House of the Damned

In the sixties, Robert Lippert's Associated Producers scored a contract making black and white 'Scope B movies to run with Fox's big pictures and turned loose house director Maury Dexter on them. The results were uneven but one group - the contemporary thrillers - the Los Angeles films - were more striking than most of the big films that elbowed them out of the advertising space.

Along with WOMAN HUNT, AIR PATROL and the later RAIDERS FROM BENEATH THE SEA, HOUSE OF THE DAMNED spins a thin budget into something surprisingly memorable. It succeeds where the Tod Browning film FREAKS failed in making it's circus performers real rather than monsters. The film's curious gentleness is one of its surprises.

The building of tension is nicely crafted - the unanswered phone, moving shots of the deserted private road, disturbing detail like the broken sculpture, the thirteen keys and the re-appearing sign.

Throw in the winning Merry Anders, anticipating the self reliant seventies woman and the atmospheric Hollywood Hills mansion setting which was once actually a haunt of bootleggers. People I see this with are always surprised that such a film exists.

Director Maury Dexter's films are, it seems, generally not much appreciated, but personally I found just about every one, with the exception of Young Guns of Texas, to be thoroughly engaging little support features that were often a cut well above the main attraction. House of the Damned came about mid-way through his early sixties output,and was beautifully lit and photographed in the particularly pleasing combination of black and white with the added benefit of CinemaScope. This is no film for horror fans. It is an atmospheric drama with a sad,low-key ending. Solid cast with popular leading man of the times Ron Foster, and Merry Anders, always a joy to watch, and especially good in Dexter's Police Nurse. House of the Damned rated X for over 16's only, topped the bill at the Rialto Theatre Coventry Street in London's west-end. A limited release in the capital's suburbs saw it supporting another Fox entry Witchcraft. Dexter's output was unpretentious but consistently entertaining, and it would be nice if the Fox Archive people were to release some, if not all of his films in their correct theatrical release ratio. Maury Dexter's contribution to the illustrious history of 20th Century-Fox may be small but it is certainly worthy of recognition.

"House of the Damned" is a quickly made Fox second feature, (inexplicably shot in CinemaScope) which offers the viewer pleasing performances from Ronald Foster, the always fine Merry Anders, and Richard Crane, who apparently is playing fast and loose with his new French bride (Erika Peters) whose acting is - how shall I say? - lousy. These four are exploring an old house with a grim history (what else is new?) which the owners want remodeled. Occasional scares, (supposedly) unexpected events, and undeveloped story reduce this one to a series of build ups to nothing in particular. The photography, however, is above average for this sort of thing. Unfortunately, it's mostly wasted here. Try "House of Dark Shadows", "House of 1000 Dolls", "House of Whipcord" or "House Of Women" instead. Incidentally, the original movie posters announce the film thusly: ''13 Keys Open The Doors To The House Haunted By The Living Dead!' If ever there was a case of fraudulent advertising, this was it. Any appearances by The Living Dead are strictly in the minds of the 20th Century-Fox publicity department.

In HOUSE OF THE DAMNED, architect Scott Campbell (Ron Foster) and his wife, Nancy (Merry Anders), move into a big, fortress-like mansion in order to survey it. It's not long before odd occurrences begin taking place.

That's about it.

The problem with this movie is that it seems like someone decided to make it, simply because they had a big house to make it in, the story being just an afterthought. It's mildly interesting at first, but there's not enough going on, and a whole lot of static scenes with nothing much happening. This all leads up to about 5 minutes of wrap-up at the end that pretty much negates any "horror" involved.

Actually, the one, true point of interest is the all-too-brief- appearance of Richard Kiel (about 2 minutes of screen time)...

Not too bad. With a running time of 64 minutes I was expecting a cheap thriller and it has a lot of setup. When things start to get weird the movie gets a little better but you know the closer and closer the end gets you will find out what's going on and then the movie will Immediately end! Kind of unsatisfactory. Some good creepy use of shadow and and the acting was better than I expected. Same thing with the production values.