With those words in my summary line, Nora (Susannah York) wakes up Charles (Richard Comar) in the middle of the night, and begs him to come over to her stately mansion some two hundred miles away. Upon arriving, Charles listens to Nora's incredible story of a decadent party she threw four years earlier, at which the house took offense, and burned itself to the ground. Having rebuilt it from scratch with the finest materials and artisans available, the house, restored to it's former self, is still of a mind to deny her entry. Apparently, the subtext here is that the house will not enable inhabitants or guests who have indulged in a sinful life. At first, Charles' entry into the house reveals things as they were when he last visited, but quite soon, he sees flames engulfing objects that he was familiar with, thereby chasing him away as well. Perhaps one can draw a metaphor to heaven rejecting sinners at the pearly gates, but that was probably not on Bradbury's mind when he wrote the story. The closing scene reveals a young woman about to make her entrance, but one will have to decide whether the house will accept or reject her, as that's where the story abruptly ends.
2 Reviews
The House Just Got Burned Up with the Goings On
Hitchcoc25 March 2015
A rich decadent young woman buys an incredible house and begins to have parties that rival any that have come before. She invites her rich friends and bathes in extravagance. She has a relationship with a man, but time passes and they grow apart. One night she calls him to tell him to come to the house. When he arrives she tells him that the house has rejected her and not allowed her to come in. She speaks of a time a couple of years back as her profligate guests were in their bedrooms, carrying on, the house caught fire and drove them out. The door has been closed to her. This is a little like the Poe story, "The Masque of the Red Death."
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