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Greetings, and welcome to VIEWING THE CLASSICS. Here you'll find capsule reviews of vintage movies from the early days of cinema through the 1970s, with a special emphasis on sci-fi, horror, and mystery movies. Be sure to check out the Pages links, where you can find a Film Index of all my reviews, links to the reviews organized by cast members, directors, and other contributors, and links to my reviews of the films of talented young director Joshua Kennedy.

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Wednesday, August 21, 2013

The Haunted House Of Horror (1969)

Starring Frankie Avalon, Jill Haworth, Dennis Price, Mark Wynter, George Sewell
Directed by Michael Armstrong
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A group of partying teenagers decide to visit a haunted house for some fun, but one of them ends up murdered, and the rest suspect the killer could be one of them.

Despite the title, this is more of a murder mystery than a supernatural thriller, and there's few attempts by the filmmakers to make the haunted house spooky or terrifying, although they should be given credit for sustaining suspense as to the murderer's identity until the film's climax.  Once we reach it, there's an effective confrontation shot between the two final suspects in which the murder weapon appears between the two, but it's not clear who's holding it, before the big reveal.  The young British cast is good, although Avalon seems an odd fit with the rest of them, but is likely in the movie with an eye towards making a profit at the U.S. box office.

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