The House That Vanished

SCREAM...AND DIE! (or "The house that vanished" (1973))is the unknown piece of horror and sex that the master José Ramón Larraz did in England in the seventees. It's an erotic thriller with psychopatic murderer (Karl Lanchbury) perfomed by a beautiful model called Valerie (terrific Andrea Allan)involved in a haunting mistery and sadistic murders occurred in a isolated manor in the forest at midnights. Scream and die has an excellent and very particular quality in images and atmosferes. The movie is slow, yes, but this thing is normal in Larraz's movies: the story is very slow and predictable, but it's too sexy (the love scenes are really good and erotic) and brutal sometimes, and has the mark from the director of masterpieces as "Vampyres" and "Symptoms", both from 1974. The fog, tne night, the sounds of the killer walking with his black gloves following Valerie, the anguish in her face in her firsts shots, the slowly music give to the film a personal sight. The first murder seen by the hidden Valerie and husband as intimate witnesses and the escape from the manor are a classic composition of horror shots, wonderfully executed by the "voyeurisitic filmmaker" with a rare and genuine talent. It's a really brutal moment of sophisticated murder and "naïve" sex. Scream and die has the very personal "touch" of the catalanian director, all the constants that are in the most part of his baroque, sensual and horrific world (Emma puertas oscuras,La muerte incierta,Vampyres, Symptoms,Estigma,Whirpool, Deviation or Deadly manor) are present in here. The spiral of terror and tension grows very slowly -step by step- describing the world of this sexy model for fashion photographers in a continuated state of danger. Larraz creates a really personal style in a very traditional thriller that must be remembered by the tension,the british locations in Kent in winter,the quiet and dead moments of inusually fascination, the use of the photography, the artistic colors and the incredible dark shots of nights, the typical "english" fog, the horror moments and the clever sex that impressed me a lot in my adolescence. Scream and die has a kind of elegance in the horror genre that others horror thrillers hasn't. All the personal obsessions of José Larraz are here in a fine lesson of cinematography in his best period of his career, the british period. The fans of José Larraz need to know his firsts features, as "Whirpool" (1970) and "Deviation" (1971)-nobody has said anything more specific about these movies? (Please: more information and reviews in IMDB or other places,webs, etc.) and his last contribution tot the terror lately in "Deadly manor"(Savage lust, 1990)produced by his old british friend Brian Smedley-Aston. When the fans of José Ramón Larraz, Brian Smedley-Aston (editor of "Performance" ,etc.), his actresses and his horrific world will have a web or a personal page about the director? Where are the fans of this spanish/british filmmaker?. Goodbye!

A photographer takes his model girlfriend to a defunct manor outside London in the fog. After witnessing something horrific, the woman makes it back to London and informs her friends of what happened. When they travel to the vicinity they can't find the house. Meanwhile she starts dating a frail-looking artist who lives with his aunt.

"The House That Vanished" (1973) is also known as "Scream... and Die!" It's basically a mixture of "Psycho" and "Twisted Nerve," as well as "The Last House on the Left" from the year prior. There are also similarities to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which debuted to the public-at-large around the same time, just shortly later in October, 1974. It lacks the compelling story of "Psycho" and the over-the-top mayhem of "Texas," opting for the dramatic tone of "Twisted Nerve," albeit adding nudity and a puke-inducing sex sequence (you'll know the one I'm talking about).

Barbara Meale (the first victim), Andrea Allan (Valerie), Annabella Wood (Stella) and Judy Matheson (Lorna) are all notable in their unique ways. Unfortunately, there's a glaring plot hole in the last act involving Valerie being oblivious to the direction Paul takes her outside London. Aduh.

It runs 1 hour, 35 minutes, and was shot in London, Essex and Hertfordshire; the latter two being northeast and north of the city respectively.

GRADE: C.

THE HOUSE THAT VANISHED is pretty good atmospheric psychological thriller. I had very little hope for it when I started watching this Larraz film. To make matters worse, the video transfer is very dark, grainy and the sound had some weird looping technical glitch. I quickly thought then that the movie flatlined from the get go, certainly during the scene with the woman undressing in front of the killer, which was a tad ridiculous. But when the movie ended, to my surprise, I actually enjoyed it. The film is not the greatest ever made and there are a lot of faults to it (pacing is one of them) but the atmosphere is very good and the story is more about the intertwining aspects of location and identity than horror or violence. THE HOUSE THAT VANISHED reminded me a lot of Mario Bava's HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON. It's like a twisted soap opera. This film deserves a better transfer, on video or DVD, than the one that's for sale on eBay (from Media), which I bought for 50 cents!!!

The throat-grabbingly monikered 'Scream and Die!' aka 'The House That Vanished' (1973) is another relatively obscure, José Ramón Larraz 70s horror excursion that is entirely undeserving of its current ignominious position of lost title. All the requisite, Larraz terror-traits are in abundance here, luridly libidinous, scantily clad buxom lovelies, creaky, dimly-lit, doom-laden domiciles with some elusive, sexually 'unusual' maniac enthusiastically slaying a series of shrieking, tantalizingly top-heavy females!

The Giallo-esque plot of some sordidly sinister, shadow-stalking, black-gloved killer rarely strays from convention, but where the estimable, Larraz succeeds, and many other genre filmmakers so often fail is that he manages to excitingly generate a palpably erotic and decadent tone amongst all the heavy-breathing, gleefully gory 'gash and slash'. Complementing the sublime plenitude of fecund, candle-lit décolletage, he also darkly infuses the admittedly generic premise with ominous oodles of genuinely unsettling Gothic motifs. After reading a few glibly dismissive reviews of 'Scream...and Die' I really wasn't expecting much, but contrary to low expectations, Larraz's warped, twist-headed thriller proved to be an uproariously entertaining terror flick with a scintillating series of deliciously sinister set pieces that managed to evoke a sweaty-palmed, Poe-like sepulchral chill. My positive opinion hasn't changed in 15 years, when in Samhain is this fine psycho-slasher going to be restored?

Model, Valerie Jennings (Andrea Allan) tags along with her thief boyfriend on a burglary. She gets tired of waiting in the car and enters the house to find him. Together, they discover the horrible truth about the house's resident when they witness a grisly murder.

Valerie bolts and the chase is on. Soon thereafter, a series of mysterious events force her to believe that the killer knows her identity.

THE HOUSE THAT VANISHED is a dark British horror / thriller featuring bizarre characters and demented situations! Fairly creepy. A true drive-in movie...