Review of The House That Screamed

While I was flinching at some of the inept handling of this material, I was nonetheless impressed with some of the very eerie and peculiarly effective bits of spookiness here. It really looks like more than one hand is stirring this pot. There's a lot of what looks like college film class 101 basic mediocrity, but then some very nicely done scary moments, and grisly scenes. For example, a nice scary bit is when the writer answers the knock on the door to find nobody, then an apparition appears to look at him from inside the house while he is on the porch unaware. But then, the fight with the doll is ludicrous. It's like Carnival of Souls without the maturity and professional film production values. It could have been much better, but still nice enough to not be a total waste, and reminiscent of those 70s flicks that were just a weird stream of ideas. Works on the level of a nightmare but then Phantasm did that much better.