This post contains spoilers! I do reveal the end of the film, as it was the interesting conclusion, that inspired me to write about the film…
House of The Damned (1963):
Behind These Doors… The Unbearable Otherness
But, I that am not shap’d for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass
I, that am rudely stamp’d and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform’d unfinish’d sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
and that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them-
-Shakespeare, King Richard III, I.I.14-23
Merry Anders plays the attractive and likable Nancy Campbell married to Scott Campbell (Ron Foster) an architect who is hired by their mutual friend Joseph Schiller( Richard Crane), to survey a castle up in the Hollywood hills. It’s more like a Hollywood Spanish fortress set in the middle of nowhere, for the reclusive Rochester’s who had it built for privacy.
Upon driving up to the Rochester Castle up on the isolated hill, it brought to mind the long opening driving sequence in House on Haunted Hill (1959), with its similar eccentric mansion, opulent… a monstrosity… Same with Eleanor Lance driving up to Hugh Crane’s twisted damned architectural fiend that was Hill House.
