Hollywood Horror House

source: Hollywood Horror House

An ageing, alcoholic Hollywood star employs a young man to assist with the staff at her Hollywood mansion but he turns out be a drug addicted, scheming, woman killing maniac. Miriam Hopkins plays the star perfectly, and this was to be her final role; David Garfield convincingly plays the handsome psychopath. As others have said this is "Sunset Boulevard"/"Baby Jane" but with lots of gore plus psychedelic drug sequences. It really is something of a curiosity, trashy but fun. I can find very little written about this in my various movie books, sad because it is a film that deserves to be better known. I have the original British VHS released by the notorious label Vipco, they were not shy in pushing this as a gory slasher movie and I guess for 1970 it was explicit. It is available on DVD under the title Hollywood House of Horror.

A campy B-movie that's shamelessly derivative of 'Sunset Boulevard,' 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?' and 'Psycho,' but which was more entertaining than I expected. Is this a good movie? No, it's not a good movie. The premise is weak (gosh do you think they could use a little more due diligence in their hiring process?) and the overall script is too. The film lacks any kind of subtlety or refinement, but maybe the alternate title "Hollywood Horror House" was a little hint of that. On the other hand, it was Miriam Hopkins' last film, and she's a delight to watch. At age 68 and just a couple of years before her death, she throws herself into her scenes, singing a little and getting a revealing massage along the way. The film also scored points for me in its opening shots, showing how dilapidated the Hollywood sign was in 1970, eight years before being saved and rebuilt. We also get a few shots on Sunset Blvd, and I liked how 'old Hollywood' was played off the topical drug/hippie stuff (plus Davis partying with the younger generation made me smile). There is an Asian-American character (Virginia Wing) who is presented to us sans stereotypes (though she is called 'fortune cookie' and hears the jibe "no tickee, no washee", it's by the bad guy). Gale Sondergaard (age 71) rounds out what is a pretty good cast for such a film. I was less convinced by the actual psycho (David Garfield, interestingly John Garfield's son), though I guess he's suitably creepy. As for the violence, with hands and heads being lopped off and whatnot, it's done in such a campy way as to seem not gory, which could be viewed as a plus or a minus. I guess I wish the film had been more serious and elevated, but as it is, it was a fun watch.

This film is often omitted from published filmographies of Hollywood royalty Miriam Hopkins and it's hard to understand why. George Eels in GINGER, LORETTA, AND IRENE WHO? and James Robert Parish in THE PARAMOUNT PRETTIES at least acknowledge its existence with George saying "Mercifully it was never released" -but that isn't true. I have a late 60s Mexican lobby card from the film's original release and actually saw this at the Drive-In in the mid-70s. Shamelessly ripping off SUNSET BLVD. and NIGHT MUST FALL, COMEBACK also resembles BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS in its psychedelic indictment of a morally decadent Hollywood in the wake of the Ramon Novarro and Sharon Tate murders. It tells the tale of a deluded diva with dreams of a cinematic comeback (Miriam Hopkins) who takes up with a sinister hippie hunk (John Garfield, Jr.) while a maniac is dismembering middle-age dames and leaving their body parts under the dilapidated "Hollywood" sign up in the hills. The story is devoid of any real suspense as the audience sees the protagonist commit a grisly murder right after the opening credits but the abrupt open-ended ending is unintentionally unsettling. Gale Sondergaard is a regally mysterious red herring in the proceedings as Miriam's devoted secretary and also along for the ride are Minta Durfee (Mrs. Fatty Arbuckle), Florence Lake, and the Three Stooges' Joe Besser as a Hollywood Tour Bus guide. There's no denying this is a decidedly low budget endeavor but that fact is cleverly disguised by setting the scene almost entirely at silent screen star Norma Talmadge's beautiful rococo estate. This is quite a curio/reel treat for Miriam Hopkins fans and the film shows just how much class former stars like Miriam, Tallulah, Joan, and Bette gave the "Grand Guignol Granny" horror sub-genre. Hopkins has a very brief semi-* scene (!) in profile when she rises from her massage table that is worth the price of admission alone and, if taken in the right frame of mind, the whole film can be a lot of fun. Like WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? and SUNSET BLVD., the movie also uses stills, posters, and film clips from its star's Hollywood heyday as glamorous props; there's even a life-sized Miriam Hopkins doll the twisted anti-hero takes to bed. The cast is in pretty good physical shape and the Pop-60s clothes and decor set them off to good advantage. There's some campy fun as Miriam gets drunk atop the Santa float during the annual Tinseltown Christmas Parade ("Too many queers on the Boulevard!", she slurs!). Some fans may be appalled to see their Miriam lip-lock Garfield (whatever happened to him?), get drunk, drugged, punched in the face, and appear au naturel for a split second but it's obvious she was having a ball and laughed all the way to the bank. These late 60s/early 70s "Hollywood horror" stories are a sub-genre all their own and are held in high esteem by exploitation trash aficionados everywhere. Other films of note from the same era have Rita Hayworth rolling and smoking a joint (THE NAKED ZOO), Lana Turner getting slipped some acid (THE BIG CUBE), and Jennifer Jones relishing her porno past (ANGEL, ANGEL, DOWN WE GO). All come "highly" recommended, of course!

