House of the Damned

I've mentioned on quite a few occasions how Fox distributed a bunch of short B movies during the years that Cleopatra was in production. Many of them were directed by Maury Dexter, and those are generally interesting even if flawed. Another one that's been in the FXM rotation recently is House of the Damned.

Ron Foster plays architect Scott Campbell, who gets a call from his boss Joseph Schiller (Richard Crane). Apparently there's a castle-like home up the California coast that was owned by an old lady who went crazy and has been under lease for years. The lease is up, so would Scott go up to the place and do a survey on it to see if it's suitable for further use? So Scott and his wife Nancy (Merry Anders) jump in their car and go for a spin.

Things seem a bit odd even before they get to the place. They have trouble finding the place where they're supposed to get the keys, and when they're on what they think is the right road, there's a makeshift "dead end" roadblock. But it's the right road, so, having found the castle, they head back to the real estate agent to get the keys. The only thing is, they find that the roadblock they moved has been put back into place!

They get into the castle, and it's one of those big old empty houses where you just know things are going to happen to make the main characters wonder whether or not they're alone. Sure enough, that does happen as, when they're asleep, an unseen hand takes the keyring with all the keys. And when the couple wake up and find the keys, they realize that two of them are missing so there are two rooms they can't get into.

Then Joseph's wife Loy (Erika Peters) shows up. The couple was supposed to show up together, but she went on ahead, foreshadowing that something that never really gets fleshed out is wrong with their marriage. Joseph shows up, but nobody can find Loy. And her car is still out front. What's going on?

House of the Damned is a movie with a reasonably good premise that is ultimately undone somewhat by the fact that as a shortish B movie there's really not a whole lot going on. Some of the sets looked familiar, and when I looked it up on IMDb I found out that my suspicion was confirmed: Filming was done in part at the Greystone Mansion, which director Dexter also used in The Day Mars Invaded Earth.

House of the Damned is available on DVD from Fox's MOD scheme (although I should point out that with the purchase by Disney I have no idea if the MOD scheme will continue, or for how long). Unfortunately, those MOD DVDs always seem to be a bit pricey. This and some of the other Dexter movies really ought to be put in a box set together.