Tuesday 22 April 2014

Murder Mansion (1972)



So the thing about doing a movie where the plot is complicated and requires the audience to pay attention to follow it, is that it relies on you making the movie sufficiently interesting that you get and keep their attention.  And that's where this film falls down, alas.

It starts off well enough, with an extended dialogue-free section where a motorcyclist and car driver have a game of brinksmanship on the road.  This ends when they spy a pretty hitchhiker and she chooses the comfort of the car.  That quickly turns out to be a bad idea as the driver is a total creep.  At the next diner, she switches to the far less skeezy motorcyclist.

A dense fog sets in, however, and all three characters - as well as a bunch of others - end up at a secluded mansion.  The owner tells them a bunch of creepy stories, then packs them off to their various bedrooms.  You will presumably not be surprised when Bad Things start happening.  What exactly those bad things are, however, will not become clear until very near the end of the film.  Maybe its zombies or vampires or witches or something else entirely.

With a more compelling script, the mystery here might be an engaging one, but for my tastes it just didn't give me the necessary hook to draw me in.  I did like that the end isn't quite what you might expect it to be; it showed a refreshingly 'real' attitude from some of the characters; but that came rather too late to save things.

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