Four Tales of… Horror?

I love classic horror. I will always go on and on about it if given the prompting, and Amazon PrimeWhile Netflix might be the largest streaming seervice right now, other major contenders have come into the game. One of the biggest, and best funded, is Amazon Prime, the streaming-service add-on packing with free delivery and all kinds of other perks Amazon gives its members. And, with the backing of its corporate parent, this streaming service very well could become the market leader. has absolutely given the prompting. “Oh, you watched this shitty classic horror movie that we randomly suggested? Would you like to try these other equally shitty films from the 1960s and 1970s as well?” Yes, absolutely I would, and so I’ve been doing a dive through all the dregs of the library of films no one else wants to watch because, hey, they’re there and I absolutely want to indulge.

Now, I will say that I originally wanted to focus specifically on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde films, since I recently reviewed Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde and I had it in my head to go through and flesh out the category, watching all of them that I could. Amazon, while having a couple of other versions of the story that I hadn’t seen before, had absolutely awful transfers of the films. One was the 1968 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde starring Jack Pallance, a made-for-TV adaptation that won critical acclaim and plenty of awards back in the day, but the transfer of the film for digital streaming was nigh unwatchable. It looked like someone had recorded a copy of TV during a rerun in the 1980s, left the VHS in a box for twenty years, then set it up on a TV and recorded that tape via a camcorder before uploading it to Prime. It was bad. So, after that terrible experience, I decided to pivot and just find other classic horror works to look at instead.

That led me to The House that Dripped Blood, a film with an absolutely fantastic title that I hadn’t actually heard of before. And yet, with the cast in it I was absolutely shocked I didn’t know it existed: Denholm Elliott (To the Devil a Daughter, as well as a few Indiana JonesTapping into the classic serial adventures of the 1940s, this franchise has gone on to spawn five films, multiple video games, a TV series, and so many novels and books. flicks), Peter Cushing (Van Helsing in the Hammer DraculaHe's the great undead fiend, the Prince of Darkness, the monster based on a real historical figure. He... is Dracula! films, Grand Admiral Tarkin in Star WarsThe modern blockbuster: it's a concept so commonplace now we don't even think about the fact that before the end of the 1970s, this kind of movie -- huge spectacles, big action, massive budgets -- wasn't really made. That all changed, though, with Star Wars, a series of films that were big on spectacle (and even bigger on profits). A hero's journey set against a sci-fi backdrop, nothing like this series had ever really been done before, and then Hollywood was never the same.), Christopher Lee (Dracula in the Hammer Dracula films, Sauramond in Peter Jackson's Middle-earthCreated by J.R.R Tolkein, Middle-earth is the setting for the author's big sagas, featuring the characters of hobbits, dwarves, elves, and men. films), Count Dooku in Star Wars), Jon Pertwee (the 3rd Doctor on Doctor WhoThe longest running sci-fi franchise (at least in terms of sheer seasons), Doctor Who has seen cancelations, relaunches, and reboots, but the core of the series remains the same: a madman in a box traveling through time and space.), Ingrid Pitt (Countess Dracula and Carmilla Karnstein in Hammer’s classic horror), all together in an anthology film written by Robert Bloch (writer of the Psycho novels, among many others). How did this film, with so many great names, fade out so that no one seems to know about it anymore?

Well, that’s because the film really isn’t all that great. Oh, the acting is fantastic, as you would expect with such power-players in horror all giving their characters their full power and attention. Like, seriously, try and find a movie where Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing didn’t give it their all. And the film has plenty of atmosphere, developing solid vibes where it can. But the whole structure of the piece, an anthology film about four unrelated stories all surrounding a single house, just doesn’t play out as well as it should. It might be pedantic of me to expect that a film about a mysterious, evil house would have a set of stories that would compliment and develop that story about said evil house. And yet, these four stories feel so disparate, so unrelated by all but location, that they could have been in other films or collections instead and it wouldn’t have even mattered.

A part of the issue with the film is tone. There are four stories in this film (although with a framing device about a cop investigating the horror house) each with a different hook and a different kind of horror story to tell. The first is a tale about a writer, Charles Hillyer (Denholm) and his wife, Alice (Joanna Dunham), who rent the house so that Charles can get into the right frame of mind to write his next blockbuster work of fiction. While there, Charles starts to envision his killer, a strangler named Dominic (Tom Adams), who he envisions outside the window of the house. But steadily, over time, Dominic becomes more and more real, until he seems to be stalking Charles, moving around the house, attacking Alice. Is it Charles who is just acting out the actions of Dominic, or is the house manifesting this man to terrorize Charles.

