BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH

UK, 1983, 87 minutes, Colour.
Kenny Everett, Pamela Stephenson, Vincent Price, Gareth Hunt, John Fortune.
Directed by Ray Cameron.

Bloodbath at the House of Death is a star vehicle introducing television comedian Kenny Everett. It was written and directed by Ray Cameron, his comedy writer.

The film begins with a mass slaughter in the spoof style. The film seems to want to be a kind of Flying High or Top Secret of horror films. It has some moments and some laughs. However, on the whole, it looks more like the scratch concert and strives for laughs rather than induces audience humour.

Kenny Everett does a take-off of Dr. Strangelove. Pamela Stephenson does an imitation of the repressed blonde, in the style of Not the Nine O'Clock News, and breaks out, of course, into sexiness. Vincent Price is an old horror film icon - and sends himself up. However, contemporary swearing fits uneasily on his lips.

The film is done in the English style, broad humour with some understatement. There are also some film parodies of Carrie (especially with Sheila Steafel), Jaws, walls bleeding like The Shining and an atmosphere of vampires like Salem's Lot. There seems to be an influence of the Stephen King movies.

The film does not achieve nearly as much as it attempts - but it shows the popularity of the multiple mass murder horror film of the 1970s and '80s and how it worked itself out into broad parody.