Jason Alley🏳️🌈🐻’s review published on Letterboxd:
In William Castle's HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, Vincent Price plays an eccentric millionaire who invites six strangers to a notoriously haunted house, gives them each a loaded gun (as a "party favor!") and offers them all $10,000 apiece if they survive the night.
That's one of my favorite set-ups for any movie ever, and the film is ALMOST entertaining enough to live up to it. Despite the flurry of twists (here's a hint: the people in this house have as much to fear from each other as they do from the ghosts) and a running time of just under 80 minutes, the pace lags in the middle. But there's more than enough goofy, spooky fun here to make HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL worth seeing, and Vincent Price is delightfully sinister.
The underrated remake is also worth checking out. While it places too much emphasis on gore, it ramps up the roller-coaster-ride premise to full effect, and Geoffrey Rush is almost as entertaining as Price in the eccentric millionaire role.