The House That Screamed (1969)

AKA: La Residencia

Director: Narciso Ibanez Serrador

Writers: Narciso Ibanez Serrador, Juan Tebar

Composer: Waldo de los Rios

Starring: Lilli Palmer and lots of young pubescent girls you've never heard of

More Info: IMDB

Tagline: One By One They Will Die!

Plot: Mme. Fourneau (Palmer) owns and runs a school for troubled girls in France (around 1900). Her absolute discipline has fostered a social order among the girls with rampant sex, lesbianism and torture the norm. Fourneau also has an adolescent son that she tries to keep isolated from the young women lest he be tainted by sexual relations. Meanwhile, girls are "running away" (murdered) one by one, with their corpses and any evidence of their outcome not to be found.

My Rating: 7/10
Would I watch it again? Only for the throat-cutting scene to the end (about 15 min)

This creeped along very slowly but with reason. Much like the slow twisting of a rubber band you feel something is happening but don't realize it until you've gone past the point-of-no-return. At that point you're committed to the rest of the film until finally the rubber band snaps. Tension builds and it makes you feel slightly on edge. This is the result of the slow, deliberate pacing of the director. This guy's good. More on that later. The kills are good and suspenseful but don't look for a lot of them or for any real gore. It's the build-up and execution that grab you.

There's one in particular that I ended up going back and watching many times, each time I had the same cringing reaction. It's dark. A hand reaches from behind a girl and pulls her head back, all the while the music builds to a crescendo like in every other horror movie. You now expect this to be just like every other horror movie when it comes to this type of kill. Music builds. The knife is pulled, shown with the blade resting on the girl's tender neck. A quick close-up of the knife/neck at the very abrupt cut-off of the music. Silence as the shot is frozen for a second or two with a single frame of film. Now there's the slow PAINFUL motion of the knife cutting her neck as you hear only the cutting of the skin and the muted gargling of her soft-spoken scream. No music. I squirmed like Madonna at an ethics hearing. It's an extremely powerful image that will linger with me for years. If I should ever make a film, this scene will be in it and a story built around it. It's THAT good. I later discovered the director was also responsible for one of my favorite horror films, WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? (1976). I'll be watching that one again this month. It's chilling and it's the best I've seen of that type of horror.

The score is good and effective for the most part. When it works, it really works well and when it doesn't? Well, it's much too much. The little twist at the end is pretty good. Overall, it's a very good film. My only complaint, really, is it's a bit too slow even though it's in the slow pacing that builds you up to the film's climax. Giggity. And I really appreciate that.

Oh, for those of you who are wondering about the boob quotient? There's a shower scene, alright, but a women-in-prison shower scene it ain't.