In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Whilst the loose morals and superficial machinations of youthful Sixties' 'swinging London' are engagingly handled, it seems an age before someone suggests going to 'the old house' to liven up a tepid evening's entertainment.American singing sensation Frankie Avalon is top-billed Chris, but is more of a supporting character to the excellent Richard O'Sullivan's far more interesting Peter and Mark Wynter's two-timing Gary - at least for the first two thirds of the 92 minute running time. The girls, who are either predatory or naïve, include Sylvia (Gina Warwick), Dorothy (Carol Dilworth) and Madge (Veronica Doran). George Sewell looks menacing as Kellett, and Dennis Price is wasted as the Inspector - a role originally envisaged for Boris Karloff (although given Karloff's health during the late 1960s, it is difficult to imagine him in the role).Director and writer Michael Armstrong fails to inject many scares into this, and typically of Tigon's output at the time, the results could better be described as a fairly routine mystery than a horror (despite the premise).Tigon films were prolific at the time. Their horror output occasionally resulted in some excellent productions, including 'Witchfinder General (1968)', 'Blood on Satan's Claw (1970)' and 'The Creeping Flesh (1973)'. Although the cast try their best, this is fairly standard runaround stuff which, instead of getting more intriguing as things roll on, actually becomes less engaging.

The title could be signalling a pastiche of the Hammer films, bolted-on to a wallpaper treatment of Swinging London. Yet it is outwardly trying to be serious and awe-inspiring, with every cliché in place, from moonlit murder-weapons to "The killer... must be one of us!" A group of young trendies meet up at a damp-squib party, where not enough is happening, and one of them suggests they should adjourn to a deserted mansion, believed to be haunted. Predictably, one of the group is soon found butchered, and we have already been fed a too-obvious suspect in swinging Sylvia's rejected lover Bob - a grim, older, married man who is openly stalking her.The group's rather improbable leader is an American played by Frankie Avalon, by then pushing thirty but still an honorary teenager to many viewers. Having recently been quizzed by the drug squad, he suggests leaving the police out of it, and burying the corpse in the woods - a scene that is never shown, but only referenced, which is rather a let-down. When Bob revisits the house, in order to retrieve an inscribed lighter he once gave Sylvia, he too gets knifed to death, and the group reunites there, to investigate further. But there we have to leave them, at midnight (of course) in the candlelit interior, for anything more would be a giveaway.It is hard to be generous about this film. Its troubled production history, with many changes of plot, does not excuse its general limpness. The best performance is by Mark Wynter (who doesn't last long!), and Avalon is at least professional. Dennis Price, on his last legs, does little for the role of the detective. As for the girls, who normally outshine the men in any Swinging London story, not one of them proves capable of speaking a single line with conviction, except at the scream-queen moments. And they never even look like partygoers, only actors following stage directions. Amateur isn't the word.I suppose we should remember that the Carnaby Street scene, per se, would have made a particular impact on audiences in the regions and in America at the time, whereas it now just looks like a faded backcloth, perhaps pointing-up the basic shallowness of that scene, so widely hailed for its bold creativity. But the supposedly trendy dialogue seriously creaks. ("I don't dig this place" is about fifteen years behind.) None of the characters are memorable or well-drawn, and in any case there are too many of them to register properly.

Wow. Incredible. I have just got through (and believe me that is the correct expression) watching this with my husband and feel that I can now say without fear of exaggeration that it is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the most stupid film I have ever seen. Okay, I am willing to concede that it might not actually be the most stupid film in the world, but I do have a hard time imagining anything more consistently cretinous. To be fair, though, that could just be because the human brain was never designed to conceive of idiocy of that magnitude without literally imploding from the impossible and unbearable strain.The premise is simple: a gaggle of hip, swinging-sixties socialites are induced to leave a happening party in the middle of the night (for reasons that are never adequately or convincingly explained), to drive, for miles, in the dark, to the far less salubrious surroundings of a deserted, reputedly haunted manor house slap-bang in a wooded square acre of nowhere. What follows has a numbing inevitability about it, not helped by the fact that the 'haunted house' has all the atmosphere of a Wetherspoons pub, or that the ensuing antics of the actors are so whimsically asinine that you often wonder if you're not watching an episode of Hollyoaks where the cast have unwittingly invented time travel.That is not to say that the acting was the worst thing about this film. The continuity errors are so numerous that they could form the basis of the most liver-punishing 'have a shot when you spot one' drinking game ever devised, and the script seems to exist with the sole purpose of propelling the cast through an increasingly nonsensical series of events, the downward spiral of which is only ever briefly punctuated by bouts of jaunty inanity or otherwise motiveless dialogue. And yes, I know a great deal of the horror genre's dramatic tension derives from the protagonists making bad choices and doing stupid things, but the decision-making process depicted in this film wouldn't make sense anywhere outside the confines of an insane asylum, and if your dog behaved with such flagrant dim-wittedness you'd shoot it to put it out of its misery. I kid you not: They not only decide to visit the house in the first place, but after one of their number is murdered and they know that a member of the remaining five is responsible they decide to cover up said murder and continue associating with each other, returning, in fact, to the scene of the crime at a later date and repeating their actions in order to discover the identity of the killer. Yes, that's right, they voluntarily lock themselves in to a structurally unsound horror house where they saw a close friend murdered with the probable killer in order to solve? the crime? Never before has the phrase WTF? been so aptly applied.Not that this is an adequate description of the sheer range of stupidity on offer. My personal favourite is the group 'bitch', Sylvia, who displays great promise in the field of utter stark-staring twittery very early on, continually accepting lifts from a man who is, to all intents and purposes, stalking her. She later goes for gold, achieving a personal best of leaving the house where she has only recently, voluntarily arrived because she is too scared (or 'bored' as she puts it), only to walk miles in the dark through a wooded area that is previously unknown to her, dressed in platform boots and white Mary Quant mini dress, looking for all the world like a futuristic prostitute. She then proceeds to hitch a lift with a perfect stranger. Sheer genius. Another example of barefaced unabashed full-frontal empty-headedness is the group standing around discussing complicity in the murder of their friend outside the police station where they have been brought for questioning. It was at this point I did start to wonder if I was watching a film at all and not some celluloid decent in to madness, either that or a very subtle (albeit bizarre) form of anti-drugs propaganda.There are yet many other rare gems on offer, but it is only fair that you are allowed to discover them for yourself. This film is, after all, a rare cultural artefact, crystallising as it does the essence of all that is gleefully crapulent in sixties cinema. Truly, like a major road traffic accident, it is compellingly awful, and as such to be saluted.

Haunted House of Horror, The (1969) * 1/2 (out of 4) Frankie Avalon and a group of friends are bored hanging out in an apartment so they go walk around a haunted house when one turns up butchered. Was a member of the group or perhaps a ghost? The only way to find out is by the group going back there at a later date to see once and for all. This British film from the Trigon Productions has a few interesting items but for the most part this thing is deadly dull from start to finish. I have an issue with many British horror films and that's because they talk and talk and talk and don't ever know when to shut up. That curse follows this film as we get plenty of talk and most of it has nothing to do with the main plot point of the film. The subplot involves a young woman trying to break free from a married man, which seems to be more fitted for a soap opera so why on Earth throw it into a slasher movie? The performances are okay for this type of film with Avalon leading the way and I'm sure he was the first to cash his paycheck. The film is great to look out with the wonderful colors and set design but you still need a story to make all of that count. There are a couple very bloody murders, which I was surprised to see and I'll give the filmmakers credit for the ending, which doesn't go the way you might expect. Even with that said this is a very hard film to get through because of how dull it is.