Eerie, literate British haunted house tale plays its supernatural angles so totally straight-faced and free of typical horror flourishes that somehow the ominous events seem quite plausible, as though weird forces are intruding into the normal world in a way that could happen to anyone. A young couple shopping for a house visits a large old estate that's up for sale at a suspiciously low asking price. An unidentified woman who says she "comes in sometimes" shows them around the place and relates the details of the haunting that terrorized the previous tenants. She then reveals the tragic tale that started the trouble. It seems an electrical engineer experimenting with new ways of transmitting electric currents set a horrible trap for his cheating wife and her lover, imprisoning them in a room wired with sufficient voltage to electrocute them if they touched the doorknobs or certain other objects. Later, after his own death, the electrician's sprit apparently lingered within the wiring of the house, affecting the TV and lamps. An occult authority is called in to investigate. He is so matter-of-fact and reasonable when he explains the nautre of ghostly phenomena that it all begins to seem scientifically possible. Most movies that bring in a ghost hunter have a hard time making the character sound like he knows what he's talking about without verging on parody, but this guy is very convincing. There are some hair-raising moments, a skillfully constructed growing sense of dread and a cool twist ending right out of classic gothic ghost story literature. This hour-long feature with a mood all its own was the third film (at least) to use the title HOUSE OF MYSTERY. The director later made CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR with Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee and Barbara Steele. This neat little old-fashioned movie is one to look for.
