House Of The Damned (1963)

An architect (Ron Foster) and his wife (Merry Anders) are hired to survey an old empty mansion set in a secluded California hillside. But mysterious things happen during the night and when the architect's employer (Richard Crane) and his wife (Erika Peters) join them the following day, the wife disappears! Written and directed by Maury Dexter, this B&W thriller may have been shot in CinemaScope but it's a "B" low budget programmer which borrows from the Tod Browning classic FREAKS. I love these old decaying mansion where things go bump in the night horror flicks but this one has an ending that cheats its audience. It's not as bad as one of those "it was all a dream" endings but it's pretty close. The movie was filmed at the Greystone mansion in Beverly Hills and it's one corker of an "old dark house". Countless movies have been filmed there including WITCHES OF EASTWICK, DEATH BECOMES HER, GHOSTBUSTERS II and THE BIG LEBOWSKI among many others. It's the kind of movie that might play well at 2 o'clock in the morning when you have insomnia. With Richard Kiel (THE SPY WHO LOVED ME) and Ayllene Gibbons.