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1974 - USA Directed By: Ron Honthaler. Starring: Victor French, Janee Michelle, Jean Durand, Mike Evans, Xernona Clayton, Lloyd Nelson, Ella Woods, Mary J. Todd McKenzie, Don Devendorf and Jo Marie.
Current Availability
Currently availability on US R1 DVD from Twentieth Century Fox as part of their revival of MGM's much loved "Midnite Movies" DVD range. This US R1 release is a 2-disc horror double bill which pairs The House On Skull Mountain up with Paul Wendkos' criminally underrated 1971 possession chiller The Mephisto Waltz. While the double bill contains nothing in the way of extras the widescreen presentation quality of both films is excellent making this value for money release a good buy for anyone interested in seeing either of these rather obscure seventies chillers.
Recommended?
Not really. Whilst competently made The House On Skull Mountain is a lackluster blaxploitation flavored revival of the age old Ten Little Indians style setup in which relatives assembled for a will reading are killed off one by one. The narrative, characterisation and performances all fail to engage the viewers interest and the feeble, tame scare tactics on display are totally ineffective by seventies standards making The House On Skull Mountain a completely mundane affair.
Review (Contains Spoilers)
It’s safe to say that the early seventies was an exciting time for the American horror picture. Indeed, the first few years of the decade alone saw the release of several classics which played an integral part in changing popular attitudes towards screen horror. Firstly William Friedkin’s The Exorcist shocked audiences worldwide to the core and soon became the most commercially successful horror film ever released. Meanwhile young Texan filmmaker Tobe Hooper’s low budget independent effort The Texas Chain Saw Massacre became an unexpected sensation, quickly achieving widespread notoriety and cult classic status. The success of Friedkin and Hooper’s indisputable genre classics soon spawned a thousand imitators as the harder edge and in your face attitude they (in part) introduced to mainstream horror cinema soon became the norm.
However, despite this sudden and dramatic change in audience perceptions as to what constituted “horror”, there were still a few American genre pictures released during the seventies which clung to the by then outdated Old Dark House clichés and mild, mechanical fright tactics which had prospered decades earlier. One of the most notable of these defiantly old fashioned horror pictures would have to be Ron Honthaner’s low budget effort The House On Skull Mountain. An obvious attempt to rehash the age old Ten Little Indians setup with a few token concession to the then burgeoning blaxploitation movement, The House On Skull Mountain – despite the backing of studio giants Twentieth Century Fox – was not a particular success and soon drifted into comparative obscurity.
The House On Skull Mountain begins with wealthy yet elderly black spinster Pauline Christophe (Todd McKenzie) dying after a long period of ill health. Following her death her four surviving great grandchildren and potential heirs to her fortune gather at her remote mountaintop mansion to pay their last respects and attend the reading of her will. Her four heirs are vivacious and level headed Lorena (Michelle), rude and brash Phillippe (Evans), mild-mannered Harriet (Clayton) and doctor of anthropology Dr Andrew Cunningham (French) who unlike the rest of the family happens to be white. The four heirs are all somewhat put out when the late Pauline Christophe’s solicitor informs them that they must all spend a week at the house before the contents of his deceased clients last will and testament can be disclosed.
Sure enough the four heirs are soon plunged into a murderous and terrifying mystery as it is soon discovered at their great grandmother and the rest of the Christophe bloodline are descendents of the infamous King Henry I of Haiti who was allegedly a master of the art of voodoo. Soon the heirs begin to die one by one in mysterious circumstances as it soon becomes apparent that someone in the house is utilising the dark powers of voodoo to kill those set to inherit the Christophe fortune.
Over the years The House On Skull Mountain has suffered from a rather bad reputation amongst those who have bothered taking the time to seek it out and has been widely dismissed by most horror buffs as an ineffective and deservedly obscure attempt to tart up a collection of dated motifs in a seventies exploitation wrapping. Viewing The House On Skull Mountain now in retrospect it really must be said that it is very hard not to concur with this consensus. The central premise of estranged relatives gathering for the will reading of a recently deceased relative only to be killed off one person at a time in Ten Little Indians fashion has of course been seen countless times of before. Needless to say this archaic setup was horribly behind the times by the standards of 1974 and in that respect it is hard to see why The House On Skull Mountain failed to make any real impact from a commercial standpoint. In fairness a half-hearted attempt is made to update the Ten Little Indians by fashioning tenuous links to the then burgeoning blaxploitation movement via a predominantly black cast and strong overtones of voodoo. In that respect it could be said that The House On Skull Mountain owes a measure of debt to William Craine’s cult classic Blacula (1972) which just a couple of years earlier breathed new life into the Dracula formula by filtering its familiar tale through blaxploitation and soul cinema perspectives. However, whereas Blacula was genuinely fresh in its approach and true to itself, The House On Skull Mountain by contrast uses blaxploitation trappings as a lazy smokescreen in an attempt to cover up the fact that it rehashes some of the most over familiar horror clichés going.
