The House in the Woods

This ludicrous, no-budget thriller is so bad it's laugh-out-loud funny. (That's a genuine line of dialogue quoted in the summary). Highlights include a fight on top of a gramophone and a Siamese cat who miaows right through one scene and then reacts perfectly on cue to a line of Howard's dialogue. (It also miraculously appears and disappears on a shelf during a struggle between Gough and Howard).

The plot strains disbelief beyond breaking point, beginning with a ridiculous encounter in the Carter's flat where their comic stereotype neighbours are holding a 'perpetual party' much to the annoyance of novelist Geoffrey Carter (Gough). When a neighbour calls round to borrow the vacuum cleaner, it's the last straw for Carter who looks for a lonely cottage to rent.

At the cottage, Carter begins to harbour suspicions concerning his new landlord, tortured artist Spencer Rowland, whose eccentricities extend to wearing a Siamese cat like a scarf and continually playing a Larry Adler record, which finally annoys Carter as much as the audience.

Don't be under any illusions about this movie: it is not some lost genre classic, or even a decent period piece. If, however, you appreciate the kind of pastiche movie skits of Harry Enfield or Peter Serafinowicz, there are some priceless, if unintentional comic moments to be found here, and some of the funniest dialogue you'll hear in a long time ("Mushrooms and toadstools should be allowed to live together")

Michael Gough is suffering from writer's block. It's the life in town, the parties in the flats around them. He can't come up with an idea for a book, so he and wife Patricia Roc get in a car and drive. They come across a cottage where widower Ronald Howard is mourning his late wife. He perks up at their company, and offers them the place for a pittance; more, they'll be his guest until the lawyers prepare all the paperwork. He brings them breakfast in bed, runs errands in town for them, and is utterly charming.

You know in a movie that means he has a Dark Secret, and the married couple will spend the brief hour of this movie winkling it out. It's not a terribly involved story, but it is very nicely performed by the three leads, and given its short length, is quite amiable.

Off-beat, little-known suspense-mystery yarn about a couple, played by British screen veterans Gough and Roc, who go to the boonies to rent a furnished house for solitude and privacy. The landlord is an artist, and he is very strange. Ronald Howard(the son of Leslie Howard) plays the artist who has a mystery hidden through a veil of lies. This is one of those little gems that just amazes you when you see it and think that you never heard of it before. It is not a big budget affair at all, but the acting is top-notch and the script keeps you going till the very end. You know that there is something wrong with Howard from the very start...just not what it is for sure. The direction is tight and keen, working the most out of everything. The haunting mood of the film is greatly added by the melancholic score of "Fantasy of a Lost Love" being repeatedly played over and over again. Gough gives a surprisingly restrained performance, showing he can act with subtlety when needed(although he can be great fun when he hams it up too). Howard is good at his role, and I distinctively disliked his character from the beginning. An appropriate response for a well-played role. Roc is lovely and adequate in her role as well. A nice little surprise film. It's like finding a gold ring in a Cracker Jack box!

"House in the Woods" could very well be subtitled "When Wooden Heads Last in the Dooryard Bloomed"; it is somewhat like an episode of Boris Karloff's sorely missed American television show "Thriller", but this British stinker has no thrills. A 60+ minute melodrama so talky it would drive all the bats from the belfry in one fell swoop. Not only that, but if there were some spirits of the living dead wandering in the wood, they, too, would once again wish to die! All about a mad artist, in other words, one who never sold a painting, who ensnares two of the dumbest people ever to wander through a classified ad section looking for a cottage to rent in the proverbial "middle of nowhere", but smack dab in the middle of "a tight little island". This artist claims he never paints anymore, but when he gazes upon Patricia Roc's glowing countenance and broken nose, he must paint her immediately. After more strokes than it took to paint the Sistine chapel, he burns the painting of his "dearest wife" and put's Roc's masterwork in its place. Be well assured her likeness is no "Portrait of Jennie". Several other machinations follow like many trips ten feet out of the cottage into the wood to pick up sinister cigarette butts.But what is the artist really trying to say? What is the husband of Roc's character really trying to find? The solemnity of the entire business is almost without circumference, or is it? The enterprise comes to a screeching halt with one of the most ill timed fist fights in the history of cinema, but it is hugely unintentionally funny. All the viewer can do is keep watching until the bitter, but not better end! Michael Gough, the stilted husband here of Patricia Roc, made some astounding stinkers in his lengthy career, but thankfully he was "resurrected" this same year,1957, in Terence Fisher's much finer "Horror of Dracula". Perhaps, a soft shoe or mellow tap dance would have helped lift "House in the Woods" out of its swamp of dreck; it certainly wouldn't have hurt.

Whilst Network obviously tried their hardest on the DVD release,nevertheless the sound is often muffled and indistinct.The plot concerns a couple getting away from everything in a country cottage and getting more than they bargained for.Unfortunately the execution of this film does not live up to the promising premise,despite an experienced cast.