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| Courtesy of Arrow Video |
A film that builds on the promise of Hammer
horror with acute attention to production design details and costuming while
upping the ante in terms of violence, gore and innovative editing techniques,
the film is considered an all-time touchstone of Spanish horror yet few
filmgoers in the States have seen it outside of its truncated form. Thanks to Arrow Video who continue to polish
and unearth hidden and well-known cinematic gems, they have presented 2K
restoration of both cuts of the film and included them here for posterity.
Sometime in the Nineteenth Century, Theresa (Cristina Galbó) has just been stationed at a remote yet ginormous, strict and domineering all-girls boarding school whipped into shape by chilly matriarch Madame Fourneau (Lilli Palmer). Theresa gradually eases into the tough unforgiving routines including but not limited to figures on the ladder with a proclivity for tormenting naysaying students and an all-encompassing sense of imprisonment but can’t help but notice fellow students start mysteriously disappearing without a trace. Hastily forming a friendship with the Madame’s leering young son Luis (John Moulder-Brown), she begins her own investigation into this simmering cooking pot of a household as more bodies fall and double crossings start cropping up between the students.
Starting out as a sumptuously rendered costumed period piece shot handsomely in 2.35:1 widescreen by Manuel Berenguer before gradually ever so slightly transmogrifying into a gothic horror beast of increasingly bleak foreboding dread, The House That Screamed is best remembered for having one of the more violent pre-giallo slasher kills on film for its day. Almost as jarring is the film’s orchestral score by Waldo de los Ríos which genuinely feels like it was curbed from a bygone era and not just a modernist classical musical invention. Where it really shines involves the film’s art direction aided by production designer Ramiro Gómez who gives the boarding school a labyrinthine vastness that feels inescapable and suffocating.
Much like Alien, the film leaves you uncertain of who to rally behind as characters you think you should warm up to are offed without looking back or thinking too hard about it, making this ornate and luxurious boarding school increasingly oppressive and like it could swallow you whole down one of its bottomless corridors. There’s even a crawlspace sequence involving peeping tom Luis trying to sneak a shower peek that’s nearly as claustrophobic and encroaching as the aforementioned science fiction horror epic.
Truly a masterwork
of the uncanny, fears of budding sexuality, vulnerability, and something of a
precursor to one of Italy’s favorite thriller subgenres, The House That
Screamed is methodically paced and structured so when its claws close in on
us were lulled into a false sense of security.
Gothic period horror, let alone of Spanish origin, was relatively new at
the time. While most point to Guillermo
Del Toro as the new father of Spanish gothic horror, it is important to scroll
back and regard one of the country’s greatest and earliest examples of the
genre to know where it likely all started.
--Andrew Kotwicki
