The House in the Woods (1957)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Nice effects though.

Good concept, poorly executed.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

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.

When television caused a chill through film studios during the 1950s a few of the smaller ones (like Walton) felt they had nothing to lose by lowering their standards and giving the public a bit of showmanship. So while Walton's old studios made TV shows like "Robin Hood" and "The Buccaneers", the first film made at their new one was a creepy little thriller, "The House in the Woods".Patricia Roc had been a glamour star of the 1940s British cinema who had been given her big chance in Gainsborough's "When the Bough Breaks" (1947), a searing story about adoption. She popped up in this noirish B as Carol Carter, the social wife of moody author Jeff (Michael Gough) who wants to escape the fly by nights who treat his flat like "Grand Central Station"!! He finds an isolated cottage that the owner is more than happy to rent out to them at two pounds a week. What's more, he hurries them into it by insisting they move in instantly - during which Jeff realises they haven't informed anyone of their departure so it's almost as though they have "disappeared off the face of the earth"!!!!Ronald Howard did start off in A films but by the 1950s his name was synonymus with Bs - he plays the strange artist, Spencer Rowland who stays on with them until the lease agreement comes through and Carol notices similarities between Jeff and Spencer. That's as far as her astuteness goes, she is lulled into calm and is constantly defending him against Jeff's mounting suspicions. His doubts stem from a dedication in a book dated two months before (Rowland claims his wife died two years before!!!), being warned away from the wood when he sees that Spencer is often there and shock when the odd painter destroys his late wife's portrait after it has hung over the fireplace for years.Jeff is also coming up with some lurid ideas for a new book (after critical successes with philosophical works). It is to be a crime thriller about a husband who murders his wife and for a while the viewer wonders if it may come true. The sinister theme music by Larry Adler is the movie's biggest plus, to me it was shaping up as a ghost story - Spencer wanting to keep them house-bound when they arrived, the beautiful Siamese cat always just in view. But by the end, obviously bowing to 1950s complacency, it finished all neat and tidy.

"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.

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")