The House That Bled to Death (1980)

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

best movie i've ever seen.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The fifth episode in Hammer's short-lived series of TV horror movies is one of the best. It's a fairly typical haunted house offering, made with strong production values and sure-hand direction from none other than Tom Clegg, the man best known as the director of the long-running SHARPE series. Probably the worst thing about this episode is the familiarity of the events. The old 'family move into house haunted by a murder of the past' thing has been done to death, and little that happens – the death of the cat, for instance – has the power or freshness to surprise.Saying that, the titular sequence – taking place at a children's birthday party – turns out to be well-staged and colourful, and there are a few brief, bloody shock scenes courtesy of SFX man Ian Scoones. Most surprising of all is the twist ending, which was a then-topical exploration of the whole AMITYVILLE HORROR furore done in a distinctly British way. The cast is interesting: TV actor Nicholas Ball (most recently appearing as a mob boss in EASTENDERS) is the unlikable husband, Rachel Davies (BOON) his sexy wife. None other than Brian Croucher, another TV staple, shows up as a Peeping Tom neighbour. It's not a fantastic TV movie, but it's well made and entertaining, and has that 'Hammer' feel – mostly down to the film's score, by composer James Bernard, which recalls his work on the Dracula films.

***SPOILERS*** What was obviously inspired by the 1979 movie "The Amityville Horror" the Hammer series episode "The House that Bled" to its credit goes a step farther in explaining what happened in a well placed surprise or twist ending that ties up all the loose as well as bloody ends in the movie together. There's the usual unsuspecting family the Peters who buy their dream house in the country that turns out to be haunted by the previous owners of the place. That's when the husband murdered his wife and chopped her up with a pair of Kurki knives and ended up sentenced to life in an institution for the criminally insane. It's when William Peters, Nicholas Bail, and his wife Emma, Rachel Davis, and their 8 year old daughter Sophia, Emma Ridley, moved in strange things started to happen that ended up driving the family up the wall and out of the house.A first the family cat Timmy was found hacked to death and into pieces as well as someone's severed and bloody hand was found in the fridge. Things reach a crescendo when at a birthday party for Sophia a pipe broke open and flooded the place with blood that drove everyone at the party totally batty. With the news of the house's strange activities making headline it ended up getting the attention of a number of major movie studios to get the rights from the Peter family to make a movie about it who ended up millionaires.***SPOILERS**** Set for life with a new house with a swimming pool and tennis court and no financial problems the Peter's were in for a big surprise at the very end of the movie. It was their daughter Sophia depressed since her pet cat Timmy was found hacked to pieces who found a book, that her parents had hidden, about the house and the family who previously lived in it! Its then that Sophia realized what was really behind all the horrors that happened there: The achievement by her parents of using the house for both Fame & Fortune. And with that she took matters as well as a deadly Kukri knife into her own hand and meted out justice!

We all love a good haunted house story. Sadly, this episode seems to relish in the gory details of childhood trauma more than anything else. Sophie the child protagonist has everything that she has grown attached to or been gifted eventually brutalized and destroyed right in front of her. It is truly one emotional trauma after another, replete with blood, murdered pets, dolls' broken limbs, stuffed white rabbits and other - by today's standards - clichés. It gets sickening and predictable and very hard to enjoy for some presumed suspense alone. The ending, too, takes a back seat to the disturbing theme of "good girl gone bad" as little Sophie starts to take an obvious interest and a degree of pleasure in the relentless violence that surrounds her.

Hammer House of Horror: The House That Bled to Death starts as young married couple William (Nicholas Ball) & Emma Peters (Rachel Davis) & their young daughter Sophie (Emma Ridley) move into a house where a brutal murder took place several years prior. At first they feel it's their dream home but soon the dream turn into a living nightmare as horrendous events begin to happen, the cat dies, blood is seen leaking from holes in the wall, Sophie finds severed hands in the fridge & two rusty old machetes keep turning up. Is the house haunted? If so is it trying to kill the Peters & what can be done about it...The House That Bled to Death was episode 5 from the one & only season of this short lived British horror anthology series made for TV by Hammer studios, originally airing here in the UK during October 1980 & directed by Francis Megahy one has to say that The House That Bled to Death was excellent for it's first forty five minutes but then everything is ruined in the last five with a truly awful twist ending which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The script by David Lloyd starts off really well as a great fast paced & genuinely spooky haunted house horror with plenty of incident but then that twist ending ruins everything. It makes no sense to me, what was the purpose of William's actions again? To write a book? To make a film? For the publicity? It's never explained to any satisfactory degree & where did Sophie get that machete from? Who was that estate agent guy & what did he have to do with it all? What was that book Sophie was reading? It wasn't a factual account of what happened because William admits to staging all the supernatural events, why? No matter how much I think about it I just can't square the circle, it just doesn't make any sense & if you work out one aspect of it then something else doesn't make sense which buggers your theory up. Nothing makes any logical sense & it's incredibly disappointing & frustrating after such an excellent first three quarters of an hour. The House That Bled to Death could have been the finest episode of Hammer House of Horror, as it is it's one of the worst.Director Megahy does a good job here, the early 80's contemporary British setting is nice & makes the events fairly real, there are some great sequences as the horrible events inside the house continue to escalate including the infamous scene where the guests at Sophie's birthday party are showered in blood & there's a graphic shot of a dead cat with it's throat cut as well if & if your an animal lover you should probably look away during that moment. There's a really oppressive & gloomy atmosphere, it's actually pretty creepy & unsettling at times like the pre-credits sequence at the start when the old man kills his wife & then reach for one of the huge machetes on the wall & then we fade into the opening credits. Shot on 35mm film rather than videotape as was the norm for most British TV this looks very theatrical & you could imagine it on the big screen. The acting is good except during the twist ending when the whole programme sadly falls to pieces really.The House That Bled to Death could have been one of the greatest Hammer House of Horror episodes if not for a disastrous & incomprehensible twist ending that ruins everything that has gone before.