Hey, how about a Halloween ad for a home air conditioning
system? I don’t think I’ve seen that before. And after seeing the 1963 movie The Haunting on TCM recently, it made me
think of one.
The Haunting (the
good one from 1963, not the lame one from 1999), based upon the 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House, is about a
supernatural researcher who brings two psychics into a notorious haunted house
and is joined by the heir who will inherit the house as a sort of chaperone.
(Stephen King borrowed the premise for his Rose
Red TV mini-series, which he then mixed with Winchester House lore and put
the whole thing on steroids. {<Fun idea, by the way! Still, I prefer the
subtlety of 1963’s The Haunting.})
And in the movie, there’s a scene where the researcher tells the others in the
house that he’s found: “the heart of Hill House”, and it ends up being this
unexplained cold spot that’s so cold, people can see their breath.
So in this ad for a home air conditioning system, the
researcher brings everyone in the house to this unexplained cold spot, and says
this is proof of the supernatural. But then, the heir guy says that it’s not
supernatural, it’s the new air conditioning system he’s having installed, and
this is the first vent, and that is why they can see their own breath: because of its incredible cooling power. Then we hear ghost noises and sound effects, and the
heir says: “They’ve been haunting me to put this in for years!” Then we see a door
bending and stretching towards them (like in another scene from The Haunting),
and the heir says: “Oh, they must have just put a vent in that room too. They’re
ahead of schedule. See how powerful it is? It’s practically bending the door
with its cold air delivery.”
And so all supernatural phenomena are nothing more than the
impressive effects of (whatever brand of) home air conditioning system: It’s
supernatural power to cool your house!
Then maybe the next ad could reference Poltergeist, and the little girl is just in the back yard talking
into the air conditioning unit as a joke, and there are no ghosts there either.
