Review of House of the Long Shadows (1983) by Michael T — 29 Apr 2012
In 1983 four of the aging icons of horror films appeared in a horror-comedy film that had absolutely nothing to do with a guy wearing a goalie's mask killing horny teenagers. John Carradine's roots in the genre went back to the 1940s and Universal's House of Frankenstein.
Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee were both huge stars in the genre thanks to their work at England's Hammer studios on films like The Curse Of Frankenstein and The Horror Of Dracula starting in the late 1950s, and Vincent Price had been AIP's answer to Cushing and Lee in The Fall Of The House Of Usher and other gothic horrors.
The careers of all these men had declined in the post-Night Of The Living Dead horror cinema but director Pete Walker decided to bring them all together in this rather old-fashioned "old dark house" horror film.
Long unavailable on VHS, the film was released as part of MGM's "Special Limited Edition" DVD series. You ordered the copy from Amazon.Com and MGM printed up one for you. Now the film is very predictable, variations of this movie's plot have shown up in countless movies and TV shows and sometimes I half expected Scooby, Shaggy, and the rest of the gang to show up in the Mystery Machine.
Though Carradine, Cushing, Lee, Price and veteran character actress Sheila Keith do a stand-up job (granted, Price was playing himself but no one else could do that as well as he could) the younger members of the cast are less convincing.
Its not surprising that Desi Arnaz Jr.'s acting career was short-lived. Still, it was a fun movie if you are a genre fan.
This review of House of the Long Shadows (1983) was written by Michael T on 29 Apr 2012.
House of the Long Shadows has generally received mixed reviews.
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