The story of the subliminal messages appearing in Harold Daniels' TERROR IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE is pretty well-documented, but a couple of questions have sprung to mind. One is that I've read the US government banned the movie after the "secret" came out, yet the movie is readily available today and was telecast for many years unedited. Were the messages altered to meet apprioval or something? And two, although I've never seen it, I've read where DATE WITH DEATH directed by Daniels the next year had the same subliminal messages; but that isn't a horror movie, so what imagery was used, and why didn't the Washington watchdogs come down on it as well?

I have examined a 35mm print of this film (we have one here in the SMU archive) on rewinds with magnification on a light table in eyeball-twisting detail, and I'm here to tell ya, the subliminal PsychoRama gimmick is deep hooey. The trailer narrated by Gerald Mohr with its super-liminal exaggerated imprints is, to my knowledge, the only thing that was ever done.

If anyone has seen or knows of a release print of the film that has something approaching what distributor Howco claimed was there, please contact me immediately. Barring such notice, I will remain convinced that this was another glorious example of threadbare 50s genre film hucksterism.

No, the subliminal messages are definitely there in video prints. I haven't seen Rhino's DVD, but the version I watched on prerecord VHS many years ago had the subliminal messages in them. The images aren't particularly scary; they look more like the badly drawn horror comics put out by Skywald in the early 1970s.

If I remember correctly, didn't Rhino themselves add those 'newly created' subliminals for their original VHS release? I believe the video box or a pre-film crawl on the video indicated that the original subliminal prints were 'lost or destroyed' so they added their own new subliminal images (goofy cartoon drawings of skulls and whatnot). I haven't seen the video in quite a while (I didn't even know the film was on DVD already!) so I can't confirm this, but I think that's what Rhino did. So Kevin's theory may be true! Talk about a wild scam! How would anyone be able to prove the subliminals weren't there if they were subliminal? Hilarious!

I would think that the government "banning" of the film was just a fake story made up by Howco for their publicity manuals.

I recall reading Rhino's new inserts were drawn by Drew Friedman.

The Rhino rhino even pops up on the cassette!