My favorite haunted house movie is still “The Haunting.” Not the overegged 1999 Steven Spielberg-produced remake, with every “chill” projected boldly in state-of-the-art CGI, but the spine-tingling Robert Wise original from 1963 – black and white, insinuating, and creepy as hell.

The direction, cinematography, editing, screenplay, and acting are all first-rate (Russ Tamblyn’s wisecracking Luke aside), and the film still makes for an effective hair-raiser, when viewed alone, late at night, with the lights out.

“In the night… in the dark,” as Mrs. Dudley says.

Adding another dimension to the piece is the unsettling score of Humphrey Searle. Searle manages to take “The Haunting” to a whole other level with his weird atonality and menacing avant-gardisms.

As a concert composer, Searle, two years younger than Benjamin Britten, is about as far from the pastoral tradition of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gerald Finzi as any English composer of his generation could possibly be (with the possible exception of Elizabeth Lutyens). Britten was contemporary, and cosmopolitan, but Searle was radical, propelled by “Wozzeck” and Franz Liszt (a composer whose works he catalogued, and about whom he wrote an influential book). Searle’s principle mode of expression may have been dodecaphonic (i.e. twelve-tone), but he liked to characterize himself as romantic.

All of Searle’s symphonies have been recorded, but to date, there has been no commercial release of his music for “The Haunting.” For me, this is on my short list of scores I hope one day to be able to purchase. It remains one of the most effective horror scores I have ever heard. Thankfully, for the present, some of it has been posted on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kvzVt0FtZg

I understand that Searle’s symphonies may not be everyone’s cup of tea. They can be austere, grumpy (or perhaps Searle-y), acerbic, tough, and even violent. But the Second, written to the memory of his first wife, Lesley, suggests a tonal center of D and is therefore perhaps a tad more orienting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh7ATj4tIJU

For a serialist (who was introduced to Anton Webern by Schoenberg pupil Theodor Adorno), Searle was not without a sense of humor. Here is his “Punkt Contrapunkt,” written under the pseudonym of Bruno Heinz Jaja, a musical joke composed for one of the notorious Hoffnung Music Festival concerts. The speakers are Gerard Hoffnung and John Amis.

And a setting of “Young Lochinvar,” after Walter Scott, also composed for Hoffnung, with Gerard Hoffnung and Yvonne Arnaud.

By coincidence, it was as Searle was on his to Liverpool to attend the premiere of his Symphony No. 2 (link posted above) that he learned of Hoffnung’s death, of a heart attack, at the age of 34.

Searle also composed scores for Hammer Films’ “The Abominable Snowman,” with Forrest Tucker and Peter Cushing, and the Doctor Who serial “The Myth Makers,” with William Hartnell.

Happy birthday, Humphrey Searle!

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: “The Haunting;” Searle at work; and Searle, seldom without cat or cigarette, caricatured by Gerard Hoffnung