Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, we begin our Halloween season exploration of how various horror sub-genres reflect the queer experience with 1963’s The Haunting.
It’s October once again, which we means we’ve got the famously fruitful and complex relationship between queer film and horror on the brain. Every week this month, we’ll be diving into a movie representing a different scary sub-genre, and exploring how they interpret queer characters and themes through the lens of spooks and frights.
At this point, it’s a cliché for horror movies to turn our repressed traumas and emotional baggage into monsters—forcing us to literally face our fears. But there’s truth behind every cliché. Sometimes what scares us most is buried deep in the back of minds, and only supernatural creatures or spirits can draw them out.
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Haunted houses have long been the perfect playground for these demons to come out and play. They are physical spaces that one can walk through, explore, and get lost in, with secrets and potential frights in every corner—and they always come complete with their fair share of troubled history. This week, we’ll be looking at one of the most acclaimed haunted house pictures in the horror canon and re-examining how it portrays one of the earliest lesbian characters in the genre.
The Set-Up
1963’s The Haunting follows Doctor John Markway (Richard Johnson), who decides to investigate the paranormal allegations of the infamous Hill House, a remote estate in the middle of a New England forest. Legend says that the man who built it had his two wives mysteriously die, only for his daughter to grow up there a recluse, eventually dying a lonely old woman. Her caretaker went crazy and committed suicide, and it’s said that their spirits still inhabit the house and chase out anyone who dares to stay.
Dr. Markway invites a team of young investigators to help him try to identify these occurrences, all of which have had personal experiences with the supernatural themselves: Eleanor (Julie Harris) saw a poltergeist as a child and now carries immense guilt after her invalid mother’s death, Theodora (Claire Bloom) has psychic abilities, and Luke (Russ Tamblyn) is the nephew of the house’s current owners who is overseeing the operation.
They decide to spend a few days in the house—despite being warned to stay away even by the servants, who refuse to stay the night—and it’s not long before they’re experiencing strange noises and sensations. Eleanor, in particular, begins to feel haunted not only by the house, but by her own past.
A Classic For A Reason
The Haunting is based on Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel The Haunting Of Hill House (which was considered unadaptable by many) and directed by Robert Wise, who had just directed the 1961 adaptation of West Side Story, and had a second musical masterpiece right around the corner, 1965’s The Sound of Music.
Although it did not open to much acclaim (Shirley Jackson herself condemned it), the movie is now considered to be a landmark not just in horror, but cinema in general, particularly for its inventive camera movements, production design, and the way it chooses to show (or not show) horror. Filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg often cite it as one of their favorite and most influential movies.
The Haunting focuses mainly on Eleanor, and how the house slowly breaks down her psyche until *spoiler alert!* she inevitably meets the same ending as the previous inhabitants. The spirits bring out her guilt and fears, and we get to hear her spiraling inner monologue throughout. But one of the most interesting aspects of the character is her relationship with Theodora, the other young woman on the team.
There’s A Presence In The Room With Us…
From her first introduction, Theodora is shown as much more abrasive and confident than Eleanor, who is rather shy and jumpy. Theodora takes the role of a big sister; she looks after Eleanor and comforts her fears and worries about the house. The two are staying in conjoined bedrooms, and one night they experience a supernatural appearance together. In one of the most famous sequences of the movie, the two are terrified in bed together, holding each other, and a new relationship and closeness sprouts between them. Theodora decides to stay in the same room with Eleanor from then on.
Theodora is quite clearly portrayed as a lesbian, first in the subtext of the film through her dynamics and mannerisms towards Eleanor. But later on, as Eleanor’s mind has started to unravel and she can’t quite trust herself or others, she becomes spiteful against those around her, and pushes Theodora away, calling her an “inconsistency” and “mistake of nature,” which Theodora doesn’t fight against. Not much subtlety there!
Even if her queerness doesn’t play a pivotal role in the narrative, it’s refreshing to see it not be downplayed or undermined either, especially in a movie about how repressed trauma comes back to haunt you.
A Haunting Legacy
There have been more adaptations of Shirley Jackson’s novel since, most noticeably a 1999 remake of this film starring Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lili Taylor, and Luke Wilson, which was critically panned and—despite being made 35 years later—treated the lesbian subtext with the same level of narrative relevance. It was also adapted into the Netflix series The Haunting Of Hill House, though the characters’ relationships and backstories were heavily changed for that version of the story.
The original The Haunting‘s representation is more incidental than anything, but by introducing one of horror’s earliest lesbian characters it underscored one of the sub-genre’s strongest metaphors: Bad things happen when you try to run away from yourself and your past.
And, as we now know, it’s a recurring theme that queer horror films would continue to explore time and time again—especially as we made our way out of the hidden corners of haunted houses and into the spotlight.
1963’s The Haunting is currently streaming on Fubo TV and MGM+ via Amazon Prime Video and The Roku Channel. It’s also available for digital rental on Apple TV.
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Jim
OMG. Did you really have to give a “Set-Up”. Are people so aware of the great Shirley Jackson and Julie Harris.
That’s just sad.