THE HOUSE THAT WOULD NOT DIE (1970) Blu-ray
Director: John Llewelyn Moxey
Kino Lorber

Seventies TV chiller THE HOUSE THAT WOULD NOT DIE gets a high definition makeover on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber.

Washington D.C. worker Ruth Bennett (Barbara Stanwyck, DOUBLE INDEMNITY) and her niece Sara Dunning (Kitty Winn, THE EXORCIST) travel to New England where she has inherited a house dating back from the Revolutionary War. The house has been an object of curiosity for the locals unwelcomed by Ruth's reclusive distant aunt, among them anthropologist Pat McDougal (Richard Egan, ESTHER AND THE KING) – who reacts strangely to the sight of Sara and a portrait she discovers of a general who once lived in the house – and his aunt Delia (Mabel Albertson, BAREFOOT IN THE PARK) who talks Ruth into holding a séance in the house with medium friend Sylvia (Doreen Lang, the hysterical woman in THE BIRDS). Sylvia feels a presence the blocks her usual spirit guide. Soon after, Sara experiences spells of sleepwalking, violently attacks Ruth, and speaks in an antiquated dialect. Ruth confides in Pat who believes that Sara is showing symptoms of schizophrenia. Pat's pupil and Sara's new boyfriend Stan (Michael Anderson Jr, LOGAN'S RUN), however, believes that she is possessed. Looking into the past of the house, they learn of a military general whose daughter vanished soon after eloping with a soldier, but asking whether the ghost wants to be reunited with her father leads to more violence and a threat not only to Sara's sanity by the lives of the others.

Based on the novel "Ammie, Come Home!" by Barbara Mertz – who wrote a series of contemporary and period gothic novels as Barbara Michaels and Egypt-set mystery novels as Elizabeth Peters – and scripted by Henry Farrell (WHATEVE RHAPPENED TO BABY JANE?), THE HOUSE THAT WOULD NOT DIE was one of a series of Aaron Spelling-produced genre TV movies of the week for ABC that included HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS, SATAN'S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS, SCREAM PRETTY PEGGY, DEATH CRUISE, DEATH AT LOVE HOUSE, CROWHAVEN FARM and CRUISE INTO TERROR. The vintage chills include the usual things that go bump in the night, mysterious voices, supernatural winds, gauzy nightmares, and some pre-EXORCIST questions about spirit possession versus mental illness. Although the plot boils down to the usual exposing a past misdeed and unearthing a hidden corpse, the film does throw in some other diversions to the formula. THE HOUSE THAT WOULD NOT DIE does not so much stand apart from the pack as fit nicely within it for those of us who enjoy made for television horror and suspense. In his native England, director John Llewellyn Moxey had a prolific career as a television director for shows like THE SAINT and THE AVENGERS but is better known to horror fans for his features CITY OF THE DEAD/HORROR HOTEL and CIRCUS OF FEAR (a UK/West German production probably given to him after he helmed several episodes of THE EDGAR WALLACE MYSTERY THEATRE) before coming to the states where he worked in both episodic television and TV movies including Dan Curtis' THE NIGHT STALKER, THE STRANGE AND DEADLY OCCURRENCE for Charles Fries, and Spelling's A TASTE OF EVIL which was fellow countryman Jimmy Sangster's own reworking of his script for Hammer's SCREAM OF FEAR.

Unlike a handful of the Spelling telefilms that found their way to VHS from Prism in the 1980s, THE HOUSE THAT WOULD NOT DIE was only available via late night television showings apart from an unauthorized release on one of Mill Creek's multi-film sets. Kino Lorber's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen transfer is derived from a new 2K master of the original negatives provided by Paramount. The image is a major improvement on the TV recordings even as it reveals the textures of studio sets and highlights the backlot nature of the film's few town exteriors. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track is free of any obvious defects although it is difficult to determine if the optional English subtitles various transcriptions of the phrase "Ammie, come home!" as "Andy", "Andie", or even "Happy" are based on the transcription abilities of the captioner or if it is meant to be misinterpreted by the characters who hear it until they learn of the ghostly girl's nickname.

Kino has provided a new audio commentary by film historian Richard Harland Smith that is quite informative not only in providing context for the seventies ABC Movie of the Week experience – with its Burt Bacharach theme music and Douglas Trumbull slit scan animation – as an "introduction into the world of adult thinking via TV movies" but also in the way that teleplay author Farrell's transplanting the source novel from Georgetown to New England and reworking the story to be more in line with the "white flight" 1970s theme of families getting away from the city and finding disturbing things in supposedly idyllic rural locations also distances the novel from the ways in which it actually anticipated William Peter Blatty's THE EXORCIST. He also provides background on Stanwyck who had appeared on ZANE GREY THEATRE when Spelling was a staff writer and had also fostered the career of costume designer Nolan Miller (DYNASTY) who here provided sixteen costumes for the actress. Also included is a short video interview with director Moxey (8:53) who recalls his British work being noticed by American producer David Susskind (A RAISIN IN THE SUN) and coming to the notice of Spelling through his wife who was working as the producer's secretary. Of THE HOUSE THAT WOULD NOT DIE, his recalls Stanwyck's insistence on doing her own stunts, working with Egan, and the wind machines destroying the set requiring production to stop for a day. The disc also includes trailers for WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE?, WHOEVER SLEW AUNTIE ROO?, BURNT OFFERINGS and JENNIFER. (Eric Cotenas)

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