Ron Honthaner’s direction is competent throughout yet slavishly workmanlike and devoid of any real enthusiasm. As a result The House On Skull Mountain plods along in a tolerable yet uninspired fashion as we are introduced to the assembled protagonists and the “reading of the will” premise is established. In all honesty The House On Skull Mountain – for the first forty minutes at least – looks as if it is set to develop into a predictable whodunit. However, once the requisite “mysterious deaths” begin, the film soon paddles its way into more familiar horror movie waters. Unfortunately this is where the film downfall begins in earnest as it soon becomes painfully obvious that all The House On Skull Mountain has to offer is a rather sorry and curiously disconnected array of dated, heavily clichéd scare tactics which the viewer has in all likelihood seen done better many times before. Indeed, a heavy sense of déjà vu soon sets in as hokey fake lightning flashes away outside and the vaguely sinister servants act shifty, apprehensive and fearful for no discernible reason. While this could be forgiven or even embraced if The House On Skull Mountain had any substantial scares in store for us, unfortunately quite the opposite is true and the sort of silly, tame visual tricks and hackneyed fright tactics on display here will in all likelihood fail to unnerve even the most nervous of viewers. Protagonists are soon being menaced by cheesy and ridiculous looking flashing skulls which materialise out of thin air, while equally feeble looking cowl wearing skeletons loom in through the windows. The addition of several scenes in which unfortunate protagonists are bitten or slithered over by snakes offers something a little more tangible, but even these moments are so flatly executed that they are ultimately unlikely to unsettle anyone apart from those with the most acute fear of our serpentine friends. In truth the only moment The House On Skull Mountain possesses which could be considered effective comes in the films first few minutes. As she nears the Christophe residence Lorena stops her car and gets out in order to view the property from a distance. While the image of the house stood upon a mountain the face of which has been weathered into the resemblance of a leering skull is obviously achieved through clever miniature work this early incidental shot evokes a pleasant sense of foreboding that the film subsequently fails to live up to.
Taking into consideration the manner in which The House On Skull Mountain leans towards age old horror clichés, logically speaking it becomes a predictable certainty given the ethnicity of the films protagonists, that the solution to all the mysterious deaths taking place lies within the shadowy world of voodoo. While this could potentially have allowed for a slight yet novel twist on the familiar Ten Little Indians premise at the films heart, unfortunately the depiction of voodoo – as with most things in The House On Skull Mountain> – leans too much upon familiar and regularly parodied cinematic clichés to be considered anything other than unconvincing and silly. We soon find ourselves in a very familiar territory indeed as the maddening thrum of the bongo drum swells up on the soundtrack, black extras babble lots of unintelligible crap, venomous snakes start turning up everywhere and each death is preceded by the sight of pins being driven into crude looking dolls. These familiar elements pave the way for a painfully over-extended voodoo ceremony that drags on for what feels like an age.
The House On Skull Mountain is also let down somewhat by its predominantly black cast which features several recognizable faces from American television who largely fail to inject any energy into the proceedings. In particular Janee Michelle as Lorena makes for a painfully inadequate leading lady with her stony faced reactions and humourless disposition making her a totally unsympathetic heroine who fails to engage any interest. The rest of the cast struggle due to lackluster characterisation although moustachioed former stuntman Victor French does succeed in playing his role as Pauline Christophe’s long lost and mysteriously white great grandchild Dr Andrew Cunningham with a semblance of conviction. The only real standout however, amongst this uninspired cast is Mike Evans who had already achieved American television stardom by this point in his career via roles in the hit sitcom All In The Family and its equally popular spin-off series The Jeffersons. Evans is on good form here as Lorena’s brash and sarcastic cousin Philippe who is rather predictably the first person to be killed off leaving The House On Skull Mountain all the poorer for the early loss of its only truly engaging protagonist.
In all fairness despite the largely negative tone of this review, it should be pointed out that there have been worse treatments of the same core theme over the years. However, that doesn’t alter the inescapable fact that The House On Skull Mountain, whilst fairly inoffensive and competently made, is still a totally mundane, unengaging and unremarkable effort. At times The House On Skull Mountain is so flat that rather than a conventional horror film it instead resembles a predictable and uninspiring mystery with the tacked on elements of voodooism and horror cliché. Made at a time when satanic possession, chainsaw wielding lunatics and lip smacking gore were rapidly becoming the norm, the mild, bloodless and predictable PG rated scare tactics on display here just completely fail to cut the mustard. It is also perhaps rather ironic that most of the creaky old chillers which clearly furnished The House On Skull Mountain with much of its inspiration, viewed now in retrospect have actually aged far more gracefully. Indeed, The House On The Skull Mountain quickly begins floundering as the outdated Ten Little Indians setup is quickly dusted down then dragged kicking and screaming into a chalk and cheese union with mild seventies exploitation trappings. The result is a bearable but at the same time mostly ineffective and often rather dull imitation of a horror film that makes for a totally forgettable viewing experience.
Also Try… The Cat And The Canary (1979, Radley Metzger) / House Of The Long Shadows / Legacy Of Blood (1978, Andy Milligan) / Blacula / Scream Blacula Scream / Blackenstein / Dr Black, Mr Hyde.
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