Ron Foster ("Private Lessons") and Merry Anders ("Women of the Prehistoric Planet") play Scott and Nancy Campbell, a married couple hired by their friend, a lawyer named Joe Schiller (Richard Crane, "The Alligator People"), to do an architectural survey on a country estate. Soon after they arrive, they experience some strange, moderately disconcerting experiences. Knowing full well that the old crone (Georgia Schmidt) who owned the place (who's now confined to an institution) would have loathed police interference, they attempt to do their own sleuthing.This fairly lightweight, routine "old dark house" type horror film ultimately doesn't deliver much in the way of actual horror. It's certainly well made, with some excellent black & white cinematography and camera work. (The Cinema Scope aspect ratio of 2.35:1 does help a lot.) The performances are all quite engaging and the script by Harry Spalding ("Chosen Survivors") features some mildly amusing lines. The "castle" itself is an appropriate setting, adding to the atmosphere that producer & director Maury Dexter ("The Mini-Skirt Mob", "Hell's Belles") is able to create.Foster and Anders make for a personable main couple, with fine support from Crane, Erika Peters ("The Atomic Brain", "Mr. Sardonicus") and the prolific Dal McKennon ('Daniel Boone', "Lady and the Tramp"). A very young Richard Kiel ("Eegah", "The Spy Who Loved Me") makes an appearance as a mute giant."House of the Damned" is watchable enough, but it never does live up to that title.Six out of 10.

House of the Damned is only an hour long, but somehow it manages to make that hour feel like about five hours and also manages one of the most spectacularly bad endings that I have ever seen. The plot is just your average haunted house premise, and sees an architect and his wife go to stay in a house that turns out to be haunted. The film actually gets off to a promising start when we are introduced to the characters, but things go downhill once the house itself is introduced; it's just an average place in California. I've come to expect more creepy residences from haunted house films! Once it starts proper, it soon gets very boring also and most of the film is taken up by pointless drama without a scare in sight, which is very boring indeed. To the film's credit, it does look very nice and the crisp black and white picture is easy on the eyes. Nothing really happens during the main bulk of the film and I have to say that I am very glad the film is only an hour long. The ending itself is just unbelievably stupid and makes practically no sense at all. It seems like a desperate attempt by the writer to introduce some shock value, but it doesn't work. Overall, this really is a rubbish film and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

An obscure and rather uneventful but nevertheless atmospheric and effective little chiller which presents us with a new twist on "the old dark house" theme which may ultimately disappoint some viewers. I won't divulge it here for those who may feel inclined to check this one out: I'll just say that it combines elements from two well-known Tod Browning movies - FREAKS (1932) and MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935) - and leave it at that! The plot deals with an architect and his wife having to spend the night in the infamous (and supposedly uninhabited) Rochester castle, who are later joined by the former's boss and his sassy girlfriend. However, before long, things start to go bump in the night: a bunch of keys mysteriously disappear and reappear with a couple of them missing, a few doors are inexplicably forbidden to the house dwellers, the girlfriend disappears after a quarrel with her intended, etc. It all seems to point in the direction of the crazed proprietress of the mansion who is currently spending her days in a mental institution but, eventually, we discover that there are even stranger forces at work here... As I said before, the moody lighting and occasional 'scary' set-pieces are the whole show in this one but, despite the lack of star names, the foursome acquit themselves quite adequately under the circumstances; in the latter stages of the film, Richard "Jaws" Kiel also makes an appearance as an unexpected 'guest' of the Rochester mansion.The low-priced Fox DVD is accompanied by a theatrical trailer which should not be viewed before the main feature as it virtually shows snippets from all the film's best sequences; interestingly, the much brighter trailer enabled me to make out some details which had eluded me during the film itself!

A very mediocre movie that based its story too much on earlier classics like FREAKS and Robert Wise's THE HAUNTED. The acting isn't something to write home about, but at least they tried to give the characters a little background. The first part of the movie suggest more horror then really showing it and at times it works. The last part of the movie ends in such a disappointing way you can't talk about a horror movie anymore and you'll ask yourself what you just have been watching. Real horror fans should avoid this one. Proof? No one dies.