BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH (1984)

Yikes. A journey 33 years in the making has ended with essentially a wet, and unsatisfying, fart. I have been trying to watch 1984’s BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH since I happened to catch it on cable in 1988 on the USA Network’s Commander USA’s Groovie Movies, a Saturday afternoon show with a horror host that ran “bad” genre films (for more on that story, see the video below).

Of course, I didn’t know that it was called BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH, or anything about it. Just a few snippets in my mind which were obviously skewed. I finally rewatched it—free from the confines of Commander USA and Saturday afternoon censors—and man is it just not good. While there is a ton of craft employed to really make it look like a UK haunted house film from the ‘70s (shades of Edgar Wright’s DON’T), and there are stand out jokes, it is a rough viewing that is awkwardly paced, poorly conceived, and terribly executed. So. That’s 33 years of brainspace I’m never getting back.

In total fairness, BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH seems very much of its time and place. While the U.K.’s dramatic arts have always been keenly observed and more intellectually profound than most other places, their mainstream comedies (especially in the ‘80s) were incredibly broad with a lot of jokes relying on weird accents, hoisting upper class twits on their own petard, and some form of mocking crossdressing or other basic ideas of gender roles. BLOODBATH was a vehicle for its star, Kenny Everett, and his collaborators Ray Cameron and Barry Cryer, a trio who were in their ascendency on British television comedies. I don’t think I’ve seen any of their work, but I have to believe it’s much better than this. Or maybe this is like their version of CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD. Who can say?

The 1984 film is modeled in the vein of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker productions (ZAZ) of AIRPLANE!, TOP SECRET, THE NAKED GUN, and so forth where there is a clear knowledge of the genre it is spoofing (in this case it would be films like LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, THE HAUNTING, and POLTERGEIST). But Cameron and Cryer forgot some of Zucker’s famous rules of comedy along with basic storytelling mechanics and the remainder is a mishmash of plot that doesn’t make sense populated by characters that don’t stand out making jokes that are easily forgettable.

Spoof movies obviously aren’t held to similar levels of cohesion. There should be odd tangents, non sequiturs, cutaway gags, and running jokes that clearly break a sense of reality. BUT there still requires a general (however broad) plot and basic sense of characters so the audience knows who is trying to do what. Everett’s Dr. Lukas Mandeville is all gimmick without a single joke; he leaves his dick out of his zipper often, wears an iron brace around his leg to create a horrible affected limp, and when he gets agitated he slips into a German accent (because he was actually a skilled German physician until everyone laughed at him and now he’s a British paranormal scientist for…reasons). Pamela Stephenson’s Dr. Coyle has a speech impediment and likes getting laid. While I know the sex with a ghost thing has been done in seriousness and parodies for a long time, this does seem like a precursor to that scene in SCARY MOVIE 2 with Tori Spelling. Though I don’t think the Wayans watched this for research.

The rest are so barely sketched out, it’s an insult to paper to call their characters “paper thin”.

Two of the researchers are gay, one is an alcoholic, one is CARRIE but doesn’t actually use her powers or anything, one man has personal amnesia and giant birthmark on his arm all to set up a completely shitty prop joke involving a mole, and the final lady is a former prostitute. Shouldn’t one be from the church? Or a psychic? Or something?

Part of this also feels like a weird precursor to John Carpenter’s PRINCE OF DARKNESS where it’s just a bunch of skeptics that have ill-defined expertises in scientific equipment (though in Carpenter’s film they actually do have specific abilities…AND personalities!). There’s no send up of characters like Roddy McDowall from HELL HOUSE or Zelda Rubinstein from POLTERGEIST. They are all certain that ghosts don’t exist when they descend upon this cursed location where lots of horrible murders happen, surrounded by a bunch of occult symbols. Again, it’s not like you want tons of complex backstory or anything, but by setting up clear roles for each, writers can then tailor jokes to play off those expectations and scenarios in which such a person would find themselves. This seems pretty basic a concept.

Vincent Price is great though. Only in it for five scenes and in two of them he makes homophobic jokes. But still. Hearing Price tell an older lady to “piss off!” is pretty sweet. And it’s impressive that the consummate professional still brought his A-game to what was probably a one or two day job for very little money. The venerable actor seems like he’s genuinely having fun playing an immortal servant of the devil and it’s a shame he isn’t in the movie more. He shines the brightest because, well, he’s Vincent Price. But also he has a clearly defined character with clear goals, and those create an expectation of how such a diabolical villain should act…which is where comedy comes in when he doesn’t act in such a manner. It’s legitimately not hard to make this work, and yet BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH snatches defeat from the jaws of victory at every chance it can get.

Another odd thing about BLOODBATH is how often the little comedy elements are off, like timing, editing, and so forth.

For example, there’s a send-up of ALIEN at dinner, with Mandeville’s stomach pulsating out of control…but it’s only done twice and then he burps. Rule of three, people! Or there’s multiple scenes that should be edited down with just blank silence as people leave or enter a room. Part of that is nice to see as films made before the ‘90s took their time to establish physical environments.

But it becomes so bizarre in places that it feels like padding the runtime. The joke is never a prolonged moment where it’s awkward, then funny, then awkward again, and back to hilarious; it’s just waiting for a cut. For people trained in comedy with the much faster-paced world of television, it’s an odd place to fumble so poorly. Perhaps it was a way of rebelling against the acceleration of attention spans with the MTV cutting that was on the rise across the board? Who knows.

BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH starts off strong with a great montage of murder and some classic horror comedy spoof jokes (like corpses in weird positions, first person POV getting hit in the face, your meat ‘n’ potatoes of these types of films). There’s the ringer in Price who nails it and while the other cast members don’t have much to do, it’s clear they were game for all sorts of fun chicanery. Director Ray Cameron works well with cinematographers Dusty Miller and Brian West to replicate those haunted house tales, with a just dab of folk horror and a pinch of psychedelic satanic panic films of the late ‘70s. But the lack of solid jokes and preponderance of shapeless characters sinks BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH so quickly that it becomes an honest to goodness chore to get through.

And the ending is greeted with a ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW nod alongside a joke/reference to E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL.

The moral of the story may be that some things should stay as fuzzy memories haunting the corridors of your mind rather than to resurrect them and see what lies beneath. Or, put a better way—“sometimes dead is better.”