The House in Nightmare Park (1973)

It can be somewhat confusing to try to pigeon-hole The House in Nightmare Park. It is ostensibly a horror-comedy--the presence of the great Frankie Howerd telegraphing this loud and clear--but for anyone familiar with Howerd's work, the humour in Nightmare is surprisingly dark. This means the horror receives more accentuation than one might expect. In fact, the film is quite effective as a Gothic horror, borrowing liberally from old dark house mysteries and gialli/slashers (there is a reference to Psycho that's hard to miss).

Frankie Howerd plays Foster Twelvetrees, a music-hall dramatic reader short on luck and talent. Enter Ray Milland as Stewart Henderson, who invites the uncouth moron Twelvetrees to his country mansion as evening entertainment for the whole Henderson family.

The longer Twelvetrees remains in the mansion, the more he discovers that he is at the center of a plot--or several plots--concocted by the thoroughly mad Henderson family, a family of former British-Indian child performers who worship Kali, Goddess of Destruction.

Most of the overt humour of the film derives from how stupid and uninhibited Twelvetrees is and from his animosity with Reginald Henderson. These jokes tend to be hit-and-miss. Some sly references to other horror films should get some laughs from fans. And there is a strain of dark humour as well that does tend to work.

As a horror film, it works much better. Director Peter Sykes is best known perhaps for To the Devil...a Daughter, but has also directed a few other horror films. It by far dominates his oeuvre. Once the action starts, Sykes darkens the house to murk, floods the outdoors with fog, and lets loose on well-paced murders. A snake-pit sequence is particularly suspenseful, despite Howerd's goofiness.

Perhaps the most peculiar thing about Sykes' direction is how visible it is. There are at least a dozen dutch tilts used throughout the film, not to mention some unusual camera angles and even more unusual edits--the most conspicuous of which is a lightning sequence and a dinner-table sequence the breaks the 180-degree rule.

So The House in Nightmare Park is not an unsung masterpiece, though it is quite a good film. It is one that will certainly be appreciated by horror fans, as it is clearly made by someone in the know, bringing a feeling both of Italian Gothic horror (Margheriti) Hammer horror (Fisher) at once. Also, Frankie Howerd fans won't want to miss this; he and Milland deliver great performances.

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To top off this review, here's a clip from a truly bizarre and hilarious sequence from the film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JH2pK07vTE
You've never seen Ray Milland like this before.