A throwback to the old dark house chillers of the 1920, 30s and 40s, the grammatically incorrect Hillbillys in a Haunted House (surely it should be “Hillbillies“?) was the last theatrical film directed by Jean Yarbrough, a prolific if not exactly distinctive director who made 132 films and television episodes in a 35-year career.

It opens as it means to go on with the first of a collection of eye-wateringly bad country and western songs, Jamboree Time, which understandably, no-one takes the credit for. The song is being caterwauled by our three leads, country singers Woody Wetherby (Ferlin Husky), Boots Malone (Joi Lansing) and their comedy relief manager Jeepers (Don Bowman). They’re on their way to a much-vaunted event in Nashville they refer to as Jamboree Time (when we finally get there at the end, it notably fails to live up to its name or its advance billing) when, in time honoured fashion, their car breaks down, leaving them stranded in an abandoned house that the locals believe to be haunted. It turns out that although there are few spooky inhabitants, much of what has been scaring the locals has been engineered by Madame Wong (Linda Ho), a Chinese spy and her gang of accomplices, Maximillian (Lon Chaney Jr), Gregor (Basil Rathbone), and mad scientist Dr Himmil (John Carradine) who have stolen a top-secret atomic formula from a nearby rocket base. Jim Meadows (Richard Webb), agent for M.O.T.H.E.R. (Master Organization to Halt Enemy Resistance – how do they think these things up? By watching The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964-1968) presumably…) is hot on their trail and joins Woody and Jeepers in trying to find Boots who has been abducted by Anatole the gorilla (George Barrows). Himmil and Gregor believe that Boots is a M.O.T.H.E.R. agent and keep her captive in the basement with the ghost of Civil War officer helps them to round up the spy ring. The threat to the American way eliminated, Woody, Boots and Jeepers are free to attend the Jamboree.

Television sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-1971) was proving to be a big hit with viewers and it inspired producer Bernard Woolner to try to recapture some of its appeal on the big screen with Las Vegas Hillbillys (1966) (spelling doesn’t seem to have been his strong suit) starring Ferlin and Jayne Mansfield and with Mamie Van Doren as Boots Malone. It must have done reasonably well for him to try it again, though both Mansfield and Van Doren proved unavailable so Lansing was drafted in late in the day to replace the latter and the former was just written out.

Despite the title, we don’t really see much of the haunted house and it’s not really much of a horror film. There’s a very unscary ghost, a lurking ape (“stupid gorilla”) and a dancing skeleton, but mostly this is a cut-price spy spoof (Bondmania was still gripping the cinema going world at the time) with a wearying obsession with bad country music – we get five songs in a row at the “jamboree” (attended by about a dozen people it seems) at the end in lieu of a proper climax. Immense patience, a deep love for largely forgotten country singers (Ferlin was apparently quite the star once, though it’s hard to see why on this evidence) or judicious use of the fast forward button will be needed to get you through its 88 minutes, though once our heroes head off for Nashville, if the songs aren’t to your taste, you can safely switch off and save yourself almost 15 precious minutes of your life.

Ferlin doesn’t radiate a great deal of charisma in the leading role, fellow country star Bowman’s comedy routine is mostly unfunny and Lansing just turns up to look pretty to lip-sync to someone else’s singing. Hillbillys in a Haunted House would turn out to be the last film for Basil Rathbone and he certainly deserved a better exit than this. Other country singers like Merle Haggard, Sonny James and Molly Bee turn up at the jamboree but the film was so low budget that these supposedly professional performers are so impoverished that they all seem to be sharing the same Fender acoustic guitar…

The songs are par for the course, from the self-pitying, “you done me wrong” school of country and western, sung with no passion at all by the stone-faced singers, the comedy is woeful and the horror virtually negligible (apart from the ghost, most of it turns out to be practical jokes or engineered by the spy ring and the poster tag “They’ll scare your pants off… and give you a chill for life!” is pure hyperbole). It’s a film that feels like it was aiming at several audiences at once (horror fans, the country and western crowd and those shoes love of spy films knew no bounds) and failing to please anyone. It’s of interest – vaguely – for its trio of fading horror stars but watching them is more depressing than anything else.

While Hillbillys in Las Vegas had found an audience, Hillybillys in a Haunted House was less successful and died the proverbial death at the box office. Its failings put a crimp in Woolner’s plans for a Hillbilly franchise and the planned third film in the series, Hillbillys in Outer Space, was quietly dropped while no-one was looking. Once again, we should be extremely grateful for small mercies…