lonchaney20 I'm hardly the first to say it, but memory is a funny thing. I taped this film off of TCM several years ago, and while the film largely struck me as average, the ending haunted me so profoundly that it left a lasting impact on my own work as a writer. I later imported a DVD copy from the UK on the strength of that final scene alone, but I kept putting off re-watching it due to the weaknesses of the story as a whole. Perhaps, too, there was some trepidation at seeing the ending again. I had a built it up so much in my mind that surely the last scene could never live up to my memory. Finally I cast aside my doubts and, having forgotten just about everything except the finale (and the fact that someone gets stabbed in the penis - ouch!), gave it a second shot.So much has happened between my first viewing and my second that the experienced proved to be profoundly different. I've become much more receptive to different kinds of cinema - so receptive, in fact, that people probably don't trust my opinions. That ship usually sails the minute you start recommending Andy Milligan movies. Anyway, I really enjoyed the film this time. Essentially it's the story of some bored twenty-somethings (and Frankie Avalon, for some strange reason) leaving a lame party and going to check out an allegedly haunted house. Over the course of the night, one of their number gets murdered, and with only one possible entrance to the house having been locked, the only explanation is that one of them is the culprit.Writer/director Michael Armstrong initially intended to make a much more psychedelic horror movie starring his pal David Bowie. The producers balked on Bowie (a move they no doubt came to regret) and forced Armstrong to take a more conventional approach. Even in its diluted form its still an impressive piece of work, with witty dialogue delivered by a capable cast (even Avalon seems shockingly at home in Swinging London), moody cinematography, a great location, and some well executed (and surprisingly bloody) murders. If the film makes one potentially fatal mistake, it's in spending too much time outside of the creepy abandoned house. Within the dusty ruin Armstrong and cinematographer Jack Atcheler are able to conjure an atmosphere reminiscent of the Italian Gothics. After the first murder, though, we spend a great deal of time back in the city as our heroes attempt to go on with their lives. Clearly the home is where the heart is with this movie, but Armstrong (or Gerry Levy, who rewrote much of the script at AIP's insistence) can only come up with a flimsy pretext to get the characters back there.As for that ending? Of course it let me down to some extent. My mind had warped it over the years, and in a way my conception of it fused with the stories I myself had been inspired to write after watching it. Looking at it more objectively, though, the sympathy the filmmakers have for their tragic killer still strikes a chord with me, and the final image is still strangely poignant. Perhaps the film isn't an exceptional murder mystery - more than a few clichés are accounted for - but it's nonetheless an entertaining and skillfully directed one. Certainly it's no classic, but it's far better than its 4.5 rating on IMDb would lead you to believe.

ludgerwilmott Ham acting, predictable plot and liberal lashings of ketchup make this a classic 60's British horror film made in the 'Hammer Horror' time honoured way when the country was great at everything. It's a very English treatment of a theme dominated since the '70s by the likes of Wes Craven and other horror American film makers who have since thrown quaint charm out with the bath water (see horror classics like 'The Haunting' 1963 and 'The Legend of Hell House' for horror films which play subtly on the mind). The plot is so predictable these days it would be hard to end with a spoiler. Basically the story revolves around not for long fun-loving,swinging 60s teenagers wandering around a creepy, old, reputedly haunted house and getting bumped off by instalments. Umm. Unlike the unsubtle use of chainsaws in Texas what makes this film for me is the imaginative and atmospheric use of the interior and exterior location shots which give 'The Haunted House of Horror' a very creepy feel and a well deserved regard as a cult classic of it's genre.

Benoît A. Racine (benoit-3) This little masterpiece from 1969 proves that when it comes to teen exploitation movies, the sixties were really the extension of the puritanical fifties.This oddball film has much to recommend it, however. It is an early over-the-top slasher film starring Frankie Avalon and taking place in Swinging London, which allows the art director to go crazy with all the latest Mary Quant mini-fashions, the form-fitting jumpsuits, the triple-layered eyelashes, the monumental hair-dos and wigs, the garish colours, a glimpse of the Beatles' Apple store, the latest mod accessories, all literally "tacked on" the dingiest apartment interiors imaginable this side of "Dame Edna's Neighbourhood Watch". The colours are jarring and the boys' Carnaby Street clothes are almost as ridiculous as the girls'. What struck me as particularly horrible was the absolute "tackiness" (that word will come up often) of the sets, where the cheap dayglo-colour carpets were literally slashed (!) and tacked (!!) on at the last minute over well-worn antique wooden floors.Everywhere in this film, the old meets the new and the result is pure kitsch! The kids are liberated, "with it" and good-looking but they are bored, boring and vacuous. To make matters worse, they have nothing to do with all their coolness except smoke a lot, drink a lot, retouch their mascara, tousle their hair, impersonate Jean Shrimpton or Mick Jagger, go out to improbable restaurants where a rock group provides salon music and exchange partners often. They leave their shiny, new chrome-plated disco to spend a night in a tawdry old haunted house for kicks. Horror ensues. They are also variously involved with representatives of the old order, grey-coloured cops and detectives who either hunt them down, offer them more cigarettes or have affairs with them. The characters' lives are directionless and their speech is stultified. They only talk in horror movie clichés with clipped BBC accents while brushing the hair from their eyes and mouth or emitting mucous. All genuine human emotion, however, is taboo. Even the screams of the hunted girl (Miss What's-her-name) in the final massacre scene are dubbed on.The very puritanical moral of this film - as in every teen exploitation slasher film before or since on both sides of the Atlantic - is that promiscuous, trendy, vapid, modern young people who have fun are really deeply troubled and deserve to die the most horrible death imaginable, as do quite a few of their elders for having anything to do with them. As to why this sold tickets, the reason escapes me and adds a genuine element of mystery to a rather shopworn horror premise.In conclusion, this film offers a lot of shockingly spilled blood and a poor man's Hitchcock experience but the real thrills and chills come from the surreptitious meeting of pink and orange on the same couch (rhymes with "ouch!").

Michael_Elliott Haunted House of Horror, The (1969) * 1/2 (out of 4) Frankie Avalon and a group of friends are bored hanging out in an apartment so they go walk around a haunted house when one turns up butchered. Was a member of the group or perhaps a ghost? The only way to find out is by the group going back there at a later date to see once and for all. This British film from the Trigon Productions has a few interesting items but for the most part this thing is deadly dull from start to finish. I have an issue with many British horror films and that's because they talk and talk and talk and don't ever know when to shut up. That curse follows this film as we get plenty of talk and most of it has nothing to do with the main plot point of the film. The subplot involves a young woman trying to break free from a married man, which seems to be more fitted for a soap opera so why on Earth throw it into a slasher movie? The performances are okay for this type of film with Avalon leading the way and I'm sure he was the first to cash his paycheck. The film is great to look out with the wonderful colors and set design but you still need a story to make all of that count. There are a couple very bloody murders, which I was surprised to see and I'll give the filmmakers credit for the ending, which doesn't go the way you might expect. Even with that said this is a very hard film to get through because of how dull it is.