Vincent Price Double Feature: The House On Haunted Hill & The Last Man On Earth

Great product.

I saw this movie in the early 1960s, in the Star theater in Lebanon, Missouri. They ran coming attractions, then a B movie, followed by a cartoon, and then the A movie. Continuously, from open till close.And you could stay in the theater as along as you liked. All for 25 cents. Milk Duds were a dime. So parents would drop their kids off unescorted for 3 or 4 hours on a Saturday, and in those days it was safe to do so.This was a scary movie for me at the time, and it scared my little brother so bad he couldn't sleep for most of 4 days after. He still remembers the terror, 40-odd years later.Okay, we were kids then, and this movie is definitely dated compared to today's buckets of splattering gore, but this wasn't your usual Vincent Price movie. He does what he has to do to survive, but he's so lonely. And he misses his family so much. And the zombies are just waiting for him to screw up so they can kill him. It's actually a little sad.So if you're a horror fan and a film buff, you should definitely watch this one. Because, although not well known, it's one of the classics. Buy a box of Milk Duds too.

The Last Man On Earth was like watching a draft version of I Am Legend.

Even though it’s not scary, it’s still a good classic movie to watch during Halloween. You can’t go wrong with Vincent Price. He was a superb actor.

Great buy. I love this movie

Terrible quality version of these two classic movies. Waste of money! Don’t buy it.

Product Details for this double-feature list VCI as manufacturer, but the photo at upper left suggests a generic "ACME" name. Bottom line on public domain movie sellers is few go through painstaking restoration and quality depends on source material. A good rule of thumb is: if the price is low, the end result may also look it.(Five star rating is solely for content, not condition.).In HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, an exercise in deadly avarice that was shot in just two weeks by producer/director William Castle, an eccentric millionaire and his fourth wife offer $10K each to any of five guests able to survive the night in their supposedly spook-infested mansion. At midnight, all are armed with handguns. First to die is the rich man's wife, an apparant suicide by hanging. Nerves are on knife's edge and things get worse as the hour gets later. One scaredy cat, played by Elisha Cook Jr., heightens tensions with his doom and gloom pronouncements.One of those rare high quality public domainers that gets better with each passing year, "House" is also the epitome of a Halloween movie!.If THE LAST MAN ON EARTH seems to resemble George Romero's  NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD  (1968), that's because Romero admittedly got his inspiration from the same book that this earlier picture is adapted from, Richard Matheson's  I AM LEGEND  (1954). Matheson also wrote the first script of this Vincent Price classic but was unhappy with the result, so he chose an alias, 'Logan Swanson' for screen credit.It's a bleak vision of a world in which the undead roam at night andare overrunning the few uninfected humans; turning them into zombies. Price plays a doctor searching for this plague's cure who also goes out in the sunshine and hunts down the incapicitated monsters. As with your standard vampire, the creatures must avoid the sun, are afraid of mirrors and repelled by garlic. They're also physically weak and dull-witted, so Price has the upper hand...in the daytime. Sheer enemy numbers however and his compassion for one infected woman may prove his undoing.Filmed in and around Rome, "Last Man" is arguably Price's best movie work. It's certainly a story that stays with you..Parenthetical numbers preceding titles are 1 to 10 IMDb viewer poll ratings.(6.8) House on Haunted Hill (1959) - Vincent Price/Carol Ohmart/Richard Long/Alan Marshall/Carolyn Craig/Elisha Cook Jr./Julie Mitchum/Leona Anderson/Howard Hoffman(6.9) The Last Man on Earth (Italy/USA-1964) - Vincent Price/Franca Bettoia/Emma Danieli/Giacomo Rossi-Stuart/Umberto Raho/Christi Courtland

Vincent Price brings a thespian elegance to everything he does, especially "The Last Man on Earth," which is basically a soliloquy for the first half of the film (except for the flashback sequence, which effectively conveys the back-story through the use of a newspaper clipping). Adding to the eerie atmosphere are the B&W cinematography, vintage 1960s cars, and the deserted streets of Rome (where the movie was filmed). The zombies predate "Night of the Living Dead" and are said to have inspired George Romero. Both movies are decent prints reasonably free from artifacts and not too dark, which makes this budget double-feature from Acme DVD Works something of a bargain, although the Midnite Movies double-feature, while a little more expensive, has a nice pairing of "The Last Man on Earth" with "Panic in the Year Zero" starring Ray Milland---another end-of-the-world epic that carries on the post-apocalyptic theme. UPDATE 8/09: I've recently had the opportunity to see the new colorized version of "The Last Man on Earth" from Legend Films. While the restoration was meticulously done, it does lose a little bit of creepiness in color. On the other hand, the enhancements are subtle and reasonably natural (and it comes with the original B&W version), making this a good alternative to consider too.

Super scary..

I mainly bought this DVD for the first film. House on Haunted Hill. And it was exactly what I wanted. A 50s haunted house story with creepy visuals and unsettling score with a cool story. Nothing extremely scary but a lot of fun. The black and white really does it justice.The other film was okay but not as good as the first film! But an interesting watch nonetheless. Highly recommend the set for anyone who loves old B movie 50/60s horror films.