Great Cast Fails to Save Silly Film

The 1983 British comedy horror film House of the Long Shadows is notable for featuring four iconic horror film stars, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine, all four together for the first and only time, one of the few things that makes this worth watching. The dinner wasn’t the only turkey here.

The main character is Kenneth Magee, played by Desi Arnaz Jr., who is oddly billed only as Desi Arnaz, although his father was very much alive and didn’t die until three and a half years after the movie came out. I was wondering how Desi Arnaz Sr. would fit in with the above four stars when Jr. came up on the screen.

Arnaz plays Kenneth Magee, an arrogant and not terribly likable, but very successful young American writer, who arrives in England for a book signing and to meet with his publisher. He dismisses novels such as Wuthering Heights (with which I do not entirely disagree but never mind), claiming he can write something similar and just as good in 24 hours. When his publisher disagrees, he bets him $20,000.00 that he can do so if he only has peace and quiet and a place with good atmosphere, to which the publisher agrees and arranges for him to stay at a Welsh manor which has been deserted for forty years.

Magee doesn’t get half a page into his book when people start turning up, including a young lady in disguise who first warns him of terrible danger, then claims to be the publisher’s secretary, followed by people who claim to be caretakers and others with business there. Soon they are revealed as the ancestral owners of the mansion harboring a dark family secret to be released at midnight that night. Then people start turning up dead, apparently murdered in gory and gruesome ways. Can Magee and the young lady escape alive?

So far it is an at least passable haunted house story, haunted more by dramatic past events than ghosts, but ends up being not so good for similar reasons that House on Haunted Hill is also no good. I named those reasons in that review, my only review of a Vincent Price film with real spoilers, and won’t here so as not to create spoilers. The main points are listed in the thread “Reasons the Plot Makes Absolutely NO Sense—SPOILERS” on this board and anyone who cares to check it out can read it and add their own thoughts.

Desi Arnaz is good as the young writer although as I say the character is not that likable. The only person the viewer can really root for is the secretary, Mary Norton, played by Julie Peasgood, who is mostly very attractive, cute, and appealing. The four horror stars are magnificent, the only caveat being that John Carradine is a little young to be the father of those who are supposed to be his children. They can’t save this ridiculous plot, which is sloppy in crucial places and ultimately beneath them. I’m surprised someone agreed to make this movie and that the actors thought it was a good enough idea to be in it. This was like a really bad episode of Night Gallery, not a major motion picture. No suspension of disbelief whatsoever.

The credits state that the movie was suggested by Seven Keys to Baldpate, a bestselling 1913 novel by Earl Derr Biggers, which was adapted by George M. Cohan into a play, and thence for film, radio, and TV. This was made into no less than seven movies, in 1916, 1917, 1925, 1929, 1935, and 1947, all under the book title, and as House of the Long Shadows in 1983, plus television adaptations in 1946 and 1961. I couldn’t find a full summary of the book to see if the plot is as ridiculous and convoluted as that last movie. If so it is unbelievable that it would be that popular. The book can almost certainly be found online but I don’t know if I have the patience to look through it. The movie is not for kids and if not for the presence of the stars might not be for anybody. If you like stupid horror films check out Mark of the Vampire.