HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR EPISODE 5 - THE HOUSE THAT BLED TO DEATH (1980)


DIRECTED by Tom Clegg

SCREENPLAY by David Lloyd 

STARRING - Nicholas Ball as William Peters, Rachel Davies as Emma Peters, Brian Croucher as George Evans, Pat Maynard as Jean Evans, Milton Johns as A.J. Powers, Emma Ridley as Sophie Peters, Joanne White as Sophie Peters (Older).

PLOT - William and Emma along with their young daughter Sophie are a young family who have just moved into their first home - a semi-detached house in the suburbs of London.

They quickly settle into their new neighbourhood and quickly befriend thier neighbours George and Jean. Life is looking good for the happy couple.

However, little do they know their seemingly idyllic new home harbours a grim secret - several years ago the previous occupant murdered his wife and mutilated her corpse...

It seems this grim past is catching up with the young family - strange events keep occurring in the house...bloody and horrific visions.

Who or what is haunting the family and is anything as straightforward as it seems ?...

PERFORMANCES - Nicholas Ball and Rachel Davis play William and Emma. At first they come over as quite pleasant, ordinary and even quite boring characters. 

William seems friendly and chatty initially, maybe there's a touch of the cockney widebody about him but he seems nice enough all the same. Emma is a typical late 70's/early 80's wife and mum, again nothing spectacular or particularly out of the ordinary but once again she's inoffensive enough, if slightly dull.

William and Emma befriend thier neighbours George (Brian Croucher) and Jean (Pat Maynard) who seem like pretty decent "salt of the earth" types. George has a slightly unfortunate habit of spying on Emma over the road as she's getting undressed which is obviously a bit creepy in hindsight. This is in full view of his wife, who seems to think it's a bit of "cheeky chappy" type fun, this WAS the 70's/80's afterall (different times and all that) and this weirdness doesn't get commented upon (or happen) again. So apart from this George and Jean are every bit as dull and ordinary as William and Emma.

With all this talk of "dull and ordinary" characters you'd maybe think that this is going to turn out to be a bland episode... thankfully this doesn't prove to be the case. As we shall see all is not what it seems with William and Emma...not by a LONG shot.

As the haunting continues Emma (perhaps understandably) becomes more and more terrified, to the point where she's hospitalised for her nerves. 

William on the other hand seems to become cockier, at first you think that this is a defence mechanism against the weird supernatural stuff that's happening around him and his family...but as the story continues you keep getting these hints there's a little more to William than meets the eye - it's all in the looks he gives, the reactions that he shows. There's a coldness there that we didn't earlier percieve.

Out suspicions definitely start to rise when we see William have a clandestine meeting with A.J. Powers (a wonderfully slimy performance from Milton Johns) who is the estate agent that sold them the haunted property.

In the end it turns out that the so-called "haunting" is just a scam cooked up by William, Emma and A.J. The idea is that they staged the haunting so that A.J. could write a book about it and then get rich by selling the movie rights to the book, which they succeed in doing.

Emma's "breakdown" comes from her not being fully informed when the fake haunting stunts are going to take place, so even though she's in on the scheme her shocked reactions are genuine thus lending credence to the story.

All of a sudden William's cold and cocky behaviour becomes easier to understand and this revelation shows him to be far from the nice guy we originally thought him to be. Don't forget - this piece of work actually murdered his little daughter's beloved pet cat at one point to make it look like the work of the "ghost". The man is a MONUMENTAL BELLEND !!!!!

Needless to say it's a great bait and switch on the audience and Nicholas Ball pulls off making William a thoroughly despicable protagonist.

Don't worry though - William gets his comeuppance...

SEX & VIOLENCE - We get yet more toplessness when we see neighbour George spying on Emma getting undressed.

As for violence - the story starts as it means to go on - in the prologue we see the infamous murder that starts off the whole fake haunting. An old man poisons his wife and then carves her up with a machete (we don't see any gore but the implication is clear what he's about to do. This is then confirmed later in the story).

As mentioned above William kills Sophie's cat. We don't see him do it thankfully but we do see the bloody results. The "dead cat" effect is about as convincing as the "dead rabbits" where in the previous episode but as a cat lover it's still upsetting to watch. I don't give a flying toss about seeing humans gorily slaughtered in horror films but as soon as they hurt a cat (even a blatantly fake one that looks a bit like a discarded glove puppet) I tend to get a bit funny about it. I'm not alone in this.

William also very kindly puts a "severed hand" in his fridge for his daughter to discover (what's with this tosser traumatising his kid all the time ? He's definitely the 1980 winner of the Josef Fritzell "parent of the year" award).

The final piece of child traumatizing comes on Sophie's birthday in what is one of THE most iconic and memorable moments in the entire series. A group of little Sophie's school friends (and their mums) are celebrating Sophie's birthday when suddenly a pipe detaches itself from the wall and proceeds to shower the bunch of screaming sprogs with gallons and gallons of blood (quite how William manages to pull this off is never explained).


Five year olds scream in sheer terror (I'm not entirely sure that the child actors where actually told what was about to happen, as they all look genuinely shocked and traumatised), the assorted mums scream almost as much as the kids. It's probably one of the best scenes ever seen in a horror TV show, people are STILL talking about it forty five years later. Classic stuff.

At the end of the story, dad of the year William finally gets his just deserts - several years after the faked haunting a slightly older Sophie overhears William and Emma gloating about how they pulled thier scam off. The memories come flooding back - especially regarding poor little Timmy the Cat. Sophie snaps and machetes William to death. Emma gets sprayed in the face with a gout of his blood. I'm guessing she's going to be next...

Take that Bastard Face ! Timmy the Cat has finally been avenged !!!

RATING - This is a great episode. It succeeds in totally subverting the audience's expectations, gives us a satisfying twist and payoff and has one of the most iconic moments in horror television ever.

5 bloody birthday parties out of 5.

ART -







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