House of Terror

I've been watching horror and cult movies for more than twenty years and I've written nearly 3.500 user-comments for this lovely website, and yet … I still make the same damn idiotic rookie mistakes! In spite of the negative ratings and forewarning reviews from fellow horror fanatics, I keep on tracking down obscure and long-forgotten films purely based on their awesome looking vintage film posters. My latest failure is this "House of Terror", released in the generally speaking splendid horror year 1973. Several reviewers, whose opinions I never question, wrote already that this was a dreadfully dull and incoherent low-budget stinker, but – oh no – I spotted a cool poster (with the face of a petrified woman in extreme close-up) and absolutely had to watch it anyway. The opening sequence and the climax are decent horror material, albeit already senseless and irrelevant, but everything in between is literally unendurable nonsense! The film starts with the bloody massacre of an elderly couple, but then they're hardly ever mentioned anymore. They supposedly are the parents of the rich Emmett Kramer, and at the beginning of the film he hires the beautiful young private nurse Jennifer to look after his loathsome wife. From then onwards I lost most of my interest, due to non-stop boring and practically inaudible dialogs, but it's something about the nurse's hoodlum boyfriend wanting to steal the family fortune and a long lost evil twin-sister coming back for vengeance… Oh, and there's a deaf- mute and bearded housemaid running about in the house, but apart from one very essential sequence, she merely just serves as a piece of scenery. "House of Terror" is insufferably boring, ugly, predictable, derivative and badly acted. But hey, the poster is awesome!

Quite a few low budget horror films have a couple of bad actors but how did they manage to fill this one full of them?! Is their a casting school just for crap actors? This movie sent for them...

The old guy who the nurse first works for and then marries is an Omar Sharif lookalike with a Frank Zappa tash, just spends his time sat down drinking booze. I don't blame him either. The nurse just gets hysterical now and then, the old guy's wife emotes and chews the scenery. And the nurse's murderous boyfriend has all the charm of week old pizza, although we are supposed to believe he has the charisma to induce his girlfriend to help murder the old guy, now husband.

Story tries to be a cross of 'The Postman always rings twice' or 'Body of Evidence,' fails and is strictly very amateur hour.

I was losing the will to live when the late wife's identical twin sister turns up to add to the plot. This shock twist didn't help and I was so pleased when the sad sorry mess finally finished.

Give this a miss and do something more worthwhile like counting your toenail clippings.

A nurse and her homicidal boyfriend plot to kill her rich and seriously ill boss while they too are being stalked by some undefined horror.When the woman turns up dead in a bathtub full of blood the couple begin to search for the money,but they soon begin to suspect that the woman isn't really dead.Perhaps her ghost has come back to avenge her death."House of Terror" by Sergei Goncharoff is quite reminiscent in tone to S.F Browrigg's "Don't Look in the Basement",but it's nowhere nearly as effective.The plot is extremely tedious,the action moves at snail's pace and there is not enough horror for my liking.Apart from the beginning where elderly couple is savagely knifed to death there is almost no blood in "House of Terror".Very boring and common talkfest with pretty eerie denouement.4 out of 10.

not the worst i ever saw but not your cup of tea at all

i mean it's not the kinda of movie to spend your evening watching or your weekend for suree

its not phsyco for the great director Alfred Hitchcock , & its not based on a novel for Agatha Cristie either so don't expect much

there is not much to talk about in that senseless picture weather in the plot or the acting or the photography or even the directing , the production was poor too so it didn't help in that sense

so i'll be short .. if you are bored & need to spend sometime watching an exciting movie, this one had no suspense or excitement guaranteed

no luck in that one sorry

I felt compelled to write up a review for this cool little potpoiler upon seeing that it has nothing but negative reviews from closed-minded individuals here on IMDb. If you have no tolerance for low-budget movies, then: why are you even watching this? -- But if you dig 70's style indies, Giallos or even US "Lifetime TV" type thrillers, this one may be right up your alley.

When a young lady arrives at an old mansion to care for a cantankerous elderly woman, she finds herself embroiled in romance, gold-digging and murder - care of the patient's husband, and old boyfriend and a family relative. The characters in this one are both nasty and kooky and definitely keep you entertained and intrigued for the duration as the story weaves its way through it's plot turns. Of special note here is Miss Jacquelyn Hyde (read that again) who is definitely a character, playing two very different roles. This lovely little theatrical scene-stealer really makes the movie!

Of course, these kinds of regional horrors hold other delights than just their intended ones. When done right, they captured a time and essence of an era so much better than most higher-budgeted, slicker productions. And this one certainly is a little time-warp experience. If you've seen and enjoyed other movies from the era that also mixed elements from Noirs and Italian Giallo films into a uniquely American sleaze experience (like "Point Of Terror" and "Blood Mania"), then I'm pretty sure you'll like this one as well. Check it out!