The Haunted House of Horror (1969)

Weak horror film is mainly interesting because of how closely the plot hews to the teen body count horror film formula long before the formula was firmly established a decade later with the "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th" films. Frankie Avalon and a group of British teens go to an old mansion where they are then killed one by one. Who is the murderer? (SPOILER ALERT!) I was really hoping it would be Frankie of Beach Party fame, but sadly it was not. Writer/director Michael Armstrong, the man who made the notorious (and poorly made in my opinion) "Mark of the Devil," delivers another weak film here. I do think this film could have been better if Armstrong got his original choice of David Bowie as the killer. Unfortunately AIP felt Bowie would clash with Frankie. Too bad. That might have made this a much more memorable of film.

60s beach movie sensation Frankie Avalon stars as Chris, one of a group of crazy, swinging London 'kids' who decide to split their dullsville house party for a more atmospheric locale, a run-down, supposedly haunted mansion in the countryside. Rather stupidly, the group decide to hold a séance at the stroke of midnight, after which one of their number is brutally killed in a frenzied knife attack. Is the killer the ghost of the maniac who once lived there, or has one of the friends flipped their wig, man?Haunted House of Horror is, for the most part, very tedious viewing thanks to its formulaic plot, bland dialogue and wooden performances from a cast that, with only a couple of exceptions, look too old for their roles (Avalon was pushing thirty!!!). A little fun can be had from the film's groovy sixties fashion—floral shirts, cravats, mini-dresses and go-go boots—but the film's only real selling point as far as I am concerned are a couple of surprisingly bloody deaths, particularly the last one in which the victim gets a kukri (a Nepalese knife with a large curved blade) rammed into his crotch. Nasty!

This little masterpiece from 1969 proves that when it comes to teen exploitation movies, the sixties were really the extension of the puritanical fifties.This oddball film has much to recommend it, however. It is an early over-the-top slasher film starring Frankie Avalon and taking place in Swinging London, which allows the art director to go crazy with all the latest Mary Quant mini-fashions, the form-fitting jumpsuits, the triple-layered eyelashes, the monumental hair-dos and wigs, the garish colours, a glimpse of the Beatles' Apple store, the latest mod accessories, all literally "tacked on" the dingiest apartment interiors imaginable this side of "Dame Edna's Neighbourhood Watch". The colours are jarring and the boys' Carnaby Street clothes are almost as ridiculous as the girls'. What struck me as particularly horrible was the absolute "tackiness" (that word will come up often) of the sets, where the cheap dayglo-colour carpets were literally slashed (!) and tacked (!!) on at the last minute over well-worn antique wooden floors.Everywhere in this film, the old meets the new and the result is pure kitsch! The kids are liberated, "with it" and good-looking but they are bored, boring and vacuous. To make matters worse, they have nothing to do with all their coolness except smoke a lot, drink a lot, retouch their mascara, tousle their hair, impersonate Jean Shrimpton or Mick Jagger, go out to improbable restaurants where a rock group provides salon music and exchange partners often. They leave their shiny, new chrome-plated disco to spend a night in a tawdry old haunted house for kicks. Horror ensues. They are also variously involved with representatives of the old order, grey-coloured cops and detectives who either hunt them down, offer them more cigarettes or have affairs with them. The characters' lives are directionless and their speech is stultified. They only talk in horror movie clichés with clipped BBC accents while brushing the hair from their eyes and mouth or emitting mucous. All genuine human emotion, however, is taboo. Even the screams of the hunted girl (Miss What's-her-name) in the final massacre scene are dubbed on.The very puritanical moral of this film - as in every teen exploitation slasher film before or since on both sides of the Atlantic - is that promiscuous, trendy, vapid, modern young people who have fun are really deeply troubled and deserve to die the most horrible death imaginable, as do quite a few of their elders for having anything to do with them. As to why this sold tickets, the reason escapes me and adds a genuine element of mystery to a rather shopworn horror premise.In conclusion, this film offers a lot of shockingly spilled blood and a poor man's Hitchcock experience but the real thrills and chills come from the surreptitious meeting of pink and orange on the same couch (rhymes with "ouch!").

I watched this movie not expecting much and still think I was short-changed somehow. The film is well photographed and although it sometimes appears to keep changing the time of day between shots in the same scene, the overall art direction is good. The film is never dull to look at with good use of camera, colour, angle and lighting. The music, except that awful pub song at the start, is at least good and sometimes better. I wasn't expecting great acting either but it's generally adequate even though the actors have nothing really to work with - this leads me onto the main problem... The plot, or lack of, as the characters appear to be going through the paces with no internal motivation whatsoever for anything they do, nor does there appear to be any logic to explain or give meaning to other events which occur either. Unfortunately, after a while I was hoping that the killer would just get on with it so I could put this disc away and watch the next movie in the pile. 3.5 stars, I would not recommend this movie for general entertainment.