Anthology alert! I've said it before - I'm just not too into anthologies. I just find it difficult to get into them. There's never any time to get into any given story. By the time you get to know the characters and really want to dig in... crazy twist/reveal, and then you're onto something else. I don't know if it's a symptom of watching a movie a day or what, but I have a hard time remembering them.
To wit - it's been less than a week since I watched The House That Dripped Blood (I'm running a little behind in my write-ups), and it's taken me a long time to remember even vague details about it. In the spirit of being computer-less (I sometimes write these up in a notebook - usually at a bar - before they make it into blogger), I'll try this without the crutch of the internet.
I mean, the funny thing is I liked it. But I only have vague recollections. Maybe that's just the way my mind works - usually it's just one little thing that reminds me of another, which reminds me of a bigger thing, which reminds of the overall plot or whatever, and then I can fill in the holes. That just doesn't work as well with anthologies. So I'll try my best.
The wrap around? (And I will say - I like how House That Dripped Blood, like Asylum, has a wrap-around that actually leads into the final story... well done.) A famous actor has gone missing. An inspector, probably from Scotland Yard, is sent to investigate. He ends up talking to a local investigator (and the relator who rents out the house) and discovers that this isn't the first time something mysterious has happened in that house. So we flashback to three other times when the house was the locale for some crazy occurrences, before we finally learn the mystery of what happened to the actor. They are (I remember now!):
(1) a horror writer whose creation takes on a life of its own!
(2) a guy (Peter Cushing!) encounters a wax dummy at a local museum that reminds him of an ex-lover... and it may also be demonic!
(3) Christopher Lee (!) as a maybe abusive dad trying to isolate his daughter in the old house... is it because he's a jerk? Or because there is something more sinister going on?
And then, the disappearing actor... a B-movie star (Jon Pertwee!) gets a mysterious cloak from a secondhand store. And it does mysterious things. This last story is kind of the outlier - it's a little more knowingly campy, and seems to be going more for humor rather than any real scares. (There's a good-natured jab at Lee's performance as Dracula, as Pertwee is making a vampire movie and modeling it after "Lugosi, of course. Not the new guy.") But it ends up being pretty corny, and just isn't a very good ending for the film. (There's even some super awkward flight by wire suspension stuff going on.) Ingrid Pitt is in this story too, but doesn't make a very good impression. The last scare sort of revolves around her, and it just flat out doesn't work.
But the other three stories are pretty solid. They are all kind of creepy without ever being overly disturbing. It's one of those early 70's films that has sort of aged out of being too scary and is now a little more family-friendly. The acting is solid across the board - there are a *lot* of big names in this film - and Lee is particularly good (and gets the meatiest role) as a stern/potentially abusive father.
The titular house (which, for the record, does not actually drip blood) is not all that imposing - you hear the name of the film and expect it to be some gothic masterpiece of architecture. But it seems more like a normal, slightly outdated home that's a little off the beaten path. Still, the house has got a decent vibe to it, thanks to the way it's lit and shot (particularly in the first story about the horror writer). The "evil-house" is a decent framing device, but is a little problematic. All but one of the stories involve *already* evil things brought into the house, so it's hard to really think of the house as haunted or cursed or anything. And one hardly even happens at the house. It feels more like the people that rent it have really bad luck. But the stories are good enough that you don't really care, and at the end of the day the "why" doesn't really matter.
So despite not being able to remember it at first, I liked The House That Dripped Blood just fine. It has a really good cast, is capably made, and sticks to a pretty good tone for three of the four stories. The last one is kind of a letdown, but three out of four ain't bad.
I would recommend this film.
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