I had always assumed The House That Dripped Blood was a Hammer production, being that it's a British horror movie, and Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are both featured players. How dare I! But no, it's in fact an Amicus Production, another British studio that made a series of "portmanteau" horror films, a fancier term for horror anthologies.
Robert Bloch wrote the script, based on several of his own short stories. The story that wraps the film concerns a missing actor, and the cursed house he was last seen in. And of course, many terrible things happened in that house (although, dripping blood was not one of them), and those terrible things make up the film's four central stories.
The best story is the third, starring Christopher Lee as a cruel father who hires a private tutor for his young daughter, whom he is convinced would be a danger were he to send her to a real school. My least favorite was the second one, starring Peter Cushing as a retiree who visits a creepy wax museum.
It's the rare anthology film where all the stories are winners (can you even think of one?), so three out of four ain't so bad!
The House Dripped Blood is available to rent from Amazon Prime. I watched it free via Kanopy.
1 comment:
Great movie. I love anthologies, too. Dead of Night is great, I think I like all the segments there.
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