‘The Haunted House of Horror’ is a 1969 proto slasher film from the under-rated Tigon Studios. Not a bad effort, it contrasts some fairly irritating scenes of actors in their mid-twenties pretending to be hip young teens with some quite satisfying scenes of the same actors being gorily murdered, or stabbed in the crotch. The cast is ‘mixed ability’ to say the least: teen idol who never was Mark Wynter, Richard O’Sullivan, Dennis Price and Frankie Avalon (the unlucky recipient of the groin focused cutlery).
The film was directed by Michael Armstrong, whose previous work had included a short called ‘The Image’ which provided David Bowie with his first screen role. Apparently, Dave was lined up to play the psychotic killer in this film, but was dropped before shooting started. Pity, as that would have been rather interesting.
Stop Press: This film is actually on TV tomorrow morning, BBC2 at 2.25am. I now think I may be a clairvoyant as I wrote the above post and scheduled it for today about three months ago.
I was determined to see this. Watched the BBC3 doc on easy listening, turned over at 2.25 got half way through the film and dozed of. Absolutely gutted.
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