Aging and alcoholic past it movie star Kathleen Parker takes a spill and needs a personal assistant. Unfortunately for her, Vic might not be a good choice for the job. In fact he might just be…A Savage Intruder!... Opening to a salvo of in and out fading clips from old movies before the camera draws in upon the Hollywood sign, pulling closer and closer until it fixes on the tattered and peeling facade, rusty strips hanging out and creaky in the breeze, this mean little hippy era psycho chiller poses old school Hollywood as corpse, intent signalled as the shot pulls down beneath the Hollywood sign to reveal some severed human remains. Vic is introduced soon after and things follow a fairly typical path, with the added frisson of an age war aspect. The town may have its stately and dignified older folk, well mannered and good too each other despite their foibles, but the decadence of a new age as embodied in the smarmy Vic is set on mockery, exploitation and worse for the gentler souls. In colourful and modishly trippy party sequences Vic and his chums are a fairly striking bunch of freaks and weirdos, and when they come up against the likes of Kathleen or her contemporaries perhaps maggots claiming their dominion over the dead milieu? Some of the partying scenes come off a little loose and may be offputting, I was amused enough to ride them out though the dated psychedelic touches are best applied in Vic's flashbacks. Chequer patterned surfaces, gaudy colours, close up faces with distorted speech shot through a fish eye lens and a nifty gore shot to top things off, it's a cool sequence if you groove to this sort of time capsule oddity. For more creepy kicks mannequins get a neat showing, as well as some weapon flashing murders, though nothing too grisly goes down. Miriam Hopkins fits the character of Kathleen perfectly, perhaps because she was an old school movie star herself, whilst fellow veteran Gale Sondegard is equally well suited to a role as an older housekeeper. Virginia Wing overacts a little but does OK as a nice young Asian lady, whilst John David Garfield has a suitably oily and arrogant demeanour as Vic. He falls a good way short of being vicious or scary enough though, which brings things down a good deal. Also the film peaks at around the hour mark, with a draggy final block propelled in barely adequate fashion by a few freaky touches. Kinda unsatisfying ending too. Still, the film as a whole is odd enough to be interesting and mean spirited enough to be a little unsettling, so it just about works on the obscure curio level. Not recommended to most, but worth a look if you dig this kind of off the beaten track kookiness.

This is really nothing more than a slightly gorier rendition of SUNSET BOULEVARD/BABY JANE hysterics. Miriam Hopkins, one of Hollywood's finest actresses during the '30's, gives an appropriately hammy performance as a demented former movie queen who, when not chugging down a bottle of vodka, is staggering around her decaying Hollywood mansion(the real-life home of famous silent screen star Norma Talmadge) plotting to make a comeback. When she breaks her leg during a drunken episode, she is assisted by a good-looking, but strange young man(John Garfield, Jr.) who passes himself off as a male nurse, but is, in fact, a sick psychopath who has been dismembering several women who live in the Hollywood hills. Despite being almost totally beyond redemption, the movie offers some occasionally worthwhile moments supplied by several familiar old-time character actors, and Miss Hopkins, in her final film role, gives a much better performance than the circumstances warrant. Also out on video as: HOLLYWOOD HORROR HOUSE. Originally titled: THE COMEBACK.

