House of the Damned

(1963) **1/2

Architect Scott Campbell obtains some much needed work and is delighted when he is asked to survey a remote, sprawling castle on the edge of a California hillside. As is often the case in these movies, this large piece of real estate comes with a sordid past. Campbell learns that a wealthy eccentric woman, Priscilla Rochester, who built the castle”, was committed to an asylum after an “incident”. The “incident” we later learn involved Priscilla “blasting the head” off a homeless man who had stumbled onto her property. Campbell is also informed that Priscilla occasionally escapes the asylum to return to her castle.


I’m crazy!

Campbell also learns that, following Priscilla’s psychiatric hospitalization, the castle had been leased to clandestine Captain Arbuckle, who made his fortune in “tent shows”. When his lease expired he left without ever turning in his keys. Initially the magnificent castle awes Campbell and his wife Nancy. When not helping Campbell with his architectural measurements, Nancy spends her days sunning by the pool and making lunch. This respite is soon disrupted when strange things begin occurring. A statue falls over shattering in the garden, keys disappear and later reappear, and a strange “creature” seems to be wandering the grounds. In the midst of these peculiar events, their friends Joseph and Loy Schiller, who were previously invited by Campbell to hang out in the castle for the week, join Campbell and Nancy. Tension mounts when in addition to all the strange happenings going on, Loy disappears following a feud with her husband. Just what is going on here? Could it be that crazy old Priscilla has once again escaped the asylum? Perhaps Captain Arbuckle never really left? Just as the tension and creepiness really get going, there is a big reveal and the film ends.

Spoilers ahead.


Hey look, it’s me Jaws! Someday I’m going to beat the crap out of James Bond before falling in love with a nerdy girl in Moonraker.

As it turns out Captain Arbuckle (“tent shows” guy) fled the castle when his lease ran out, leaving behind the above-pictured circus performers (You might recognize at least one of them from Todd Browning’s 1932 "Freaks"). The motley crew did not wish to harm anyone; they were just protecting the only home they had. In a “Gee-whiz mister, we didn’t mean ya no harm, we’ll get out of your hair” kind of statement, the Americans with disabilities go upstairs to pack up their belongings assuring themselves that they’ll find another place to live. The End.



This film, which was chugging along nicely with the right mix of creepy events and shadowy figures drenched in sumptuous atmosphere, has such a sudden and awkward finish that I actually stared at the screen for a moment before bellowing, “That’s it?! You’ve got to be goddamn kidding me!” to which Whirlygirl poked her head out of another room and said, “What’s the matter?” House of the Damned is a damn fine time for 60 minutes. At 63 minutes the end credits roll. I haven’t been this disappointed in a movie this much since it slowly dawned on me that Jar Jar Binks was going to be in more than one scene in The Phantom Menace.