Sunny's Video

Greetings friends. We here at Sunny's Video don't just sell movies, we watch a ton of them as well! I thought it might be fun to share some thoughts on recent watches. Today's pick is The House That Cried Murder but first, some backstory.

Probably about 12 or so years ago I decided I wanted to watch every movie mentioned in Stephen Thrower's legendary book, Nightmare USA. For those unfamiliar with this book, it covers exploitation & horror movies from the 70s & 80s in extreme detail. I can't recommend it enough. There are close to 500 titles in the book & I've made it a personal mission to watch them all. There's a checklist in the back with every title (this checklist can also be found on ListChallenges). This has been an ongoing project (obviously) but I recently got motivated to ramp it up a bit. Today's title is one I picked randomly from the list.

The House That Cried Murder was first released in October of 1973. Producers loved to re-title the same movies for the drive-in market so this was also released as The Bride, Last House on Massacre Street, No Way Out and even Scream. That is a lot of titles for 1 movie! This was filmed in Connecticut & had some limited drive in runs before disappearing into obscurity. Code Red put this out on blu ray & is likely the only authorized disc version.

The movie is about a wealthy bride who builds her dream house and marries the man of her dreams. During the reception on their wedding day she catches her husband in bed with his ex (family values)! She proceeds to attack him with a pair of scissors, is fought off & disappears. The husband moves in with his ex & they begin receiving strange phone calls from someone claiming to be the bride. I won't go into anymore details to keep this spoiler free but it gets twisty.

I was really impressed with this one. It's low budget regional horror so don't expect high production values or Oscar worthy performances but I have a soft spot for that genre so that doesn't bother me. I would compare this to a really good extended episode of Tales From The Crypt. It has the right mix of camp & twists that it instantly reminded me of that series when the movie was over.

There's a lot of bad movies to be found in the book (I'm looking at you Curse of the Confederate Cannibals) so it is refreshing when a gem emerges from a pile of garbage. I would go so far as to say this is a hidden gem in the horror world & it comes recommended, perhaps highly. This title is Sunny's Video approved with 4 barks out of 5.