CRRRRS 549 Hammer House of Horror:

By Roy Mathur, on 2024-07-26, at 22:49:59 to 23:14:24 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show

Welcome Back to the Last Three

Tonight: Visitor from the Grave, tomorrow: The Two Faces of Evil, and Sunday: The Mark of Satan.

Production

Notable Cast: Penny: Kathryn Leigh Scott, Policeman/Gupta Krishna: Gareth Thomas, Harry: Simon MacCorkindale; The Sword and the Sorcerer, Margaret: Mia Nadasi, Charlie Willoughby: Stanley Lebor; various villains
Director: Peter Sasdy; The Thirteenth Reunion, Rude Awakening, The Stone Tape, Taste the Blood of Dracula, Countess Dracula, Hands of the Ripper
Writer: John Elder AKA Tony Hinds, real name Anthony Frank Hinds, son of Hammer founder William Hinds. Producer: Journey to the Unknown, The Lost Continent, writer: unproduced The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula
Producer: Roy Skeggs; ex-Hammer Films, formed spin-off Cinema Arts, returned to Hammer, moved production to Buckinghamshire and created Hammer House of Horror
Locations: 1980 in and around Buckinghamshire. Penny and Harry's house is in Great Hampden, the village where Penny sees Charles Willoughby in his Range Rover is High Street, Chalfont St Giles, and Penny sees a poster of a temple over water with turbaned men in the foreground in the travel agent at Packhorse Road, Gerrard's Cross
Production: Hammer Films, Cinema Arts, and ITC Entertainment
Distribution: ITV
Music: The memorable theme music was composed by ex-Jazz pianist Roger Webb.
Broadcast: Episode 11 of 13, first broadcast 22 November 1980, c. 54 minute running time (c. 1 hr inc. ads), following Guardian of the Abyss (pod 548)
Media: DVD Hammer House of Horror: The Complete Collection (2002), Blu-ray Hammer House of Horror: The Complete Series (2017) is worth buying because the series was shot on 35 mm film, ITVX in the UK (2023), Apple TV

Zeitgeist

Echo and the Bunnymen are on the cover on NME, Peter Shilton on the cover of Shoot, and Blondie's The Tide is High is still the UK no. 1.

Story

When Charles Willoughby attempts to rape Penny in a remote cottage, she lets him have it in the face with both barrels of a shotgun. When her husband Harry returns, he convinces her that they should cover up the killing because of her mental condition and the unlicensed gun. He buries Willoughby in the woods, drives his Range Rover into the lake, into which he also throws the spent shotgun cartridges. He is later questioned by a policeman because of an argument with Willoughby prior to his disappearance.

Penny starts seeing Willoughby and after a meeting Harry's friend, the psychic Margaret, is confronted by his vengeful spirit. Margaret says only renowned psychic Gupta Krishna can help, but it will cost her 150,000 grand.

At the seance, Krishna summons the angry vengeful Willoughby, Penny flees and shoots herself. Gupta takes off his disguise and reveals himself to be the policeman who interrogated Harry, Willoughby is also alive and in on the game, and, together with Harry and Margaret, they celebrate their successful con's cash windfall. Suddenly Penny's apparition appears demanding vengeance and the money burns.

Thoughts

Brian Croucher (Travis 2), Paul Darrow (Avon), and now Gareth Thomas (Blake), though seeing Gareth Thomas doing a comedy Indian accent after pulling off his beard made me hate him a little bit. Yes, he's an only an actor playing an awful character, but the role left a little loathsome residue on a Blake's 7 actor I like.

Mystical Margaret's intuition that Penny is upset is hardly a feat of incredible psychic power, and even less so when we discover she's in on the scheme.

Live maggots crawling over Willoughby's facial wound, when he is dug up by Harry, was a nice touch.

A rich, vulnerable American woman with a gold digging posh English husband and his vile team of grifters makes Merry Olde Englande look incredibly hostile from our protagonist's point of view. I hope Penny's shade gets the vengeance she deserves.

Trivia

The poster Penny sees in the travel agent is of the Sikh's Golden Temple of Amritsar in India.

Next

Even more Hammer House of Horror.