October Horror 2013: 1 - The House that Dripped Blood

The House that Dripped Blood, not to be confused with The House that Drips Blood On Alex, is a 1970 anthology film directed by Peter Duffell, who would become the 2nd unit director on Richard Donner's Superman, and written by Robert Bloch.  Bloch was probably most famous prior for penning Psycho and numerous other collaborations with Hitchcock, as well as Lovecraftian short stories.  The movie stars several well known actors including Denholm Elliot, John Pertwee, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing.

Framing Story:
Film star Paul Henderson (played by Pertwee in the 4th segment) has disappeared and a detective from Scotland Yard has arrived to investigate.  While interviewing the local police for background, Inspector Holloway is told repeatedly that there's something evil and wrong with the house.  He then interviews the landlord who owns the property and is told more stories about the horrible things that have happened there.

Method for Murder:
The first story concerns a horror novel writer (Denholm Elliot) who moves in to the house to focus and finish a novel concerning a strangler named Dominic.  He imagines his character coming to life and tormenting him and threatening his wife. Except he's not hallucinating, Dominic is real and strangles the author's psychologist after the wife suggests that he was strangling her when he saw Dominic doing it.  Except Dominic isn't Dominic, he's a failed actor the wife is having an affair with.  They planned to make the writer think he was insane and that his killed the psychologist, except Dominic has really gone mad and killed both of them, then strangles the wife.  It's pretty fun as a story and though I liked the idea of Dominic, he looked retarded.  The story worked really well in short format, while a longer movie would need to have a lot more superfluous elements to distract us from that the base story is a bit simplistic.

Waxworks:
An older gentleman played by Peter Cushing moves into the house next and spends his days listening to music and reading.  At one point he goes for a walk into town to find out if anything cool is there and discovers a wax museum.  He becomes transfixed by the wax sculpture of the museum curator's wife, who he's told is a murderer who was hanged.  A friend comes to visit and he also becomes transfixed by the figure.  It turns out the curator was the murderer and he kills the friend for coveting his wife, then when Peter's character comes to investigate what happened to his friend he finds the severed head on the platter the wife sculpture holds.  The curator then attacks him and we cut forward to someone else being transfixed by the wife sculpture that now holds a wax version of the head of Peter Cushing's character.  I thought this was the weakest, the killing took place outside of the house and the person who went mad had nothing to do with the house at all.  While the idea is nicely twisted the execution was lacking.

Sweets to the Sweet:
I wonder if the tagline to Candyman was a reference to this, or if it's just an older phrase?  Anyway, this segment concerns a widdower named John played by Christopher Lee who moves into the house with his awkward and withdrawn daughter.  Forbidding the daughter from entering local school, John hires a nanny/homeschool teacher for her.  The teacher and the daughter connect while John spends significant amounts of time being a complete bastard, at one point throwing a doll the teacher had bought for the girl into the fire.  The twist here is that both John's wife and daughter were powerful witches and he was fearful of them.  He restricted access to dolls and noneducational reading because he feared his daughter would construct a voodoo doll of him and use it to kill him.  Which she does using books on witchcraft from their private library and some candles.  This one was interesting initially because I was watching it just to understand why John was being such an asshole to his daughter, and then when the reveal happened it was over quickly enough and all the odd references earlier in the segment got nicely tied up that was a fun a tidy little segment.

The Cloak:
Famous actor Paul Henderson moves into the house where he will stay while filming a Hammer-style horror movie in which he plays a vampire.  He's a bit of a snobbish prick and after deciding that the cloak provided him by the wardrobe department won't do, he finds a business card for a local costume shop and then decides to check it out.  While there he buys a cloak the owner repeatedly tells him is "authentic" for his role as a vampire.  When puts on the cloak it legitimately turns him into a vampire, he no longer has reflection and despite being freaked out goes on to do the scene with his costar.  He bites her and she gets pissed at him.  As a way of making amends, he invites her over for dinner the next night and confesses he believes the cloak really turns you into a vampire.  He puts it on but it doesn't work, then it's revealed she's slipped him the prop cloak and already believes in the real one.  She puts it on, becomes a vampire, and attacks him.  This was probably the most fun to watch, although the premise was quite silly.  The acting is pretty tight, especially in the film-within-the-film where they're playing bad actors acting.  But the faces Pertwee makes are so freaking stupid looking they're hilarious.

Framing story wrap-up:
Deciding he's heard enough, Inspector Holloway enters the house to investigate, against everyone's advice.  He enters the basement and discovers a coffin containing a vampiric Paul Henderson, who turns into a bat and attacks him.  The landlord appears to give a "Spooooooky" sales pitch about the house needing a tenant, perhaps it could be you? Roll credits.

While not bad, this movie feels very shlockey and not particularly creepy, I don't know if the original reaction was to take it more seriously but I don't feel like it aged well.  Admittedly my modern sensibilities skew me into thinking that saying AN AXE MURDER HAPPENS does not do much to shock me, so for an audience not so well conditioned it may have been more visceral.  However I will give it that the stories were well constructed, if not having aged well and the camera work was good as far as I can tell.  The title is ironic because there's actually no blood in the movie, though it may just be "Dripping blood" in the sense that it has a very death-filled history.

And that's our first movie of the season.  Tomorrow we cover more tales from lists past with The Uninvited.

--PXA