Sat 29 Apr 2017
A Horror Movie Review: THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1971).
Posted by Steve under Horror movies , Reviews[10] Comments
THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD. Amicus Productions, UK, 1971. Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Nyree Dawn Porter, Denholm Elliott, Jon Pertwee, John Bennett, Ingrid Pitt, Chloe Franks. Screenplay: Robert Bloch. Director: Peter Duffell.
This four-story-in-one horror film from Amicus has one major flaw, at least looking back upon it now. In spite of the title, there is no blood in it. It was, in fact, rated GP at the time of its release, the equivalent of today’s PG.
It is possible to give the audience a few chills without a lot of gore, and that’s all the movie does: give the audience a few chills along with a few twists of plot, most of which are foreshadowed well in advance.
The setting for all four segments is a common looking house in the English countryside, rather large but otherwise not very imposing. But it has its secrets, and each of those who rent it out find out what exactly that means.
Part One: A writer of horror stories finds that one of the crazed killers he writes about is coming to life and haunting him, but his wife can neither see nor hear the man. The biggest twist in all four stories comes in this one.
Part Two: A newly retired tenant (Peter Cushing) finds a waxwork museum in town with a figure of a woman inside whose face begins to haunt him. A friend who comes to visit falls under the spell of the waxwork face as well. A rather tepid tale with a easily foreseen ending.
Part Three: A man (Christopher Lee) who rents the house with his very young daughter hires a tutor for her, a woman who soon learns that this is not a happy twosome she is working for, especially the daughter (a spellbinding Chloe Franks).
Part Four and the underlying connection between all four segments: An inspector from Scotland Yard comes to the village looking for a famous movie actor (Jon Pertwee), who has disappeared, seemingly (as it turns out) under the spell of a vampire’s cloak. More special effects are used in this segment than any of the others, to little avail.
There are lots of famous names in the cast, but the stories are both dull and obvious. Personally, I expected more from Robert Bloch, and I was disappointed.
April 29th, 2017 at 7:29 pm
I like the movie. The only real dog is the Waxworks section, where the intentions of the writer were at odds with the intentions of the director. The Denholm Elliot section is very nicely done, with some lovely jump-out-of-your-seat moments. THE CLOAK is a nice spoof. I recall being at a convention where Jon Pertwee made it plain that the rather pompous horror movie star that he was playing was meant to be a parody of Christopher Lee (something that caused some hilarity amongst the film crew).
April 29th, 2017 at 9:04 pm
I think we watched the same movie, Bradstreet, just slightly different reactions to it.
April 30th, 2017 at 6:56 am
I first saw it years back, when it was part of a Friday night run of horror movies on my local TV station. Some of those in the run were absolutely dire (one of them being DRACULA, PRISONER OF FRANKENSTEIN by Jes Franco, a film that resembles home movie out-takes). In comparison with stuff like that it does come across as a pretty good movie. Good direction, good cast, and the stories at least make some sort of sense and don’t outstay their welcome. I wouldn’t put it anywhere near the best of the Amicus output, such as ASYLUM or BEYOND THE GRAVE, but whilst agreeing that it has faults, I have to say that I got some enjoyment out of it. In the end I’m happy with that.
April 30th, 2017 at 12:30 pm
In 1971, when this came out in the USA, I read Variety‘s review, possibly the first American write-up it got.
The reviewer (whose name I can’t recall) was hip to the Amicus style, pointing out that well-respected British actors had no compunction about making “fright flix” for matinee audiences.
In addition to the names mentioned above, the reviewer specifically called out Joss Ackland, of whom I’d never heard before; he’s Peter Cushing’s pal in the waxwork segment. In the years since, I’ve taken note of Ackland’s presence in many other projects, on both sides of the Atlantic, on big and small screens; this was one of Amicus’s services to the world audience.
I may have the timeline wrong, but this was about the time that Jon Pertwee took on Doctor Who, which didn’t cross the ocean for another few years yet; The House … was likely the first thing many Americans would have seen him in (at least in a lead role).
In 1971, Chicago still had its cluster of movie palaces in the Loop: the monster movies, foreign and domestic, generally played either the Woods (Dearborn and Randolph; since displaced by the prestigious Goodman Theatre) or the Oriental (middle of the block on Randolph; now the Ford Center For The Performing Arts, a legit house).
I think I saw House … at the Woods, which, like all the other Loop movie palaces, was going through a period of decline (falling apart, if you prefer).
That slightly seedy ambience went some ways to inform the presentation of the movies, particularly on Saturday afternoons, when they seemed to do most of their business.
The Amicus Collections always did well with the weekend crowd, which was mainly teens and just over-and-under; a whole generation of Fangoria readers came out of there …
April 30th, 2017 at 12:31 pm
The Amicus films meant substantial $$ for Robert Bloch, and no one deserved it more.
May 3rd, 2017 at 11:39 am
However, they were also a source of some frustration, as his scripts were heavily fiddled with by the productions, and not, one gathers, to their betterment. Hence some of the crashing obviousness of ASYLUM and DRIPPED; TORTURE GARDEN, even with the stupid title stolen from an irrelevant Decadent novel, is a bit better.
May 3rd, 2017 at 11:43 am
I believe Boston’s “Xperimental” PBS station, WGBX 44 (little sibling to WGBH 2), was already offering DOCTOR WHO by 1971…I got to see an episode or so early on thus, though didn’t start watching it regularly till the Tom Baker episodes of the later ’70s.
May 6th, 2017 at 10:13 am
For Todd Mason:
Channel 11, Chicago’s PBS ststion, somehow got hold of Doctor Who in its original half-hour serialized form, the Jon Pertwee years.
Ch11 ran the half-hours on a daily basis in late weekday afternoons, until they exhausted the original purchase. It didn’t do all that well, even on a local basis (and given PBS’s lower audience bar).
It wasn’t until a few years later, when someone (not the same someone from before) started combining the Tom Baker serials into “feature-length” shows for weekends that Doctor Who really caught on in the USA –
– but that’s another story …
May 6th, 2017 at 1:05 pm
8. Mike, I started watching Doctor Who in 1972 on the local Baton Rouge PBS station. They started with Tom Baker and it was shown in its multi-part form. I remember my disappointment that the modern version had abandoned the serial form.
I have joined the BBC streaming service BritBox and am watching every available classic Doctor Who from the very beginning. The William Hartnell ones can be difficult to get through.
May 8th, 2017 at 9:41 pm
mr. shonk:
May I make the guess that your problem with the Hartnell episodes is the pre-PAL low-res 408-line British TV picture?
Many American viewers younger than you and I are thrown simply by Black & White; much early British video looks worse than US kinescopes.
… which doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be shown, of course, but people who don’t share our sense of history ought to be warned about this.