VHS Week Day 6: THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1971)

If you were to make a list of the worst things that could drip from one's house, surely blood would rank near the top. I mean, the very notion of it is enough to induce heebies and jeebies–it's gross, unhygienic, and scary. A house that drips blood is not at all something you want in your life! The House that Dripped Blood, however, is another matter entirely. You definitely want it in your life, but only if any or all of the following appeal to you:

• Peter Cushing
• Christopher Lee
• Amicus Productions
• Robert Bloch
• Ingrid Pitt
• Anthology movies

All of those things appeal to you, right? You're not, like, some kind of lame or something, right? Right? I don't want any lames hanging out around here!

A cynical Scotland Yard detective is searching for a famous actor who's gone missing. The trail leads to a house the actor rented from an agent named Stoker (how scary!), who regales the detective (and us) with several tales from the house's history. Each tale centers around a renter who meets (or makes) a grisly end within its walls: a horror writer whose evil creation may have leapt from fiction to reality, a retiree who is drawn to a macabre wax museum, a father who frightens–and is frightened of–his young daughter, and finally, the famous actor himself, whose search for authenticity while making a vampire movie may not be the wisest career move.

Yes, indeed, this movie is as delightful as those bullet points up top would lead you to believe. Like most every other anthology film, it's campy at times, creepy at times, and rocks a decidedly EC Comics vibe with all of its twist endings and mad people. More than anything, though, it's a real celebration of "horror." Characters are tied to the genre in various ways, and there are shout outs to Poe, Hoffman, Universal monsters...there's even a sly wink at Christopher Lee's incarnation of Dracula. While it's a terrific Sunday afternoon kind of fright flick, it lacks the truly memorable stories and moments you'll find in other anthology films, such as "And All Through the House" (Tales from the Crypt) or basically any second of Creepshow. Still, any movie that has the good sense to cast Ingrid Pitt as a vampire is an automatic A++ movie, so there you go.