House on Haunted Hill Page #2

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 --

CUT TO (B&W)

ECU -- a formal PHOTOGRAPH of the man himself, mustache

waxed, eyes intense as a mesmerist's, seeming to stare a hole

right through us --

VOICE OF PATHE:

-- Richard Benjamin Vannacutt --

and --

INT. LIMBO SET -

-- suddenly, stepping right through VANNACUTT'S FACE and

strolling solemnly towards us in bright video-taped color is:

CHRISTOPHER LEE. He addresses the CAMERA:

CHRISTOPHER LEE:

-- murdered by his own patients before

every one of them perished in the

blaze. Ironically, the only humans

to escape the conflagration --

-- behind him, we see SILENT NEWSREEL FOOTAGE of five

people.

EXT. THE HOUSE - MORNING (CHYRON INERT)

-- three ORDERLIES, two NURSES -- clothes and faces sooty

and singed, each coughing up a storm as they're treated at

the scene --

CHRISTOPHER LEE:

-- were five of Vannacutt's equally

sadistic Staff, all of whom, until the

day they died, insisting that they were

only following "Doctor's Orders."

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