House of Mystery

When a young couple come to view an house, they can't quite figure out why it's priced so cheaply. When they enquire of the occupier, she tells them that it might be because of rumours there is a ghost. Sceptical, they ask for details and so learn that the previous occupant liked to dabble in home electrics, and - well lets just say things didn't work out so well for him. They decide to go ahead anyway, and so "Trevor" (Maurice Kaufmann) and "Joan" (Nanette Newman) become the new owners. Not long after they arrive, she thinks she has seen a man in their living room, then the lamp starts to go off all by itself. Are they going mad or is it just a fault with the wiring? Well they decide to consult a ghost-hunter (Colin Gordon) who tells them all about ectoplasm and suggest they employ the services of a powerful spiritual medium (Molly Urquhart) to find out just what went on in their home before they arrived. The first half hour of this is all really rather pedestrian mixing a really slow pace with some mediocre writing and acting. It does pick up a little for the second half as the science takes over a little more and there is a twist in a tale of greed and murder, but it can never quite shake the look of a late night television feature that doesn't quite deliver. It has it's moments, but just too few and you'll never remember it afterwards.

At just under an hour long, this film shows what can be done with a good script and good acting. Everything makes sense and there are no plot holes. Although you can guess who the mysterious woman telling the story is pretty easily, this doesn't detract from a fascinating tale of avarice and horror. A couple want to buy a house but are curious why the price is so low. The woman who lets them in shows them around and tells them the story of the house. A woman and her lover vanish. An inventor mysteriously dies. Lights go on and off in the house. A man's figure appears and disappears. All this is knitted into a tight story which would have done justice to "Lights Out", "Inner Sanctum" or "Thriller".

"House of Mystery" is an extremely obscure and unknown little film, but if you do eventually encounter a review for it on the internet left or right, it's always very positive and praising. That's the main reason why I tracked it down, actually, since I'm continuously on the lookout for hidden gems in the horror genre. Another thing motivating me to look for a copy was the name of director Vernon Sewell. Sewell definitely isn't the most prominent of British horror directors from the 1960's and 1970's, but he nevertheless made a couple of interesting hit-and-miss films, like "The Horrors of Burke & Hare", "Ghost Ship", "The Blood Beast Terror" and "The Curse of the Crimson Altar".

Sadly I have to announce that "House of Mystery" honestly isn't an undiscovered masterpiece. It's a modest, compelling and moderately engaging little thriller with a few good ideas and admirably tense atmosphere, but the conclusion isn't nearly as shocking as build up towards to. With its short running time of barely 56 minutes and abrupt transitions between scenes, "House of Mystery" feels more like an episode in a supernaturally themed TV-show, like Alfred Hitchcock Presents or something. The plot is about a young couple scouting for affordable houses on the British countryside and stumbling upon one that is extremely well-priced considering its size and condition. Obviously there's a minor catch, because the curious female caretaker tells them about the house's dark past. It seems another young couple already bought the house before them and they had problems with the lamps and the TV-set, as a result of electrical impulses around the house going bonkers. The house was originally owned by an electrical engineer Mark Lemming, who discovered that his wife and her lover wanted him dead and invented a little game to get even.

"House of Mystery" has a bizarre flashback within flashback narrative structure of which I don't really understand the added value. The couple listens to the story of another innocent couple's bad experiences with the house. How they hired a paranormal detective and how they witnessed a seance to discover the truth. What exactly is the point of all these extra characters? Also, the more you contemplate about the murder plot, the less sense it makes. The fiendish lovers try to kill Mark Lemming through electrocution. Hello, he's an electrical engineer!? Of course he saw through the plan. That's like wanting to kill Mike Tyson in a boxing ring. It just doesn't work. The flashback illustrating Lemming's vengeance abruptly ends without ever stating clear whatever happened to the survivors, so I really can't call it great thriller stuff even if I wanted to. The concept of domestic terror through electrical booby traps is creative and assures a few suspenseful sequences, but that still doesn't guarantee a horror sleeper hit.

Eerie, literate British haunted house tale plays its supernatural angles so totally straight-faced and free of typical horror flourishes that somehow the ominous events seem quite plausible, as though weird forces are intruding into the normal world in a way that could happen to anyone. A young couple shopping for a house visits a large old estate that's up for sale at a suspiciously low asking price. An unidentified woman who says she "comes in sometimes" shows them around the place and relates the details of the haunting that terrorized the previous tenants. She then reveals the tragic tale that started the trouble. It seems an electrical engineer experimenting with new ways of transmitting electric currents set a horrible trap for his cheating wife and her lover, imprisoning them in a room wired with sufficient voltage to electrocute them if they touched the doorknobs or certain other objects. Later, after his own death, the electrician's sprit apparently lingered within the wiring of the house, affecting the TV and lamps. An occult authority is called in to investigate. He is so matter-of-fact and reasonable when he explains the nautre of ghostly phenomena that it all begins to seem scientifically possible. Most movies that bring in a ghost hunter have a hard time making the character sound like he knows what he's talking about without verging on parody, but this guy is very convincing. There are some hair-raising moments, a skillfully constructed growing sense of dread and a cool twist ending right out of classic gothic ghost story literature. This hour-long feature with a mood all its own was the third film (at least) to use the title HOUSE OF MYSTERY. The director later made CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR with Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee and Barbara Steele. This neat little old-fashioned movie is one to look for.

If you've seen director Vernon Sewell's Ghost Ship (1952) then his House of Mystery will seem very familiar: it's practically the same story, except that, instead of the film's central couple buying a haunted boat, it's a country cottage that is home to a troubled spirit

Like Ghost Ship, the married couple buy the cottage despite being told that it is haunted. And like Ghost Ship, they begin to experience strange phenomena, eventually bringing in an expert in the paranormal to help them with their problem. A medium comes to the cottage and, during a seance, we learn what happened to the property's previous occupants.

It's humdrum haunted house nonsense that is told with little verve or energy, the whole thing acting as build up to the 'surprise' at the end, one that I am sure most people will have guessed within minutes of the introduction of the cottage's dour housekeeper.

Of course, running at under an hour long, the whole thing is too short to allow boredom to set in, so if you're after an undemanding piece of British spookiness to kill some time, House of Mystery is just about worth a go.