[4][5] Millonaire Frederick Loren invites five people to a party he is throwing for his fourth wife, Annabelle, in an allegedly haunted house he has rented.

He promises to give each guest $10,000 with the stipulation that they stay the entire night in the house after the doors are locked at midnight, all the windows are barred, and there are no phones or radios to use.

The guests are test pilot Lance Schroeder; newspaper columnist Ruth Bridges; psychiatrist Dr. David Trent; Nora Manning, who works for one of Loren's companies; and the house's owner, Watson Pritchard.

Watson believes that the house is genuinely haunted by the ghosts of those murdered there, including his own brother; he claims to have spent one night there before and "was almost dead" when found the next morning.

He gives a tour of the house, including a vat of acid in the basement, which a previous resident used to kill his wife.

Annabelle privately warns Lance that her husband is scheming something and that she suspects him of murdering his second and third wives after his first wife disappeared.

Having encountered further apparitions, Nora decides against staying the night, but the caretakers lock the doors five minutes early, taking that option out of the guests' hands.

Aroused by the ghostly sounds, David concludes that the killer is about and proposes that he and Frederick split up to search the house.

Frederick emerges from the shadows, holding the puppeteer control unit that he used to manipulate the skeleton and revealing that he had known their plot all along.

When they arrive in the cellar, Frederick explains that he loaded her gun with blanks, that his wife and David plotted to kill him, and that they both died in the vat of acid.

[6][7] The bulk of the film was shot on sound stages,[8] depicting the interior of the house in a combination of styles, including 1890s Victorian, with gas chandeliers and sconces.

Johnny Legend released a 50th anniversary DVD containing many extras such as both the original theatrical trailer and TV spots plus several William Castle and Vincent Price theatrical trailers, a Carol Ohmart profile and "golden age" TV shows starring Vincent Price.

[22] Allmovie has praised the film retrospectively, writing, "Campy and creepy in equal measures, House on Haunted Hill deserves its status as a horror classic.

"[23] The film was also spoofed by RiffTrax on February 9, 2009 and again live in Nashville which was released on DVD on May 16, 2011 (the latter also featured two shorts: Magical Disappearing Money and Paper and I).

The 1999 film was released to negative reviews but was a box office success, while the 2007 sequel was direct-to-video and widely panned.