(1980)
Dir - Tom Clegg
Overall: MEH
One of many supernatural tales that takes its inspiration from The Amityville Horror, "The House That Bled to Death" is one of the few that touches upon the hoax aspect of the actual case, one that was perpetrated and embellished by author Jay Anson and proven hucksters Ed and Lorraine Warren. While this gives the Hammer House of Horror segment a differentiating quality from just anther haunted house yarn, David Lloyd's script easily falls apart under even the most minute scrutiny. It is a disappointing twist in any respect, revealing icky people doing icky things and traumatizing their own child in the process. If one can forgive the narrative shortcomings, lack of likeable characters, and stock nature of the material, there are a few fiendish set pieces to enjoy, namely a birthday part that goes straight to hell via bloody water pipes.
(1980)
Dir - Robert Young
Overall: MEH
Five years after Dan Curtis' seminal Trilogy of Terror found Karen Black fending for her life against a cartoonishly creepy Zuni fetish doll, the Hammer House of Horror installment "Charlie Boy" presents yet another small screen foray into an African idol on the loose. This one pulls off more of a drawn-out string of unfortunate events instead of just going full tiny slasher mode. Leigh Lawson gets his hand on said mystical antique which as it turns out is possessed by a no-good sorcerer, and in a fit of rage against some people who he felt wronged him, he stabs the thing, the thing bleeds, and one-by-one people start getting picked off by elaborate means. The plot follows a framework that is easy to foretell and there are odd musical choices made along the way that disastrously dilute any sense of proper atmosphere, but both the aforementioned doll and the basic premise are unsettling, plus the death sequences have some ghastly charm to them.
(1980)
Dir - Alan Gibson
Overall: GOOD
Notable for being the last Hammer production that Peter Cushing would ever appear in, "The Silent Scream" is one of the more ghastly entries in the Hammer House of Horror program. Cushing of course is wonderful and ideally cast as an elderly pet shop owner that is not entirely what he seems, even when we are shown that he likes to keep a collection of exotic pets surrounded by electric gates. A spry Brian Cox is also on board as a recently released petty criminal, and Francis Essex' script takes some foreseeable turns that nevertheless remain intentionally unpleasant. It is a torture porn precursor of sorts, but it is done in a non-graphic, television friendly manner that pulls off a nifty trick of having an ending where justice is served yet everybody still loses and loses hard. Despite its unpleasantness and some sequences that will not please animal lovers, it achieves its objective to disturb, plus Cushing fans would be doing themselves a disservice to miss the beloved actor in one of his final horror forays.
(1980)
Dir - Tom Clegg
Overall: MEH
With a title like "Children of the Full Moon" in a program like Hammer House of Horror, one can accurately guess that werewolves will be afoot. That said, Murray Smith's script does some singular things with such obligatory monsters, even going so far as to have a rug-pull midway through where we are made to believe that what we had previously witnessed was merely an acute nightmare. Besides that narrative cliche, we also get the ole gag of a couple's car breaking down, them huffing it up to a spacious and isolated mansion to use the phone, said phone not working, the person living there being disturbingly chipper, and other curious hints that something odd is going down. As far as actual lycanthropian shenanigans, they are few and far between, plus the scant makeup shots are hardly up to par with Hammer's The Curse of the Werewolf from nearly two decades prior. It gets by to a point on its inventiveness, but it is still an unremarkable production overall.
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