Savage Intruder is one of those late 60's/early 70's horror films that adorn formerly famous, formerly glamorous Hollywood starlets in their elder years. Kick-started into action by the surprise horror hit "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane" which breathed new life into Bette Davis and Joan Crawford's practically non-existent careers at that point, suddenly other actresses, who were shunned by the studios which had used them up and spit them out, started lining up to star in low-budget horror movies. Their loss is our gain, because even though Hollywood has no use for them, I find seasoned actresses to be the most fun to watch - especially in a horror film. This one stars Miriam Hopkins and Gale Sondergaard (who was criminally black-listed by Hollywood when she refused to testify against her husband during the McCarthy-inspired "Red Scare" hysteria in the 1950s). Hopkins is (surprise-surprise) an aging actress who lives as a recluse in her Hollywood mansion of memories. Sondergaard plays her tough but caring assistant. Suddenly, a young handsome stranger who harnesses a charismatic charm as well as a bad temper worms his way into the household, fooling Hopkins but not Sondergaard. There is a nice helping of sadism, murder and weirdness embedded into the film, sure to please lovers of these kinds of horror movies. Although it is very hard to find, this one is well worth the effort.

This mostly forgotten entry into "hag horror" is better than many of the others and came a little too late to the game to have any major impact. Compared to the similar films being done by Joan Crawford or Bette Davis, this one doesn't appear to have as much of a budget or a big studio push behind it. Miriam Hopkins is excellent as the washed up film star who doesn't like to leave her opulent Hollywood mansion a la Norma Desmond. A mysterious drifter comes into her life and the bodies start piling up.

Hollywood Horror House has been forgotten for far too long which is unfortunate, because it's one of the most entertaining of the films that followed in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane's wake featuring faded former Hollywood leading ladies anxious to play the most grotesque characters imaginable. The star in question here is Miriam Hopkins who plays a faded former film start with a pretty terrible drinking problem (she collapses down the stairs during a drunken delusion when we first meet her) and she lives with her minimal staff in a stunning and well maintained Hollywood mansion, seemingly content living in her dreamworld like a slightly more stable Norma Desmond. Everything changes when a mysterious young drifter infiltrates her inner circle and the bodycount rises. Unlike many of the other Baby Jane clones, this film had the luxury of coming at the start of the 70's where it was becoming apparent that anything you could dream up content wise could get on screen, so there's a lot more sleaze and gore in this film than some of the others. It's sometimes silly, but it's always entertaining.

Although she is well remembered today, Miriam Hopkins was never what you would call a superstar. The height of her fame was in pre-code, with some success in the screwball comedy era. Most of her career was spent as a character actress, but her apparently huge ego never allowed her to move past those golden years, hense her addition to the stars of the 1930's and 1940's who participated in that notorious genre years later crudely referred to as "hag horror". I doubt anybody ever went on the Hollywood stars tour to see where she lived, but her Norma Desmond like movie star here is a major stop on that bus ride through Beverly Hills and Bel Aire. She's a delusional lush, injured after a drunken fall down the stairs, and nurse David Garfield is hired by her officious assistant (a tired looking Gale Sondergaard). Before long, Garfield (an obvious drug addict) has taken over Hopkins' life, and by the time she becomes aware of his dangerous personality, it's too late. The body count begins, and the murders are pretty...pretty gruesome that is. This has no real point other than to give a few visual shocks, some absolutely disgusting. Hopkins continues to chew up the scenery, just as she had done when paired opposite Bette Davis. Garfield doesn't have the spark of his more famous father (John), but Sondergaard gives a wise, almost knowing performance, as if she knew she was the key in preventing this from becoming total trash. The acid trip dreams are fascinating, both visually and as a warning against drug use, but this ranks as an embarrassing Z grade mix of grindhouse slasher horror and the desperation of a delusional diva to keep her name alive, no matter how repulsive the film she's in is.