The House That Dripped Blood (1971)
Directed by Peter Duffell

Film Review

The success of Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) and Torture Garden (1967) had helped to establish the small British film company Amicus as a serious competitor to Hammer Films, and similar anthology horror films allowed Amicus to thrive whilst Hammer endured its slow and painful decline.  The House That Dripped Blood is one of the more enjoyable of the films in this series, a satisfying thrill fest consisting of three blood-curdling little chillers and a humorous diversion which reveals what Doctor Who gets up to in his spare time.  The title is a total misnomer as not a single drop of blood is spilt anywhere but let that not put you off.  There are plenty of good old fashioned frights involving murderous intrigue, witchcraft and vampirism in this monstrously entertaining compendium of horror.

Films of this kind stand and fall by the quality of the script.  Good direction and good acting are not enough to make a decent anthology film.  At the time, Amicus was fortunate to be able to avail themselves of the services of a great horror writer, Robert Bloch, who had written the novel on which Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) was based.  Bloch scripted five films for Amicus, including The House That Dripped Blood, a film where the author's flair for suspense, macabre incident and dead pan humour are all very much in evidence.  The four stories that make up the film are all gripping, self-contained yarns, each offering something very different from the others.  The framing story is a little tenuous, but everything is wrapped up satisfactorily in the killingly funny final act.  Anyone who buys a dusty old house from someone calling himself A.J. Stoker deserves all he gets.

Amicus always knew how to assemble a great cast and The House That Dripped Blood offers one of the best.  Not only do horror icons Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee show up (both meeting the grisliest of ends), but TV stars Nyree Dawn Porter and Jon Pertwee are drawn into the fray, along with Hammer's queen of horror, Ingrid Pitt, and a host of distinguished character actors (Denholm Elliott, John Bennett, Joss Ackland and Geoffrey Bayldon).  Despite the late 60s garb, Miss Porter still looks as if she is playing Irene from The Forsyte Saga, and Jon Pertwee appears even more bound to the character he was most famous for at the time.  Any lack of similarity between the frilly-shirt wearing eccentric ham actor we see in this film and Mr Perwee's portrayal in a popular British TV sci-fi series of the 1970s is purely coincidental.   Despite stiff opposition from the incessantly face-pulling Pertwee, the award for the campest performance goes to Ingrid Pitt, who once again proves that a woman's bite is definitely worse than her bark.  Directed with verve by Peter Duffel and performed with relish by a superb pool of acting talent, The House That Dripped Blood is a horror fan's delight - if we overlook the obvious lack of haemoglobin and the unpardonably cruel jibe against Christopher Lee's Dracula.

Film Synopsis

Investigating the mysterious disappearance of a temperamental film star named Paul Henderson, a Scotland Yard detective arrives at a house which, according to the records at the local police station, has had a troubled past.  A few years previously, a horror fiction writer rented the house with his wife and was driven insane when his latest creation, a strangler named Dominic, took on a life of his own.  The next tenant, a retired stockbroker, met a similarly gruesome end when he and a friend of his became fixated on a waxwork of the temptress Salome at a nearby horror museum.  The third victim of the cursed house was a quiet businessman who brought about his demise when he hired a private tutor to educate his young daughter, insisting that the little girl be kept away from other children and toys.  The estate agent, a certain A.J. Stoker, is able to account for Henderson's disappearance, a curious case of vampirism involving an enchanted theatrical cloak...