dunham douche). I treasure my out of print Anchor Bay DVD of this film, which has it doubled with the amazing
The Queen of Spades.
