After a slow start (for a 60s horror studio at least), what would eventually become known as Amicus Productions portmanteau series finally shifted into a higher gear once the 70s rolled around. With Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors and Torture Garden already in the bank, the partnership of Subotsky and Rosenberg decided to double down on the spooky/campy anthology numbers and delivered The House That Dripped Blood – but some noticable changes had been made.
While the usual faces were present and correct in front of the camera (Chris Lee and Pete Cushing in the hizzy!) and Robert Bloch adapted more of his short stories to form the screenplay, director Freddie Francis was noticable by his absence after helming the previous two movies but being unavailable for this one. In his stead was Peter Duffell and with him came a breezier, more fast paced style that lit a welcome fire under the rather stodgy and stuffy pacing of Torture Garden. Gone were endless convos in dark drawing rooms and instead we got a more energetic clutch of frighteners that matched the moving times.
Inspector Holloway from Scotland Yard has been called in to investigate the disappearance of film star Paul Henderson who has vanished from the old country house he was renting while shooting his latest horror film, but after inquiring at the local police station, the copper finds out that he’s not the first person to come a cropper at that address.
The first instance is related to him by a local bobby and concerns a hack writer and his wife who moved in so he could have the peace and quiet he needs to finish his latest horror novel. After cooking up a cemetery-toothed, leering strangler named Dominic to stalk through his newest novel, Charles Hillyer finds that his new creation starts stalking through his mind as he starts seeing the misshapen villain during his waking hours. Afraid that he’s cracking up and on the verge of harming his wife, Charles undergoes therapy, but unbeknownst to him, the sightings of Dominic have a far more sinister explanation.
After digesting that, Holloway is soon hit with another story about retired stock broker Phillip Grayson who moved in a short while after. But after a visit to a Waxwork located in town, Grayson spies an effigy that looks like the exact double of a woman he loved many years prior. His obsession with the dummy is heightened when Neville Roger’s, the old rival he once had for the affections of this dead woman, shows up to visit and becomes similarly entranced. Needless to say thing gotta bit hairy.
After visiting the estate agent in charge of letting the house, Holloway learns of yet another disastrous tenent in the form of a horribly strict father who hires a teacher to home school his young daughter, but soon it becomes apparent that he’s terrified of the little moppet – but why?
Finally, the inspector gets the details concerning the disappearance of Henderson, but what does the purchase of an old cape possibly have to do with the man practically falling off the face of the earth?
While it might sound fairly dismissive to announce that The House The Dripped Blood is a bog standard anthology flick, that also doesn’t stop the remark from being far more accurate than the title is. In fact, THTDB proves to be the Amicus anthology third title in a row that is shown up by technically being unrepentant bullshit as Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors didn’t include a house and that wasnt even legally his real name. Furthermore, Torture Garden didn’t contain any torture or gardens and this latest batch of titular lying doesn’t feature a single drop of blood, be it dripping from a house, or anywhere else for that matter. Of course, I’m taking the piss a little here, but if I’m being genuinely honest, the wonderfully garish title is by far the most memorable thing about Amicus’ third crack at numerous tales which I guess makes the titular, blood dripping abode a multi-story building (pause for laughter…). However, even though the movie hardly stands out much among the production company’s other attempts, it’s still an enjoyable romp that sees the filmmakers obviously having fun while trying to perfect the format (something they arguably did with 1972s Tales From The Crypt – a movie that, coincidently doesn’t feature a blatantly lying title).
Firstly, the wraparound sequence has been tweaked to feature more into the actual plot, but while the questions of Inspector Holloway give the four stories a more organic framework to operate in – however, I would argue that even though it streamlines things a little, I’m already missing the trope of a central, scenery chewing weirdo who instigates all this fortune telling hoopla to begin. I mean, I guess we have John Bryans’ decidedly strange estate agent, A.J. Stoker, but he’s far too subdued to match up to Peter Cushing’s German(ish) Dr. Terror accent, or the impish malevolence of Burgess Meredith’s Dr. Diablo. However, what does work far better is that House opts to drop the stoney seriousness of Torture Garden by adding a cruel, humorous streak that plays up the ghoulish nature of the tales which helps the more long winded of Bloch’s stories drop some of that drag factor. There’s also a sense that Amicus is starting to want to show some of that dripping blood that title was so enthusiastically bullshitting about – but even though the movie succeeded in hold back on the red stuff entirely, the tome of the film is decidedly tipping into that of the ghoulish.
Torture Garden’s biggest flaw was giving us stories about pussy cats with a taste for human flesh and killer pianos that frustratingly never really explored the more fucked up aspects of those concepts, but here, Duffell is less reluctant to pull his punches despite the dryness of the kills. Witness “Waxworks” eagerness to slap you across the face with its double decapitations (spoiled somewhat by the poster, I might add), the throttle-happy antics of Dominic in “Method For Murder or an epically stern Chris Lee getting the business end of a voodoo doll in “Sweets To The Sweet”.
However, The House The Dripped Blood’s best feature by far – unsurprisingly – is its impressive collection of character actors that sees usual suspects Lee and Cushing joined by the likes of Denholm Elliot, Joss Ackland, a shamelessly mugging Jon Pertwee (that’s right, Doctor Who and Worzel Gummage himself) and, in another act of Hammer poaching, a impressively vampish Ingrid Pitt. Ok, so maybe not all the stories are as tight as they could be – Pertwee’s vampire tale, “The Cloak” was apparently shot as an out and out comedy segment but then was edited back into a more horror heavy shape on a producer’s insistence – but it’s Amicus’ final stepping stone on the way to nailing the format with their next gathering of horrible happenstances.
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