A young couple (Ronald Hines and Colette Wild) visit an isolated but attractive house in the Devon countryside, which they are surprised to find is being sold for far less than it is worth. They are shown around by a mysterious old woman (Jane Hylton) who tells them about the house's sinister past. It was once owned by an electrical engineer called Mark Lemming (Peter Dyneley) who discovered his wife Stella was having an affair with his best friend Clive (John Merivale). When their attempt to kill him failed, Lemming got his revenge by trapping them in the the house that he wired up so that if they touched anything they would be electrocuted. Stella and Clive died in their attempts to escape and, some time later, Lemming killed himself during an experiment that went wrong. Ever since then, anybody who bought the house ended up selling it and moving on within a short space of time since it is haunted. The couple are disturbed and no doubt deterred from buying what they thought was a "dream house", but who is this strange elderly woman and is she connected to the place's sinister past?
This highly acclaimed b-pic was originally released as the support feature to Sidney Hayers' classic heist thriller Payroll in UK cinemas. It was writer-director Vernon Sewell's fourth attempt to film an old French grand guignol play entitled L' Angoisse, which he first made as The Medium in 1934 (his debut feature as a director). His second version was an 'A' film entitled Latin Quarter (1945), which concerned the exploits of a mad sculptor who hides his murder victims in his work and the third go was the neat 'B' film Ghost Ship (1952) about a haunted yacht. In life Sewell was a keen yachtsman and his own steam yacht, The Gelert, featured in a number of his movies including that one.
House Of Mystery deserves its reputation as a distinguished second feature and anybody who believes that good results could never be achieved in this area of British cinema will doubtlessly change their mind after seeing it. For a film that only lasts 56 minutes, it succeeds in creating a creepy and sinister atmosphere through a combination of taut direction (Vernon Sewell), music (Stanley Black), lighting (Ernest Steward), who in a rather splendid touch opts to keep the ghoulish Jane Hylton in shadow during her scenes narrating her sinister tale to the naive house hunters. The film couldn't have worked in anything but black and white. The quality of Sewell's direction makes one regret that he never got to make any more major films after the late forties as he spent the remainder of his film career making quickies. He certainly stages some entertaining shocks such as the ghost of the electrical engineer Lemming manifesting itself on a TV screen. The scenes where he traps his adulterous wife and her lover in the live sitting room manage to be suitably unsettling too. It's most spine chilling moment has to be where Stella is attempting to climb out of a window and her vengeful husband sends the voltage through her as she is suspended across the window frame. Anybody who has seen Ghost Ship (issued on DVD in 2007) will spot some glaring similarities with that film here such as the use of a medium who is employed by the owners of the property to discover the reasonings behind the hauntings. Yet, as in Ghost Ship, it is well handled and adds greatly to the atmosphere of the mysteriousness. Good acting all round too especially from Jane Hylton and Dyneley who neatly portrays a sense of rational, yet chilling menace as the mad scientist.
This highly acclaimed b-pic was originally released as the support feature to Sidney Hayers' classic heist thriller Payroll in UK cinemas. It was writer-director Vernon Sewell's fourth attempt to film an old French grand guignol play entitled L' Angoisse, which he first made as The Medium in 1934 (his debut feature as a director). His second version was an 'A' film entitled Latin Quarter (1945), which concerned the exploits of a mad sculptor who hides his murder victims in his work and the third go was the neat 'B' film Ghost Ship (1952) about a haunted yacht. In life Sewell was a keen yachtsman and his own steam yacht, The Gelert, featured in a number of his movies including that one.
House Of Mystery deserves its reputation as a distinguished second feature and anybody who believes that good results could never be achieved in this area of British cinema will doubtlessly change their mind after seeing it. For a film that only lasts 56 minutes, it succeeds in creating a creepy and sinister atmosphere through a combination of taut direction (Vernon Sewell), music (Stanley Black), lighting (Ernest Steward), who in a rather splendid touch opts to keep the ghoulish Jane Hylton in shadow during her scenes narrating her sinister tale to the naive house hunters. The film couldn't have worked in anything but black and white. The quality of Sewell's direction makes one regret that he never got to make any more major films after the late forties as he spent the remainder of his film career making quickies. He certainly stages some entertaining shocks such as the ghost of the electrical engineer Lemming manifesting itself on a TV screen. The scenes where he traps his adulterous wife and her lover in the live sitting room manage to be suitably unsettling too. It's most spine chilling moment has to be where Stella is attempting to climb out of a window and her vengeful husband sends the voltage through her as she is suspended across the window frame. Anybody who has seen Ghost Ship (issued on DVD in 2007) will spot some glaring similarities with that film here such as the use of a medium who is employed by the owners of the property to discover the reasonings behind the hauntings. Yet, as in Ghost Ship, it is well handled and adds greatly to the atmosphere of the mysteriousness. Good acting all round too especially from Jane Hylton and Dyneley who neatly portrays a sense of rational, yet chilling menace as the mad scientist.