The answer (which I don’t mind spoiling for this 1971 film because, really, it’s, been 53 years and we’re well past the statute of limitations on spoilers) is that that Dominic isn’t real, but is actually Alice’s secret lover, Richard, in heavy makeup, and the two were trying to terrorize Charles and drive him mad so that he could be committed and the two lovers could run off with Charles’s money. Except maybe also the house is evil and turns Richard into Dominic. Honestly it’s bonkers, and stupid, and just doesn’t work. The initial build up of the story is good, but this section entirely falls apart upon the conclusion.

This is followed up by the tale of a former theater actor, Phillip Greyson (Cushing) who, having retired from the business, now wishes to spend his days alone in the house, enjoying his reading and music. But when he finds a signed picture from a former lover, it makes him realize just how lonely he is. He wanders into town, to find something to distract him, and he stumbles upon a waxwork museum where, within its halls, he spies a figure of a very beautiful woman that reminds him of his former lover. The waxwork owner (Wolfe Morris) says the figure is actually his embalmed wife, who was a murderer, and Phillip is horrified by this… but still finds himself drawn to her. When a friend of his, Neville Rogers (Joss Ackland), comes to visit, the man is also drawn into the waxwork and entranced by the figure of the woman. But when more is revealed about the woman, and the waxwork owner, it can only lead to one thing: death.

I’ll be honest, this story feels underbaked. The man being drawn in by the beauty of the woman might have worked better, if we’re being frank, if the wax figure of the woman were better made and more entrancing. They probably needed to use an actual actress for this, having her stand very still with some solid makeup work applied to her, instead of using an actual wax figure for the model of the woman. But really, the story just doesn’t have enough development, or time, to really get going properly. Cramming it into an anthology of four stories means this work doesn’t get the time to really develop its tension and build to its scares. It’s more shock and twists than really terror.

Plus, if we want to be truly pedantic, and I do, the meat of the story doesn’t even take place at a haunted house but at a wax museum nearby. Are we trying to say the evil of the house extends out into the town? The film doesn’t make that case, and it’s all just very silly.

Third, we have probably the best story of the set. This one features a father, John Reid (Lee), who moves to the house with his young daughter, Jane (Jane Reid). John hires a teacher and nanny, Ann Norton (Nyree Dawn Porter), to tend to the girl, choosing to keep her out of public school for some reason. He’s distant and cold to his daughter, and she seems withdrawn. Shedoesn’t even having any dolls to play with, something Ann tries to correct but John upon seeing a doll Ann bought for Jane, throws the toy into the fire. Well, as it turns out, John’s wife was a practicing witch, something he learned after he married her, and he fears that Jane could develop the power as well, and if she did, who knows the kind of evil she could unleash.

This one works really well because it’s a tight, focused story that doesn’t mess around. It has a simple setup, an effective building of tension, and the characters and story all tie in together very well. Plus, of course, the acting is solid which helps to carry the story even more. The one flaw with this film is that this is the first to truly introduce supernatural elements into the film after the previous two barely had them or only maybe hinted if you squint a certain way. To suddenly go from more grounded stories into witchcraft and sorcery feels like a stretch. But then we’ll really get a stretch with the next story.

The final tale is of film actor Paul Henderson (Jon Pertwee), who has featured in over a hundred horror films. He’s cast to play a vampire in a new production but the sets and costuming aren’t up to his standard. He gets a card in his dressing room for a costumer, so he goes to investigate. The old man working the store is quite odd, but he has a cloak perfect for a vampire. Paul takes it, wearing it on set the next day. But he finds, while he wears the cloak he becomes, well, vampiric. Is the cloak turning him into a vampire?

This final tale is more comedic than horrifying, and honestly it doesn’t work. I appreciate the way the film tries to build this as a proper tale, even bringing in Ingrid Pitt, film actress of her fair share of vampire horror, to help sell the material. But this one feels so far removed from everything that came before, both tonally and in structure as well as relevance to the overall theme of the evil house that fails to work on any front. It’s an amusing little vampire trifle, I suppose, but it’s a left-fiend entry for the film that probably should have been excluded.

On the whole, then, we have one very successful story and three that could have used far more work. That’s a bad average for stories in an anthology film, and all the fine acting and solid production values can’t fix bad stories. And it’s a pity because the production is so good outside the actual stories it’s telling that you really wish the film were better. It’s a solid piece of horror work applied to an absolutely awful bit of writing. I wish this film were better because, with a better script, it would be an absolute knockout. But it fails at a fundamental level, and there’s no saving the film, sadly.