House of Terror (1973)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

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!

Lovely young nurse Jennifer Andrews (ravishing brunette beauty Jennifer Bishop) is hired by nice guy millionaire Emmett Kramer (Mitchell Gregg) to take care of his mean and cranky semi-invalid wife Marsha (an excruciatingly shrill and unpleasant portrayal by Jaquelyn Hyde). After Jennifer's sleazeball boyfriend Mark Alden (an effectively smooth turn by Arell Blanton) kills Marsha in a staged suicide, Mark persuades Jennifer to marry Emmett for his sizable fortune. Complications ensue when Marsha's bitchy and conniving actress sister Dolores (Hyde again gleefully camping it up) shows up to also get get greedy paws on Emmett's money. Sound good? Well, it just ain't. Seriously undermined by Sergei Goncharoff's static direction, further marred by an extremely blah, talky, and by-the-numbers predictable script by Tony Crechales, a painfully slow pace, drab cinematography by Robert Maxwell, a mild PG rating that puts the kibosh on any gratuitous nudity or hardcore sleaze, all the standard insipid clichés (dark and stormy nights, blood dripping from the ceiling, a foul and ugly mute housekeeper, etc.), a generic ominous score by Jaime Mendoza-Nava, and a meandering and uneventful narrative, this dreary dud proves to be a heavy and unenjoyable chore to slog through. Neither the sight of the delectable Bishop in a bikini nor a nasty surprise twist ending can alleviate the severe boredom. A real yawnfest.

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.

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 sureeits 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 senseso i'll be short .. if you are bored & need to spend sometime watching an exciting movie, this one had no suspense or excitement guaranteedno luck in that one sorry