Monday, December 16, 2013

The House that Screamed (1969) (aka La Residencia, The Finishing School)




So, thanks to Stacie Ponder over at Final Girl www.finalgirl.blogspot.com, I've decided to (at least temporarily) resurrect Drinkin' with the Movies. (applause, please!)

The occasion: Stacie has added one of the best horror movies I've seen in recent years to her "Final Girl Film Club." If you don't know her blog or the Film Club, you must go immediately to www.finalgirl.blogspot.com and check them both out. Many, many hours of hilariously written, spot-on reviews and general horror commentary and lists (LISTS!) await you.

So, Stacie has chosen,at least partially at my suggestion, Narciso Ibanez Serrador's underrated 1969 thriller The House that Screamed (aka La Residencia or The Finishing School) as this month's Final Girl Film Club pick. And here's what I've got to say about it:

As an avid horror movie buff, especially of 60s, 70s and 80s European horror, it's easy to feel like maybe I've seen the last really good thing out there. Especially before the wonders of Netflix, YouTube, DailyMotion and bittorrent sites, the hunt for the most obscure, trashy, and just plain weird giallos, Italogothics, Eurozombies and Sleaze with a capital "S" was a Holy Quest. Calling around town, trying to find the video store that carried that one bootleg copy of D'Amato's Porno Holocaust (a really terrible film, btw) or Franco's Bloody Moon (a bit better, but still not quite great) or Argento's 4 Flies on Grey Velvet (awesome!), or alternately, finding indie mail-order websites that specialized in these things was grand adventure. But after years of hunting and hunting and watching and checking these movies off your list, you start to realize how many of them are pretty much crap and deserve to stay undiscovered. Or maybe you're just older now and are naturally gravitating towards more benign pleasures like 70s TV movies of the week (but this is a discussion for another post).

So, what a rare treat it is, now in 2013, to discover one of these obscure films, and realize that it's a goddamn masterpiece!  And even better, you can watch it for free right here! The House that Screamed! (I'm going to use the original American release title here, even though the Youtube print is called The Finishing School.)

Quick plot rundown: Around the turn of the last century, young and beautiful Therese (the lovely Cristina Galbo of What Have you Done to Solange and Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) arrives at a French girls' boarding school run by Madame Fourneau (an appropriately sinister, yet restrained Lilli Palmer). This, however, is no ordinary boarding school. It's for "troubled" or "difficult" girls, and is run with a very firm hand by Madame Fourneau and her sadistic pet student Irene (Mary Maude), who has a penchant for whipping and humiliating students who displease her or Madame. Also in the mix are Fourneau's Peeping Tom teenage son (John Moulder-Brown) and other assorted creepy men, including a groundskeeper and the smarmy delivery guy from the village who takes his turn with the students in the hayloft on a rotating schedule managed by Irene (!). Oh, and there's a killer who's bumping off the students, who are then believed to have run away.

Serrador masterfully builds the tension and atmosphere of disease and repression. We know from the get-go that something is wrong in this dark and imposing building. It's not long before we witness the whipping punishment of a surly, back-talking student and the vaguely predatory kiss that Madame Fourneau gives the student's back after the deed has been done. This scene, along with another extended scene of a student's verbal humiliation later in the film serve as complement to the film's two murder scenes, which are also conducted with brio, using slow motion, freeze-frame and superimposed montage techniques to heighten the suspense and draw them out just a bit longer, long enough to engrave the image on your brain. These four setpieces are the "shock" moments of the film, and punctuate the path to the incredibly macabre and disturbing finale.

I believe this film is important for the way it straddles the divide between the older, more staid gothic horrors of 1960s Hammer films or even the more racy and perverse Italian gothics starring Barbara Steele  and the increasingly psychological horrors of the 1970s. The school is a diseased and decaying monument to repression. A scene where one student has a fleeting sexual rendez-vous in the barn is a perfect example. The scene begins in a needlepoint class. The "lucky" student is excused to check on a boiling pot in the kitchen and then  sneaks away to the barn to meet her assigned stud. After minimal flirtation, the man rips open her blouse and begins to take her. Then the film cuts back to the needlepoint class where the girls are all imagining what's going on and longing for their own turn, licking their lips as they rhythmically make their stitches. The edits are fast and furious between closeups of hands, eyes and mouths as the soundtrack lets us hear the lucky student's gasps and moans. The stitching grows frenzied, faster and faster, keeping time with the moans, until finally one girl pricks her finger, just as the student's gasps reach climax.

Another scene with Madame Fourneau and her son, where she lectures him to stop spying on the girls and thinking of them continues this theme of repression and perversion. She tells her son that none of these girls are good enough for him, that he must wait to find the right girl, a good girl worthy of replacing his mother's love. She then kisses him on the lips, just a bit too long, and we know what her issues are.


So, to recap: Beautiful period costumes; dark but luxurious set design; a lush and haunting score, especially the title theme; strong performances (in spite of the English dubbing, which isn't half bad for this kind of film); an engaging plot that takes it's time but rewards with several punctuating shock scenes and an interesting twist about 3/4 of the way in; and a final shot that will have a true horror fan jumping up and clapping for joy.  If you like your horror a bit oldey-timey but with nice notes of twisted perversion, The House that Screamed is for you. Check it out!

Drink: Cognac or red wine served from a crystal decanter.

P.S. Some have said that this film may have influenced Suspiria. I'm not sure about that, but there are definitely visual similarities in certain scenes. Keep your eye out for those connections. It also definitely influenced a much trashier Spanish horror film (and one of my fave guilty pleasures) of the 1980s, but I don't want to name it until you've seen this one. See if you can guess what I'm talking about. Cheers!

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