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Jane Eyre and 10 Other Scary Houses Movies

Posted February 23, 2011 to photo album "Jane Eyre and 10 Other Scary Houses Movies"

Something’s not quite right up at Thornfield Hall, as Mia Wasikowska discovers in Cary Fukunaga’s new adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel. Consider these other films where something is not quite right at home.

Jane Eyre and the World of Scary Houses
There’s No Place Like a Haunted Home
The Innocents: Henry James’ Turn on Jane Eyre
The Haunting: The Science of Scary
The Shining: The Places that Drive You Mad
Demon Seed: The Ghost in the Machine
Suspiria: A Maze in Real Estate
The Others: Everyone Haunts Someone
The Orphanage: Horror Stripped Bare
Safe: Suburban Scary
The Winchester Trilogy: American Fear
Gravity was Everywhere Back Then: DIY Scary
The Haunting: The Science of Scary

The Haunting: The Science of Scary

Robert Wise adapted Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House for his 1963 film The Haunting, which Martin Scorsese dubbed the scariest film of all time. According to the American Film Institute, Wise had read Jackson’s novel on the set of West Side Story and jumped out of his seat. Determined to transfer that jolt to his audiences, Wise, like The Innocents director Jack Clayton, used wide-angle lenses to give the house a visually creepy vibe, even cajoling Panavision to give him lenses that were not yet approved for the market because they distorted the image too much. In The Haunting, a scientist gathers a small group to spend several nights in a supposedly haunted house in what will be an investigation of the paranormal. A camera careening down a spiral staircase and a “breathing” door that buckles against its frame are just two of the scary household flourishes that make Hill House one of the most famous haunted abodes ever. It’s even a stop on Britain’s Movie Magic Tour, which takes fans to the sites of their favorite movies. While the story was set in New England, and the interiors shot at the MGM Studios in Borehamwood, the exterior was, says Robert Wise, “a several-hundred-years-old manor house out in the country, about ten miles from Stratford-on-Avon. It was a pretty horrifying-looking thing under certain kinds of lights and I accentuated that by shooting some of the exteriors with infra-red film.” At the May, 2010 event, fans stayed overnight in that home with star Richard Johnson hosting a candlelit screening of the film.