Disappointment for a huge fan!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

We were stuck for something to watch last night and we chose this 'hilarious comedy' to pass a couple of hours. We usually delight in watching bad films, but this one took us to our limits really. Frankie Howerd can be very funny left to his own devices, but here he is stuck with a script with weak jokes and a very thin story. Ray Milland has never been our cup of tea, but here he puts on a good show, seemingly resigned to the fact that his career was over anyway. Several notches less entertaining than 'Up Pompei!', it ground its way through our evening and we were quite relieved when it finished.

The House in Nightmare Park is set in England during 1907 & starts as stage actor Foster Twelvetrees (Frankie Howerd) is invited to perform his one man show at an old stately mansion owned by Stewart Hendersen (Ray Milland) & his sick brother. More of the Hendersen family arrive & seem to start arguing about money & their sick brother, Foster learns that he is in fact the rightful heir to the Hendersen fortune as well as a million pounds of diamonds that are hidden somewhere in the manor. Unaware that he holds the clue to the diamonds whereabouts the Hendersen's try to trick Foster into revealing where they are but to no avail, soon the bodies start piling up as someone in the house will kill for the diamonds & wealth they will bring. Can Foster survive long enough to solve the clues & find the diamonds?This unjustly obscure British production was directed by Peter Sykes & is a mix of dark Gothic Victorian horror, innuendo laced comedy & gags & a murder mystery whodunit all neatly packaged together in an old dark house style chiller. The script effectively juggles laughs, one-liners, a bit of horror, a passable murder mystery, some hidden diamonds & some weird scenes that make The House in Nightmare Park really quite an enjoyable watch. At 90 odd minutes it moves along at a decent pace & there's a decent double twist ending that is reasonable but maybe not as effective as it could have been, the final shot of Howerd planting his spade into the ground & the camera zooming out for literally miles is a nice way to end things. The horror ranges from killer Snakes & meat clever wielding bald women living in the attic (!) to fog swept moors where murder takes place, the comedy ranges from one-liners like 'Yoo-hoo! I'm here... the entertainment's arrived! I've played empty houses before, but blimey...' when walking into an empty house to 'It's a bit dry for my taste. I prefer it a bit... wetter' while drinking some wine to visual gags like Howerd not being able to get anything to eat while the murder mystery aspect is quite good with a fair few bodies although no-one is killed on screen. There's an amazingly weird & odd scene in which the Hendersen's dress up as puppets & perform a song & dance which is frankly bizarre & has to be seen to be believed.Almost impossible to find these days I don't think The House in Nightmare Park has ever been released on DVD & it hasn't been shown on television over here in the UK for over a decade. I'm not sure why really, the atmospheric house & sets coupled with the murder mystery plot & a name like Frankie Howerd surely makes this worth releasing on a digital format? Surprisingly well shot with some Hammer horror style atmospherics & Victorian era production design. The murders occur off-screen & there's no real blood or gore in it.The imposing house featured in The House in Nightmare Park was actually Oakley Court in Windsor in Berkshire which was used for all manner of films such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) & lots of Hammer horror films including Dracula (1958), The Brides of Dracula (1960), The Plague of the Zombies (1966) & The Reptile (1966). The cast is great, Frankie Howerd puts in a good performance full of sly sexual innuendos & funny faces while Ray Milland as the villain is also good.The House in Nightmare Park is a fun horror comedy murder mystery with a great atmosphere that works surprisingly well on many levels, while maybe not for all tastes I found it highly amusing & very watchable. Much better than expected, while not as out & out funny as Carry on Screaming (1966) it's creepier by far.

Frankie Howerd was enjoying something of a career renaissance in the early '70's, thanks to 'Up Pompeii!', going on to star in three feature length spin-offs, the last of which was 'Up The Front!' in 1973. Also that year he starred in this curio, a delightfully old fashioned comedy thriller in the mold of 'The Cat And The Canary'.Howerd plays 'Foster Twelvetrees', a ham Shakespearian actor invited to give a performance at the house of the sinister Henderson family. Somewhere on the premises is buried treasure, and someone is determined to find it - even if it means committing murder.As you'd expect in a Frankie Howerd movie, the saucy jokes come thick and fast. But the reason why I've given this unusual British film a ten out of ten rating is because it expertly mixes comedy with terror. The shot of a defaced poster of Twelvetrees just before the opening credits is accompanied by a blood-curdling scream - perfectly setting the tone for what follows. The scene in the snake house, the live puppet show, and Twelvetrees almost being butchered with a meat cleaver by an insane old woman are unusually strong by comedy standards. Credit for this must not only go to the underrated director Peter Sykes, but writers Clive Exton and Terry Nation. The latter had written for Tony Hancock a decade earlier, as well as creating the Daleks for 'Dr.Who' so he knew all about scaring audiences.The presence of Ray Milland adds class to the film and marks it out from the other British comedies around at the time. My favourite supporting character, though, is played by Hugh Burden, muttering 'swine!' under his breath each time he claps eyes on Twelvetrees. 'Park' came out on Network D.V.D. some time ago, and I would unhesitatingly recommend it to people even if they weren't fans of Mr.Howerd.

Frankie Howard got few chances on film to showcase his comedic talents. Nightmare Park(AKA House of the Laughing Dead) is probably his best effort to do so on film. Like Benny Hill, only not quite as blatant, Howard is walking innuendo. We see through his eyes and speech an almost endless stream of one-liners, albeit rather tame by today's comparisons. Howard is funny in the main role of a third-rate entertainer who loves himself that has been invited to a mysterious mansion in the English countryside. The rest of the cast is comprised of the inhabitants of the house, a strange lot indeed with Ray Milland as the head of the family. The story is whimsical, and utterly absurd, but through the efforts of Howard, Milland, et all, and the fairly atmospheric direction of Peter Sykes, the film comes off quite well as a somewhat gothic comedy.