Continuity mistake: When Theo and Eleanor decide to explore the house, before the arrival of Luke and Dr Markway, they are in one of the dark corridors of the house. When Eleanor speaks the leaves of a plant shake, close to her right shoulder, but Eleanor is standing perfectly still, touching the right hand side of her chin with her right hand. Eleanor then hears a gasp, and we hear her thinking. In the next shot of Theo, Eleanor, now in the background, has moved a meter or two away from the plant, she is more to the centre of the archway. The next shot shows Eleanor standing next to the plant again.
The Haunting (1963)
Directed by: Robert Wise
Starring: Claire Bloom, Russ Tamblyn, Julie Harris, Richard Johnson
Trivia: Julie Harris was very aloof during filming and would often ignore her co-stars behind the scenes - especially Claire Bloom. Bloom felt very hurt by this. However, after filming, Harris showed up at Bloom's house with a gift and revealed that she actually really liked Bloom and her other co-stars. She behaved as she did during filming because she was trying to stay in-character between takes, and was worried that her performance as an outsider would suffer if she was friendly with her co-stars.
Trivia: In an early draft of the script, the story was re-written so that Hill House was actually a mental hospital where Eleanor was a patient, and the other characters were doctors and staff. It would be revealed that Eleanor was mentally ill and was misinterpreting the things around her as being supernatural in origin. However, this idea was discarded and the film was re-written to be more faithful to the original novel.
Luke Sanderson: I haven't seen a damn thing! I just don't like the way it looks.
Eleanor Lance: I was leaning back to see the top of the tower and... I got dizzy.
Luke Sanderson: Dizzy like a fox, huh?
Dr. John Markway: When people believed the earth was flat, the idea of a round world scared them silly. Then they found out how the round world works. It's the same with the world of the supernatural. Until we know how it works, we'll continue to carry around this unnecessary burden of fear.
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