Bloodbath at the House of Death

Alternate titles : Headstone Manor

Tagline : "The movie that took a lot of guts to make!"

Considered something of a "lost classic", as (up until 2008 anyway) it hadn't been seen on home video since the early 1980's, this oddly humoured horror/comedy stars TV comedian Kenny Everett as the leader of a group of paranormal investigators, who have gone to investigate rumours of ghostly goings on at the remote country mansion of Headstone Manor.

Referred to by the locals as the "House of Death", the manor was the setting of a brutal massacre some years previous (as we see during the films intro) whereby 18 guests at the house were brutally slaughtered under mysterious circumstances, and has remained empty ever since. But as the scientists (which includes 80's TV actor Gareth Hunt and comedienne Pamela Stephenson) settle in for the evening and set up their equipment, it soon becomes obvious that there's more than just paranormal activity at work in the house.

This turns out to be a group of Satan worshippers, lead by the aptly named Sinister Man (played by horror legend Vincent price) who want them out, as the house is built over a sacred shrine to their master "Diabolis Supremis" (that's the Devil to you and me). Can the scientists thwart the Sinister Man, or will the bungling incompetents that make up his bizarre cult oust them before Satan really gets pissed off?

Scripted by noted British comedy writer Barry Cryer, the film was meant to be a campy comedy, as we see it cheerfully ripping off scenes from "Carrie", "The Entity", "The Shining" and many other horror films of the day, but falls just short of humour mark as many of the gags don't really work. The film isn't a total loss, but it's not in the same league as those "Airplane" or "Naked Gun" movies, though its still miles better than those god-awful "Scary Movie" (or "Epic Movie", "Super Hero Movie" etc..) films from more recent years.

TV funny man, the late Kenny Everett, is his usually wacky self, as is Pamela Stephenson, and in case you were wondering, yes Kenny Everett's TV sidekick Cleo Roco DOES appear in this too. But it's Vincent Price who steals all the best lines of dialogue, as he launches into long winded tirades at the slightest provocation, using sentences like "to think that I, the right had of Beelzebub himself, should be subjected to the opinions of Churl's and Hobbledehoys".

Overall Marks : 5/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• Believe it or not, the film tied with David Cronenberg's "Videodrome" at the Brussel's International Fantasy Film Festival as winner of the best Science-Fiction film in 1984. What the hell where they smoking?.
• Scriptwriter Barry Cryer and Director Ray Cameron have cameo appearances in the film as police officers during the films opening.
• The film was not a success and faired quite poorly at the UK box office.
• Director Ray Cameron was hired to direct as he'd previously worked with Kenny Everett on the "Kenny Everett TV Show" back in the 80's.
• John Fortune, who plays scientist John Harrison, is a prominent comedy actor and still appears on UK TV to this day with impressionist Rory Bremner.
• The scene were the barmaid tells Vincent Price's character to "piss off" was not in the original script.
• Pamela Stephenson, then known for her anarchic antics on TV's "Not the Nine O'Clock News", is currently a doctor of psychology. She is also the wife of Scottish Comedian Billy Connolly.
• The film was released on UK video in the early 80's by Thorn-EMI, but after the introduction of the Video recordings act in 1984, which required all videos be re-submitted to the BBFC for classification, the distributors decided to cease trading. The film was going to be re-released by Cannon films in 1987, but this never came to light as shortly after submitting the film for classification the firm went bankrupt. It wasn't until 2008 that distributors Nucleus films picked up the rights and finally issued the film on UK DVD.
•  The movie was very nearly lost forever, as when Nucleus films wanted to release this during the late 00's, no prints of it could be found. The original distributors had ceased trading long ago and the rights to their catalogue had changed hands several times and the current owners did not have any copies in their vaults. As the film was produced independently, it became a case of seeing if the original production company still had the negatives in storage anywhere. Fortunately they were found at a film processing lab, but were due to be thrown out as the production company had long since gone bust, so the storage fees hadn't been paid for a long time. Had Nucleus not come along and taken the negatives off their hands when they did, these would have been subsequently destroyed and the film lost forever.

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