Ghosts of Hanley House (1968)

Ghosts of Hanley House (1968) is another of those incredibly obscure low-budget movies that has gained a new lease of life thanks to the advent of streaming and its insatiable appetite for content.  The fact that it is in the public domain means that you can find it absolutely everywhere - consequently, it has undoubtedly been seen by countless more people than it ever was on its initial release.  Watching it, the grainy black and white footage, with its tinny mono soundtrack - which frequently fades out - makes you think it was actually made at least ten years before its official 1968 release date.  But the clothes, cars, haircuts and incidental details tell you that no, this really was shot in the late sixties.  The film has many of the shortcomings typical of such shoestring productions - a cast of, at best, semi-professional actors, poor production values, poor pacing and weak dialogue - yet it exerts a certain fascination while it is playing.  It can best be described as a no-budget version of The Haunting (1963), with its scenario of a small group of people accepting a bet to spend the night in supposedly haunted house from which the previous occupants disappeared without trace.  The lack of budget means that the supernatural manifestations experienced by the group are minimalist, to say the least: a disembodied knock on the door, disappearing car keys, voices in the night, for instance.  The most violent thing that happens in the house is one character being choked by a pair of phantom hands, while the main ghostly apparition is simply a glowing disc.

But the sheer simplicity and mundaneness of the incidents, coupled with the fact that the film is shot in a real house, giving proceedings a slightly claustrophobic feel, contribute to the strange sense of eeriness that accompanies this main portion of the film.  It all makes a stark contrast to the preceding scenes on the sunny streets and gardens of the small California town where the house is located.  Despite a frenzied opening, involving screams in the night, axes and an unseen killer and a flurry of action toward the end, with the dismembered bodies of the ghosts haunting the property being dug up (although we only, briefly, see a severed head) and some graveyard action, the reality is that not a lot actually happens in the film.  It's all about atmosphere and the psychological effects on the characters of the various goings on - which the cast, unfortunately, aren't really capable of doing justice to.  Yet, it remains an intriguing film.  Not a good film, by any measure, but certainly not as bad as some would have you believe.  Ghosts of Hanley House seems to have been something of a labour of love for writer/director Louise Sherrill, for whom this remains her only directorial credit, (although she has a number of later acting credits), hovering on the brink of almost being a home movie, of sorts.  The only recognisable professional actor in the cast is character actress Elsie Baker, who had credits stretching back to the silent era, in her last film role.  Ultimately, the atmospheric section of the film taking place in the haunted house elevates Ghosts of Hanley House slightly above the average micro-budgeted semi-professional B-movies of its era.