House of the Long Shadows (1983)

Pete Walker's final film as director, featuring the icons of horror that are Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, John Carradine and (yes) Sheila Keith, gets a new Blu-ray and DVD release from Fabulous Films.

Getting all those elements together might have seemed a bit daunting for even the most capable of producers. Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus of the Cannon Group didn't exactly have a track record for producing quality cinema at the time, but they were very good at the one thing producers need to be - separating investors from their money. Unfortunately on the whole the films they produced made vast losses due to Cannon's uncanny ability to give the public pretty much what it didn’t really want on a regular basis - at least until all those investors realised what was going on.

And that’s one of the problems with HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS. It’s an old dark house thriller. Unfortunately this kind of picture went out of fashion in the early 1940s and never came back. Sadly Walker’s proposed project to Cannon about a murderous aborted foetus back from the dead and looking for revenge was rejected by Golan in favour of a ‘proper horror film’. Writing these words I’m even sadder now than when I learned of the project that DELIVER US FROM EVIL (what a great title)  that was also due to be written by Armstrong never reached the screen. Instead we have HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS, written very quickly by Armstrong apparently in two weeks and unfortunately it does show, sadly taking ages to get going.  

Once it does, and the old horror stars are reassembled, each after having their own superb visual introduction, the film is a delight. In the last half an hour or so there are some well-orchestrated nasty murders and you can tell that this is where Walker’s heart is. Sadly the opening half, documenting writer Arnaz’s bet with publisher Richard Todd (presumably driving Walker’s trademark Rolls Royce at the beginning) that he can write a great gothic novel in the tradition of Wuthering Heights isn’t just slow but rambling and uninspired as well. Only Norman Rossington as a deliciously melodramatic Welsh railway station master is worth watching or listening to, and Arnaz and Julie Peasgood as the young leads just don’t have the charisma of the stars of 1930s vehicles such as Barbara Stanwyck or Dick Powell.

One can’t be too hard on HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS, though, as it’s a film that by rights shouldn’t even have existed in the Jason Voorhees / Michael Myers dominated horror cinema of the early 1980s. The leads are an absolute joy, with Vincent Price getting to do what he was always best at (and getting to call Christopher Lee a bitch which must be a cinematic once and only), Mr Lee doing his very best arrogant and slightly miffed fish out of water bit, Cushing playing around with one of his ‘weak character’ roles - a bit like CREEPING FLESH’s Emmanuel Hildern but without the brains or reckless abandon, and John Carradine doing a nice job of being the slightly incensed elderly master of the house. Sheila Keith is just wonderful as well and her performance here only makes it all the more regrettable that this was to be her last appearance in a horror subject until the Amicus spoof episode of Steve Coogan’s Dr Terrible’s House of Horrible (And Now The Fearing). The bit players aren’t bad either, with Benny Hill regular Louise English as the pretty girl who gets her face burned off by acid and Richard Hunter in the typical Walker male role of henpecked weakling of husband.

Even Richard Hartley does a creditable job trying to sound like Walker’s regular composer Stanley Myers doing haunted house music, and the location itself is nicely spooky. Apparently the house belonged to a friend of FLESH & BLOOD SHOW screenwriter Alfred Shaughnessy.

Fabulous Films' print looks about the same as the Final Cut version from a few years ago (although obviously Blu-ray does help it to make the image look a bit cleaner). Extras include Derek Pykett's feature-length documentary House of the Long Shadows - Revisited, which here is a little bit longer that the previous release. The commentary track with Pykett and Pete Walker has been ported over, and you also get a brand new featurette - Pete Walker's House of Horror which is a new interview with the director that lasts about fifteen minutes. Let's have a trailer, shall we?

Pete Walker's HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS is out from Fabulous Films on Blu-ray and DVD on Monday 28th March 2022