'The House That Dripped Blood.' Hmm. Well, the title is very different from the plot of the movie. But do not get me wrong, this movie is great! It's about a detective who investigates the supposed killing of a famous actor. He meets some people that tell him wild stories of what had happened to the previous people who lived there: a woman whose husband now sees illusions of the creepy things he writes; a man who goes into a wax museum and becomes drawn to a particular display; a man who, for some reason, hides his young daughter from civilization; and, of course, the film actor who buys a cloak, and mysteriously disappears. If you like this movie like I did, I recommend a few other Hammer Studio classics, such as 'And Now The Screaming Starts' and the original 'Asylum.'

Perhaps the finest of the Amicus Anthology series. One star off for the 'wrap-around' story....but these are usually the hardest stories to pull off.

GET THIS DVD! It is a great collection of short horror stories with my all time favorite - Peter Cushing. The stories are interesting and engaging as you try to figure out why tradegy befalls each tenant of the mysterious house that they have rented. It's a great premise, and wonderfully done. The acting is superb ... again, a great addition to your collection!

I thought and thought about buying this movie for the longest time because of the title and cover but it was just my kind of show! A lot like the Night Gallery pilot. Good actors doing well written shows. The first tale being about a writer who moves to the "house" for creative inspiration, the next tale centers around Peter Cushings love life, the third tale is about Christopher Lee and his trouble as a single parent raising a rather unusual daughter and finally the fourth tale about the houses lastest renter gone missing - an actor who has really taken his vampire role to heart. Great house, I would love to live or die there.

While it has one of the best casts of any of the Amicus five-in-one (or portmanteau) films, "The House That Dripped Blood" cannot be considered the best of the genre, even though some of the parts are excellent. In fact, this film might be the horror equivalent of the proverbial "Little Girl With a Little Curl:" When it's good, it's very, very good, but when it's bad, it's horrid...or at least uninspired. On the good side is the entire wraparound set up, that of a police inspector investigating the disappearance of an actor in the house, and then learning of its checkered history. On the bad side, I've watched this film repeatedly and I STILL can't made any sense of the final revelation of WHY the house is doing these things. Also on the good side is a dynamite opening episode featuring Denholm Elliot as "young" writer from London (he still manages to pull the role off despite being in his fifties) whose horror novels appear to be coming to life, and a middle chapter with Christopher Lee as the remote father of a very strange little girl, at odds with a sympathetic new nanny. Though it's brief, this is one of Lee's best performances, exploiting his talent for playing fearful men, which he does as well as playing fearsome ones. Probably the worst element, unfortunately, is the one starring Peter Cushing, in which he plays a man who becomes obsessed with a figure in a wax museum. Cushing was a master at rising above material, but here he gets bogged down with wobbly character motivation and a subtext that keeps trying to emerge but never does. The conclusion is pretty predictable (particularly if you've seen the poster art, which is reproduced on the DVD cover), but still confusing. The last segment, starring Jon Pertwee as a pompous horror film star known for playing vampires who gets more than his contract called for, is the best known one, but not the best. It is played for camp comedy and is quite amusing, but at the expense of the story. One of its best bits is a cameo by undersung British actor Geoffrey Bayldon, made up to resemble Ernest Thesiger in "Bride of Frankenstein," as a strange antique shop owner. Devotees of vampire lore will find any number of no-nos in this sequence (not to mention highly visible flying wires). Nearly all of the Amicus portmanteaus are mixed bags, but this one seems to be more mixed than most. Wouldn't it be spectacular if somebody could assemble the "Severed Hand" segment from "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors," "Living Doll" from "Torture Garden," the Denholm Elliot segment here, the Richard Todd/Barbara Parkins opener from "Asylum," the Peter Cushing "Valentine's Day" chapter of "Tales From the Crypt" and the Terry-Thomas/Glynnis Johns segment from "Vault of Horror" into one super-portmanteau?