Director Peter Duffell brings a much-needed touch of class to Amicus’ third anthology film which is a marked step-up from its predecessor, Torture Garden but not quite up to the standards of the films still to come (Tales from the Crypt (1972), Asylum (1972), Vault of Horror (1973) and From Beyond the Grave (1974)). Like Torture Garden (and the later Asylum) Robert Bloch provided the script, derived from short stories published in pulp horror magazines.
The framing story is one of the weakest in the series. Inspector Holloway (John Bennett) is investigating the disappearance of horror film actor Paul Henderson from the house he recently rented from estate agent A.J. Stoker (John Bryans). Bloch tries to imply that the house itself is the cause of the terrible fates that befall its residents (“it’s that house,” mutters a local bobby, “there’s something about it…”) but never develops it – the stories could have taken place anywhere and the building itself (“played” by a lodge in the grounds of Shepperton Studios) places no role in shaping the events of any of the stories.
The first tale is Method for Murder (based on a story published in Fury no.7, July 1962) in which the house is rented by horror writer Charles Hillyer (Denholm Elliott) and his wife Alice (Joanna Dunham). Hillyer is working on a new novel featuring a psychopathic strangler named Dominic (Tom Adams) who he soon starts to see lurking around the house. Hillyer becomes increasingly paranoid and psychologist, Dr Andrews (Robert Lang) suggests that Dominic is the product of Hillyer’s own split personality. But there’s more to Dominic than meets the eye leading to a double twist ending that disintegrates as soon as you try to apply logic to it.
Despite strong performances from Elliott and Dunham and some spookily lit and shot moments wherein Dominic lurks in the shadows, apparently unseen by Alice, Method for Murder is one of the film’s weaker entries. The plot was already shop-worn and Bloch does little new with it. The ending is a bit “Tales of the Unexpected” and you have to wonder how Stoker knew all the details of the story he’s supposed to be telling Holloway.
Things don’t get much better with the second story. Waxworks (first published in Weird Tales vol.33 no.1, January 1939). Peter Cushing plays former stockbroker Philip Grayson who moves into the house where he hopes to retire in splendid isolation. While on a walk through the nearby town he explores a wax museum where he’s attracted to a model of Salome which supposedly resembles his a dead woman he had been in love with. His friend Neville Rogers (Joss Ackland) – who had also been in love with the woman – turns up and insists on visiting the museum and he too becomes obsessed, so much so that he can’t even bear to leave town at the end of his stay. Their grisly fate lies in the hands of the museum’s eccentric owner (Wolfe Morris)…
Cushing is great as ever and both he and Ackland bring some dignity to their roles despite being saddled with truly eye-watering fashions (Ackland’s lemon shirt and blue cravat combo is a particular affront to good taste). Indeed the entire film is a veritable museum of wacky fashions apparently popular with trying-to-be-hip middle-aged, middle class men for about ten minutes in the summer of 1970. More seriously, the story is undone by a wax sculpture of Salome so awful that it not only looks nothing like the woman in the photograph but leaves you wondering why anyone in their right mind could become obsessed with it. And it’s further undone by a terrible performance from Morris as the museum’s proprietor. The film’s poster rather gives away the episode’s twist ending.
Thankfully, things get much better from now on. Sweets to the Sweet (adapted from a story first seen in Weird Tales vol.39 no.10, March 1947) initially casts Christopher Lee, playing single father John Reid, as another of the haughty and cruel characters that he was so good at but then subtly undermines him, revealing a terrified and helpless man cowering beneath the stern exterior. That the object of fear is his own young daughter, Jane (Chloe Franks), makes the story all the more chilling. Reid hires former teacher Ann Norton (Nyree Dawn Porter) to tutor the neglected Jane and the two bond, Ann helping Jane to overcome her fear of fire and teaching her to read. But Jane is the daughter of a witch and seems to have inherited her mother’s powers. As she becomes more confident in using then, Jane fashions a wax effigy of her father…
Thanks to three very strong performances (Franks is particularly creepy as Jane and Lee effortlessly conveys the genuine fear masked by Reid’s bluster and abuse) and some inventive direction from Duffell, Sweets to the Sweet emerges as the pick of the House that Dripped Blood crop. Like the rest of the stories it’s not much more than macabre punchline but at least this time the story is gripping enough to justify it.
Sweets to the Sweet is the most chilling and effective of the four stories but the final tale, The Cloak (from Unknown May 1939) is the most fun. We finally get to see what happened to Paul Henderson (Jon Pertwee, on top form and recently having inherited the keys to the TARDIS in Doctor Who (1963-1989)). A temperamental specialist in horror films that he clearly thinks are losing their way (Pertwee allegedly based his character on Lee; “Dracula,” he notes at one point,” the Bela Lugosi of course, not this new feller”) starts work on his latest, Curse of the Bloodsuckers. He spars with the crew (he comes close to quoting Vincent Price’s supposed putdown of Michael Reeve when the two clashed on the set of Witchfinder General (1968)), complains about the sets and generally acts like a spoiled diva. In search of decent props for the film, he finds himself in a back street antique shop (anticipating the wraparound story of From Beyond the Grave) where the out-of-time proprietor, Theo von Hartmann (Geoffrey Bayldon) (“I do not patronise the kinema…”) sells him a cloak. But it turns out that von Hartmann is vampire who gladly dies in a fire that destroys his shop, content in the knowledge that by passing the cloak on to Henderson he’s also passed on his curse. Soon enough, Henderson is biting the neck of co-star Carla (Ingrid Pitt) – but things only get worse when Henderson finds that he has undead fans who want to welcome him into their ranks.
It’s all very silly but a lot of fun, Pertwee playing it all with a straight face and lots of in-jokes and sight gags. Indeed the film is full of nicely judged humour, with plenty of self-reflexive touches (you can see a copy of Lotte H. Eisner’s The Haunted Screen in the title sequence, the name Stoker, a publicity still from the Doctor Who story Inferno (1970) pinned to Henderson’s dressing room wall) and both Bloch and Duffell manage to balance the macabre and the humour rather well.
Duffell (who took on the job after first choice Freddie Francis proved unavailable) had wanted to the call the film Death and the Maiden on the grounds that women play central roles in all four of the stories but Amicus heads Max Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky were having none of that and insisted on the more sensational and commercially acceptable title The House That Dripped Blood instead. This despite the fact that none a single drop of blood is spilled in the entire film – indeed the British Board of Film Censors initially rated it ‘A’ (the rating would change its meaning between the film’s production and its release so that unaccompanied children could be admitted to screenings) and distributors Cinerama sent Amicus back to the board to demand an ‘X’ certificate instead.
What The House That Dripped Blood lacks in violence it makes up for in humour and Duffell’s moody direction works wonders with even the thinnest of stories. A top notch cast does it no harm either and although it’s not a patch on the likes of Tales from the Crypt or From Beyond the Grave, and though it gets off to a shaky start with its two weakest stories and the framing story feels tacked on and unconvincing, it’s still a lot of fun.
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