Season appraisal

southdavid

Having ploughed through "Beasts" and most of "The Frighteners" series, I was looking for another anthology horror series to kick on with and what could be better than "Hammer House of Horror" - trading of the classic UK studio name, with a series of sometimes gory, sometimes scary, sometimes sexy stories. You can find my review of each episode on its page.

The episodes are, it's fair to say, a mixed bag. There are some high spots, such as fantasy horror "Rude Awakening" and "The House That Bled to Death". But there are also some real clunkers, such as "Growing Pains" and "The Mark of Satan". The budget for each episode is not extraordinarily high, so you can see several locations reused across the run, and repeated use of driving stunts, by the one stuntman they had. There is, however, a lot of talent on the screen. James Cosmo, Denholm Elliott, Peter Cushing, Brian Cox, Diana Dors and Georgina Hale all make appearances.

It's hard to judge the horror aspects of these on their merits 40 years later - but I'll say that looking back on the series, there's only the horror of one episode that has made much of a lasting impression on me. I'd be hard pushed to tell you what some of them were about, despite having watched them all within the last month or so.

Unless you're a real completest, like I unfortunately am, I'd say that you use Youtube to watch "The Silent Scream" then if you're really curious "Rude Awakenings" and "The House That Bled to Death" and ignore the rest, they're generally not worth your time investment.

score 6/10

southdavid 9 September 2020

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw6078355/