The House That Dripped Blood (Blu-Ray)

Blu-Ray, Horror, Reviews,

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The fans of Amicus movies all have their personal favorites. Some prefer the pulpiness of TALES FROM THE CRYPT or VAULT OF HORROR while others enjoy the cheesiness of TORTURE GARDEN or DR TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS. Then there's the literate approach of HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD and FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. I love them all and saw every Amicus film that came my way, even the non-anthology ones like AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS and I, MONSTER. Most of them I caught in drive-ins. My personal preference is for the low key approach of HOUSE and GRAVE with HOUSE being my favorite Amicus movie although it was a close race between the two.

HOUSE strikes me as a combination of MASTERPIECE THEATER and ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. It's even based on stories by Robert Bloch (PSYCHO). The film is a remarkably handsome production considering the budgetary limitations of $500,000. It grossed far more than that. The photography is simple and direct, the background lighting is extremely effective, and the performances by old pros at the genre like Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are uniformly fine. Even an over-the-top Jon Pertwee in a role originally intended for Vincent Price is, forgive the pun, Price-less. As is often the case with anthologies, some stories are better than others with #s 2 & 3 standing out in my opinion.

The film has an interesting background and release history. In addition to the Vincent Price story, the director, Peter Duffell, wanted to call it "Death & the Maiden" after the musical work in the Peter Cushing segment but producer Milton Subotsky came up with the less prosaic title. Ironically, there's no blood in the film at all. It was originally released in the U.S by a small company called Cinerama (no relation to the film process) who quickly went under leaving the film hard to see for many years. The original VHS was a sad affair but the 2003 Lionsgate DVD (the one pictured here) is the one to get. The more recent Hens Tooth DVD has oversaturated colors. If you love old school British horror, this is one of the best.