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House on Haunted Hill
FADE IN:
BLACK SCREEN:
And in the darkness, a TICKING sound is heard. Soft and
steady -- soothing -- and then a BANG!
SMASH UP ON:
INT. HOSPITAL - BASEMENT NURSE'S STATION - NIGHT
A HAND punching a CARD into the huge, ticking TIME CLOCK on
the wall:
7:00 a.m.PULL BACK TO REVEAL - A bleary-eyed MALE NURSE beginning
his day. Alone inside a small wood and glass cubicle, he
rips off yesterday's day-at-a-time calendar page, revealing
today's date:
October 11, 1931.Goes to the Victrola inside the cubicle. Cranks the turntable
up to speed. Puts the huge needle down on a spinning 78: we
hear the song crackling through the empty halls of the
hospital -- depression-era Muzak: Horace Heidt & His Musical
Knight's "Keep Your Sunny Side Up"
The Nurse sharpens the last of a half-dozen pencils to needle-
points, sits down at his desk, and begins the tedium of
jotting entries into a tall stack of Patient Records.
Beat. And then he hears a soft, almost paw-like tapping on
the glass. He looks up: a PATIENT with a heavily bandaged
head is standing there, his eyes as dull and lifeless as
marbles.
The Nurse waves the Patient away. Goes back to his work.
Beat. And then the tapping is heard again. The Nurse snaps
his head up, about to bark at the man -- but the words stop
dead on his tongue:
Standing on the other side of the glass are now two dozen
patients. Likewise bandaged, staring silent and dead-eyed at
him.
Unnerved, the Nurse's finger slowly stretches towards a
buzzer-button just below the desk-top. It never makes it.
Because --
A HAND - lashes into frame and grabs the Nurse's fingers. The
Nurse looks up.
In addition to the mass of Patients outside the cubicle,
there are now six of them inside it, surrounding him. The
Nurse's eyes shoot to the still-locked doors of the cubicle,
and he utters one confused word --
MALE NURSE:
-- how -- ?
-- and then someone rams all six of his needle-sharp pencils
eraser-deep into his throat.
The Nurse gurgles and staggers -- falls back against the
Victrola, hitting the turntable crank as he goes down,
causing it to start spinning like a pinwheel.
"Keep Your Sunny Side Up" now blares through the halls triple-
time, sounding like a thousand manic chipmunks. And to the
beat of that tune, the Patients smash the CONTROL PANEL
inside the cubicle until it shorts-out and explodes! Which
pops open
- and sends dozens more wild, raving Humans rampaging through
the hospital, while EVERY ELECTRIC LIGHT in the place strobes
maniacally, and ORDERLIES & OTHER NURSES are chased down like
rabbits by Patients and beaten to pulp, and
INT. "THERAPY" ROOMS -
- filled with devices that look straight out of the Spanish
Inquisition are trashed to toothpicks, and some of the STAFF
are forced into devices and tortured as PATIENT RECORDS are
spindled and ignited -- flaming torches used to set
everything in the place ablaze, and A WOLFPACK OF PATIENTS
kamikaze down-
INT. CORRIDOR - CONTINUOUS
-- fling open a set of double doors marked "Cerebral
Hygiene," shouting: "Vannacutt!" And we see --
INT. CEREBRAL HYGIENE ROOM - CONTINUOUS
-- two people in surgical scrubs: the moustached Doctor
named VANNACUTT and a FEMALE NURSE wielding a 16mm camera. As
the two whip around, startled by the shouts, we see the
object of their ministrations: A PATIENT on a gurney being
filmed as his internal organs are slowly and methodically
extracted -- while still alive.
And then all hell breaks loose as the WOLF PACK descends:
DR. VANNACUTT manages to yank down a LEVER on the wall
labeled "Lockdown" before he's swallowed by the Mob;
From somewhere in the house, we hear heavy gear, cables and
doors loudly shutting down the house.
The NURSE is clubbed to the floor with her own camera. And
amidst all the vengeful shouts and wails, a curious thing
happens:
As one of the Patients picks up the Nurse's blood-spattered
camera and puts it to his eye, the image on screen abruptly
SMASHES TO:
INT. CEREBRAL HYGIENE ROOM - CONTINUED - GRAINY BLACK & WHITE
-- and dead silence -- and we find ourselves watching old
soundless 16mm footage of what happened next: a blur of
scalpels and saws as the Patients viciously vivisect
Vannacutt and Nurse, who've been crammed together on that
same gurney. The B&W CAMERA PUSHES IN TIGHT on Vannacutt's
screaming maw -- and suddenly we hear SOUND AGAIN --
-- but, for some reason, it's not a human cry, but the
CROWING OF A ROOSTER -- and when we PULL BACK OUT we see that
what we're now watching is the Crowing Rooster and four
blazing camera lenses that was the logo of the old PATHE
NEWSREEL. The stentorian VOICE OF PATHE booms OVER:
VOICE OF PATHE:
October 11, 1931: Los Angeles!
Dithering, Bernard Herrmann-like strings swell up.
CUT TO (B&W)
A PATHE NEWS HEADLINE CARD: "HOSPITAL OF HORROR!"
CUT TO (B&W)
EXT. THE HOUSE - NIGHT - NEWSREEL FOOTAGE
A WHIPLASH PAN from the ocean to a GRANITE BUILDING high atop
the Pacific Palisades. Smoke and flames shoot from every
window and door as Firemen look on helplessly.
VOICE OF PATHE:
A conflagration of Biblical
proportions incinerates nearly
everything and every one inside
what was once Tinsel Town's most
celebrated psychiatric facility:
The Vannacutt Neuropathic
Institute. But the secret this
inferno burned free was far more
frlghtening than any picture that
Hollywood could ever produce!
CUT TO (B&W):
EXT. THE HOUSE - MORNING - NEWSREEL FOOTAGE
L.A. Sheriff's and Coroner's Investigators poking through the
Institute....
INT. THE HOUSE - VARIOUS ROOMS - MORNING - NEWSREEL FOOTAGE
QUICK CUTS OF GRUESOME IMAGES:
-- BODIES manacled to walls; rows of SKULLS riddled with
drill-holes; a huge VAT filled with blood
VOICE OF PATHE:
-- a Sanitarium of Slaughter supervised
by a surgeon gone mad --
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"House on Haunted Hill" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 6 Sep. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/house_on_haunted_hill_476>.
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