Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.
Anthology films don’t always work. The biggest problem with them is that they often tend to be uneven. Many a horror anthology (and let’s be honest here—most anthologies are horror anthologies) has an excellent example or two and a few others that are simply marking time. Even in a case where most of the stories are good (like Creepshow), there’s still a definite hierarchy, meaning that a rewatch is going to be filled with different moments of excitement for the good parts and dealing with the weaker parts. The House that Dripped Blood is an anthology film that manages to avoid a lot of the problems of the style. There are only four stories, allowing each of them some space to play out without any of them overstaying their welcome.
The framing story here helps as well. A police detective named Holloway (John Bennett) is investigating the disappearance of an actor who has rented an old house. When the inspector starts investigating, he discovers that the three occupants of the house before the actor have also had unique, tragic, and deadly occurrences in the house. The film, then, is a trip through these four stories in chronological order. We meet, from start to finish, a writer (Denholm Elliott) obsessed with a murderer he has created for a new book; A retired man (Peter Cushing) entranced by an image of an old love found in a wax museum; a man (Christopher Lee) who seems abusive toward his young daughter but may have reasons to fear her; and finally a horror movie actor (Jon Pertwee) who gets a little more than he bargained for with the purchase of an old cloak.
