House of the Damned

In the sixties, Robert Lippert's Associated Producers scored a contract making black and white 'Scope B movies to run with Fox's big pictures and turned loose house director Maury Dexter on them. The results were uneven but one group - the contemporary thrillers - the Los Angeles films - were more striking than most of the big films that elbowed them out of the advertising space.

Along with WOMAN HUNT, AIR PATROL and the later RAIDERS FROM BENEATH THE SEA, HOUSE OF THE DAMNED spins a thin budget into something surprisingly memorable. It succeeds where the Tod Browning film FREAKS failed in making it's circus performers real rather than monsters. The film's curious gentleness is one of its surprises.

The building of tension is nicely crafted - the unanswered phone, moving shots of the deserted private road, disturbing detail like the broken sculpture, the thirteen keys and the re-appearing sign.

Throw in the winning Merry Anders, anticipating the self reliant seventies woman and the atmospheric Hollywood Hills mansion setting which was once actually a haunt of bootleggers. People I see this with are always surprised that such a film exists.

House of the Damned (1963) is a movie I watched off my DVR after recording it on FXM. The storyline follows an architect and his wife who has been asked to survey a house that was built for an eccentric lady. As they try to complete what should be a simple task they are approached by strange things within the house. Will the young couple be able to escape the house or will they be bound there forever?

This movie is directed by Maury Dexter (Hell's Belles) and stars Ron Foster (The Money Pit), Merry Anders (Tickle Me), Richard Crane (Behind Green Lights), Erika Peters (GI Blues) and Richard Kiel (Happy Gilmore).

This is an early 60s movie in black and white that honestly feels more 50s than 60s. The acting is very good and the dialogue is well written. The horror elements rely on circumstances and background music. They did do a good job creating a few good jump scares and there's some classic scream scenes (Psycho like).

Overall this is a fun, above average addition to the genre if you enjoy horror films from this era. I would score this a 6/10 and recommended seeing it once.

Not too bad. With a running time of 64 minutes I was expecting a cheap thriller and it has a lot of setup. When things start to get weird the movie gets a little better but you know the closer and closer the end gets you will find out what's going on and then the movie will Immediately end! Kind of unsatisfactory. Some good creepy use of shadow and and the acting was better than I expected. Same thing with the production values.

In HOUSE OF THE DAMNED, architect Scott Campbell (Ron Foster) and his wife, Nancy (Merry Anders), move into a big, fortress-like mansion in order to survey it. It's not long before odd occurrences begin taking place.

That's about it.

The problem with this movie is that it seems like someone decided to make it, simply because they had a big house to make it in, the story being just an afterthought. It's mildly interesting at first, but there's not enough going on, and a whole lot of static scenes with nothing much happening. This all leads up to about 5 minutes of wrap-up at the end that pretty much negates any "horror" involved.

Actually, the one, true point of interest is the all-too-brief- appearance of Richard Kiel (about 2 minutes of screen time)...

An obscure and rather uneventful but nevertheless atmospheric and effective little chiller which presents us with a new twist on "the old dark house" theme which may ultimately disappoint some viewers. I won't divulge it here for those who may feel inclined to check this one out: I'll just say that it combines elements from two well-known Tod Browning movies - FREAKS (1932) and MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935) - and leave it at that!

The plot deals with an architect and his wife having to spend the night in the infamous (and supposedly uninhabited) Rochester castle, who are later joined by the former's boss and his sassy girlfriend. However, before long, things start to go bump in the night: a bunch of keys mysteriously disappear and reappear with a couple of them missing, a few doors are inexplicably forbidden to the house dwellers, the girlfriend disappears after a quarrel with her intended, etc. It all seems to point in the direction of the crazed proprietress of the mansion who is currently spending her days in a mental institution but, eventually, we discover that there are even stranger forces at work here...

As I said before, the moody lighting and occasional 'scary' set-pieces are the whole show in this one but, despite the lack of star names, the foursome acquit themselves quite adequately under the circumstances; in the latter stages of the film, Richard "Jaws" Kiel also makes an appearance as an unexpected 'guest' of the Rochester mansion.

The low-priced Fox DVD is accompanied by a theatrical trailer which should not be viewed before the main feature as it virtually shows snippets from all the film's best sequences; interestingly, the much brighter trailer enabled me to make out some details which had eluded me during the film itself!