You must decapitate rather than anticipate what falls off in this late entry into the "Old Dark House" prototype, a rip-off of the type of film that William Castle was doing years before with more wit. Cesar Romero takes over a Vincent Price role as the magician whose wife allegedly disappeared years before after he "perfected" a guillotine trick. Now deceased with every intent of coming back from the dead, he has left his spooky Hollywood Hills home to his daughter (Connie Stevens, who also appears briefly as Romero's wife) left to an aunt to raise and now an heiress with $300,000 coming to her, as long as she can spend seven nights in the mansion filled with skeletons, mischievous bunnies, and his father's drunken mistress and attorney who for some reason read the will on the stages of the Hollywood Bowl. (Is that so reporters over in Pasadena can hear them?)
Along comes mysterious young man Dean Jones with an interest in Stevens that you are not sure is romantic, financial or nefarious. The drunken mistress (Virginia Gregg) singles him out as a gold-digger, and Stevens can't make up her mind whether she loves him or despises him as certain facts are made known about him. The "wascally wabbit" (this is a Warner Brothers film after all) pushes a box down the stairs which contains a duplicate of Stevens' head, a brawny housekeeper (Connie Gilchrist) starts and quits on the same day (being pushed to a fainting spell by the fake skeleton and waking up to find herself being kissed by the bunny), and visions of the dead dad keep appearing. If this was made in 1930, before the original "Old Dark House" (in itself a variation of "The Cat and the Canary"), this might be the best horror comedy of the year, but after "The Tingler", "The House on Haunted Hill", "The Haunting" and "The Bat", this seems really old hat.
Still, there are a few gags to laugh with (or at), and there is a slight sense of creepiness that makes you forgive the film for its repetition of old ideas. However, the actors, while not openly laughing, seem to know that they're reading from a ridiculously silly script. If it wasn't for the silly rabbit, tricks would be for Romero!
Along comes mysterious young man Dean Jones with an interest in Stevens that you are not sure is romantic, financial or nefarious. The drunken mistress (Virginia Gregg) singles him out as a gold-digger, and Stevens can't make up her mind whether she loves him or despises him as certain facts are made known about him. The "wascally wabbit" (this is a Warner Brothers film after all) pushes a box down the stairs which contains a duplicate of Stevens' head, a brawny housekeeper (Connie Gilchrist) starts and quits on the same day (being pushed to a fainting spell by the fake skeleton and waking up to find herself being kissed by the bunny), and visions of the dead dad keep appearing. If this was made in 1930, before the original "Old Dark House" (in itself a variation of "The Cat and the Canary"), this might be the best horror comedy of the year, but after "The Tingler", "The House on Haunted Hill", "The Haunting" and "The Bat", this seems really old hat.
Still, there are a few gags to laugh with (or at), and there is a slight sense of creepiness that makes you forgive the film for its repetition of old ideas. However, the actors, while not openly laughing, seem to know that they're reading from a ridiculously silly script. If it wasn't for the silly rabbit, tricks would be for Romero!