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Vincent Price headlines as a millionairre who offers $10,000 to five people if they’ll spend the night with him and his wife in their haunted hilltop mansion. The house is the site of countless murders and is supposed to be haunted by ghosts. But is it the paranormal the guests should be afriad of? Or is it Price and his wife, who seem to be playing a deadly game of revenge on one another?

Schlockmeister William Castle (The Tingler, I Saw What You Did) directs this twisty-turny whodunnit. I usually enjoy claustrophobic ensemble pieces, but only if they have some personality. The story here is tedious and in dire need of more interesting characters and performances. The women in this movie are asked to do the worst kind of overacting imagineable. They scream and scream and scream and scream, and faint, and cower, and scream and scream and scream… it’s highly annoying. The men are less annoying, but still boring. Price has his usual charisma, though he doesn’t seem especially keen on this particular project. Elisha Cook Jr musters the most screen presence as the guest who adamently believes in ghosts. Castle makes the most of his sets, but as expected, all the scares — from constant theremin sound effects to skeleton marionette puppets — are too cheesy to withstand the test of time.