House of the Damned

* *½ / * * * * *

Couldn’t sleep at 2 in the morning and had House of the Damned recorded from early Saturday morning so I was hoping for a little spooky fun before hopefully eventually nodding off. While I can’t say the film ever quite reaches its potential or capitalizes on its foreboding (and architecturally extravagant) setting as it could have, there were nonetheless aspects of the film I certainly enjoyed. I liked the main leads, Scott and Nancy Campbell (Ron Foster; I know him from “The 7^th is Made of Phantoms”, a memorable episode of Twilight Zone & blonde beauty, Merry Anders), as architect and independently-minded wife respectively, on call to survey a peculiar “Hollywood Spanish” relic (the famous Greystone Mansion) once owned by an eccentric now confined to an institution after shooting a “bum nobody” with a shotgun, taking his head clean off. Scott is commissioned for the job by LA attorney, Joe Schiller (Richard Crane), planning to meet them the next day, requesting the Campbells spend the night at the mansion, hoping they will get measurements and develop a plan to impress the current Rochesters (family of the kooky, Priscilla (Georgia Schmidt)), reputed to be “creative builders”. While sleeping one night, a barely visible figure, walking on hands, seemingly without feet, in the dark, creepily secures keys inside the mansion, as Nancy awakens to the bedroom’s door closing. Eventually the keys are returned, but instead of thirteen on the ring there are only eleven. So Scott and Nancy realize someone (or more than one) is in the mansion somewhere, occupying a locked room. Joe’s wife, Loy (feisty and opinionated Erika Peters), eventually arrives, looking to sunbathe, rather obviously (and not too subtly) revealing to the Campbells her marriage with Joe’s estrangement. Later, when confronting Joe after he arrives, determining from the voice of a woman across his phone while “away on business” that her hubby is an adulterer (he’s not; Joe is just handling secret divorces meant to be kept hush-hush). So the Campbells remain uncomfortable in the awkwardness of the dissolving marriage of the Schillers in front of them, trying to remain civil and quiet.

The film has a promising start, I must say. I especially jived to the Nickolaus ominous photography (he was director of photography for several memorable Outer Limits episodes), particularly an aesthetic dynamo when the main characters investigate the house when lights are out and the shadowy dark offers its unpredictable potential for something awaiting them somewhere in the house. But the conclusion (when what lies within the house surfaces) is so anticlimactic and devoid of any real excitement (the dread of the first thirty or so minutes grinds to a halt), just sort of ending after the leads determine that the house’s squatters aren’t responsible for a former leaser’s (Captain Arbuckle) death, allowing them to leave. I guess I don’t necessarily mind the ending, per se, but the first half just has a such well developed (yes, the film is clearly done on the cheap but no one told Director of Photography, John Nickolaus, Jr. that) chiller mood set up the payoff, you’d think, would result in some serious shocks. The result of who is in the house is like a tame version of Browning’s Freaks, as Richard Kiel is the only truly creepy member of the troupe, forwarding towards a terrified Loy before she screams and vanishes from the film, only to be returned to Joe unharmed.

Joe and Loy’s marital angst aside, I personally embraced Foster (and certainly) Anders as the happy married couple who function as a unit. When Scott asks Nancy to stay aside while he investigates the one responsible for a closed door, she follows behind him anyway. They always speak about his work as a team, and the measurements within the house are done by both of them. It is always a partnership. Of course the preposterousness of the double beds date the film…there’s no way I believe Scott wouldn’t want that beautiful woman in bed with him. This was just an observation I noticed when the film focuses on them at the beginning. I liked that it was clear the two of them were so in synch with each other. Quite a contrast to Joe and Loy, which was clearly on purpose. Just the same, when the Campbells arrive and set up shop in the house, their tour throughout the amazing location captivated me. I just dug this setting, even as I rejected the ending as a bit too pat and quaint. I guess I should take into account the era of the film’s making, the desire to end on a pleasant note, as the director gives the squatters an affectionate sendoff. I will say that the 65 minutes running time was a blessing in disguise as a great deal of the film was movement throughout the house and the mystery behind who was inside it. I have read the disenchantment with the dullness of the film’s pace, so any longer than it lasts would have been severely detrimental…still despite some opposing critique of House of the Damned (not a good title for the film as it promises what it doesn’t deliver), I didn’t consider it a total waste. That isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, but I guess I watched it at just the right time…a very dark early morning sojourn into the dark corridors of Greystone Mansion isn’t an altogether bad thing.