Gli orrori del liceo femminile

THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED (La Residencia)

Aspect ratio: 2.35:1 (Franscope)

Sound format: Mono

(35mm and 70mm release prints)

A young girl (Cristina Galbó) arrives at an isolated boarding school in the south of France where several students are believed to have run away, but were actually the victims of a psychotic killer...

Odd mixture of giallo mystery and Hammer-style Gothic, set in a labyrinthine girl's school where principal Lilli Palmer struggles to contain the passions of her youthful charges, all of whom she considers 'marked' by their sublimated sexual desires. However, Palmer is quickly revealed as a hypocrite with an incestuous crush on her handsome teenage son (played as a child-like simpleton by John Moulder Brown), and the students are forced to endure a regime which fosters cruelty, rebellion and murder. Palmer dominates the film with effortless grace, and there's solid support from Mary Maude as the ice-cold beauty who makes life miserable for heroine Galbó. Memorable set-pieces include a slow-motion murder in the school's greenhouse, Galbó's doomed attempt to flee the building at midnight, and - believe it or not - an erotically-charged sewing circle! But the film reaches an apex of horror in its closing moments, when the killer is unmasked during a showdown in the attic, staged with stunning conviction by debut director Narciso Ibáñez-Serrador (¿QUIÉN PUEDE MATAR A UN NIÑO?).

But the *real* star of the show is cinematographer Manuel Berenguer (55 DAYS AT PEKING, KING OF KINGS, etc.), whose prowling camera-work makes a virtue of Victor María Cortezo's Gothic set designs, and the widescreen compositions are judged with startling clarity (indeed, Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA owes an obvious debt to the style and tone of Ibáñez-Serrador's movie). For all its virtues, however, THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED is a little too leisurely in places, and the film's sumptuous visual aesthetic disguises a fairly routine plot line, spiced with 'subversive' trimmings. Flawed, but beautiful.

(English version)

An authentic bold and disturbing thriller for its time, during General Franco reign in Spain. And, we can see here many elements that we can find now in today's cinema, especially the Spanish gnre, involving teenagers.. Some lines may remind the Italian Giallo, but don't expect to see here a kind of SUSPIRIA; I recommand this awesome atmosphere, not very usual for this decade that will stick you to your seat.

The story deals with a respected house (managed by Lilli Palmer and Candida Losada) of rebel girls (Mary Maude , Maribel Martin , Teresa Hurtado , among others) where arrives a new boarder (Cristina Galbo). There happens several astonishing murders with bloody and gruesome executions . Lilli Palmer has a teen son (John Moulder Brown) who looks for a girl just like his mother . Various suspects (Victor Israel) implicate about anybody girls are running away and dieing one by one. Meantime , the girls are escaping and someone originates a frightening massacre of the remaining wayward girls .

Chicho Ibañez Serrador's first great success is compelling directed with startling visual content . This frightening movie is plenty of thrills , chills , high body-count and glimmer color in lurid images with phenomenal results . This is a classic slasher where the intrigue , tension , suspense appear threatening and lurking in every room , corridors and luxurious interior and exterior . Agreeable performance from Cristina Gabo who played various Giallo and Horror movies such as ¨Sleeping corpses lie¨ , ¨What have you done to Solange¨ and ¨The killer must strike again¨ . This genuinely mysterious story is well photographed by Manuel Berenguer in location of Palace of Sobrellano (Comillas , Cantabria, Spain) with shades of ochre , translucently pale turquoises and deep red . Creepie and eerie musical score by Waldo De Los Rios.

This splendid movie belongs to Giallo genre . These Giallo movies are characterized by overblown use of color with shining red blood , usual zooms , and utilization of images-shock . The motion picture is well directed by Chicho Ibañez Serrador . Chicho directed another classic as ¨Who can kill a child ? ¨ and for TV , ¨Historias para no Dormir¨, being his last film an episode titled ¨Blame¨(2006) . Rating : Good, this is one of the more imaginative slasher pictures in which the camera stalks in sinister style . Well worth watching .

Generally speaking, the reviews on this film are in it's favor. After watching the movie I have to agree that this is a worthwhile older horror-thriller - it's good.

It's fairly easy to know whodunit and why but it's still interesting to watch how the film plays out. Knowing whodunit and why does not spoil the film.

Sexual repression, incest, murder, a sadistic boarding school owner/teacher, lesbianism, torture and mystery - this movie has all of that. It is reminiscent of the 60s/70s Hammer Horror films. If you like all that then you might enjoy this film. It's sorta a hidden gem.

8/10

"The House That Screamed," better known in Spain as "La residencia" ("The Residence"), focuses on a remote girls' boarding school in nineteenth-century France. The school is run by the stone-cold Mademoiselle Fourneau (Lilli Palmer), whose methods of punishment border on sadism. New student Thérèse (Cristina Galbó) arrives, and almost immediately notices something is not right with the headmistress, her wayward son, or her female peers—which becomes increasingly clear as students begin to disappear into the night.

Let's be honest—a film with a title like "The House That Screamed" doesn't exactly generate high expectations, and the plot summary on IMDb would further lead one to assume this film is in the ranks of the sleaziest of Euro-sleaze. I went into the film with such expectations, but about an hour through it, realized there was a huge chasm between what I'd anticipated and what I was getting.

This is not to say that "The House That Screamed" is necessarily a masterpiece—but it's damn good. The film operates almost more as an astute period piece than it does an outright horror film; the isolated school setting and multitude of sexual repression themes would recall "The Beguiled," though "House" predates it—and this is another reason the film seems to have garnered more interest in recent years. Given that its production took place in 1969, it begins to look more and more like a predecessor of the contemporary slasher film.

It is supremely Gothic in its aesthetics, with the majority of the film taking place within the confines of the castle-like school. The costumes and sets are historically accurate and elaborate, and the film captures the era successfully. Apparently pioneering (at least in Spanish cinema) slow-motion shots of murder sequences add a grim layer to the film. There is not much in the way of violence, but the lingering murder scenes are effective. The film has often been criticized for being too slow, and those claims are somewhat fair; it does begin to drag its feet in the second act, but the production values and performances are enough to keep most audiences chugging along with it. The performances are all above-average, with Lilli Palmer leading the cast as the stone-faced headmistress, and "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" star Cristina Galbó as the newcomer who seems to stir up the school's dynamics.

The conclusion is effective in spite of the fact that it seems in retrospect quite obvious, but in any case, I was taken by surprise. All in all, "The House That Screamed" truly outdoes its title, which is something of a rare occurrence in the genre. It's a semi-cerebral, moody, and atmospheric film with a handful of great scare scenes (the conclusion in the attic is genuinely nail-biting). Given its 1969 production, its influence seems fairly obvious, whether it be on the likes of Argento or even "Black Christmas"—but even in spite of those conjectures, the film succeeds on its own as a Gothic murder mystery that functions as well as a period piece as it does a horror film. 8/10.