The concept of domestic terror through electrical booby traps is creative and assures a few suspenseful sequences, but that still doesn't guarantee a horror sleeper hit. The flashback illustrating Lemming's vengeance abruptly ends without ever stating clear whatever happened to the survivors, so I really can't call it great thriller stuff even if I wanted to. That's like wanting to kill Mike Tyson in a boxing ring. Hello, he's an electrical engineer!? Of course he saw through the plan. The fiendish lovers try to kill Mark Lemming through electrocution. What exactly is the point of all these extra characters? Also, the more you contemplate about the murder plot, the less sense it makes. How they hired a paranormal detective and how they witnessed a séance to discover the truth. The couple listens to the story of another innocent couple's bad experiences with the house. "House of Mystery" has a bizarre flashback within flashback narrative structure of which I don't really understand the added value. The house was originally owned by an electrical engineer Mark Lemming, who discovered that his wife and her lover wanted him dead and invented a little game to get even. It seems another young couple already bought the house before them and they had problems with the lamps and the TV-set, as a result of electrical impulses around the house going bonkers. Obviously there's a minor catch, because the curious female caretaker tells them about the house's dark past. The plot is about a young couple scouting for affordable houses on the British countryside and stumbling upon one that is extremely well-priced considering its size and condition. With its short running time of barely 56 minutes and abrupt transitions between scenes, "House of Mystery" feels more like an episode in a supernaturally themed TV-show, like Alfred Hitchcock Presents or something. It's a modest, compelling and moderately engaging little thriller with a few good ideas and admirably tense atmosphere, but the conclusion isn't nearly as shocking as build up towards to. Sadly I have to announce that "House of Mystery" honestly isn't an undiscovered masterpiece. Sewell definitely isn't the most prominent of British horror directors from the 1960's and 1970's, but he nevertheless made a couple of interesting hit-and-miss films, like "The Horrors of Burke & Hare", "Ghost Ship", "The Blood Beast Terror" and "The Curse of the Crimson Altar". Another thing motivating me to look for a copy was the name of director Vernon Sewell. That's the main reason why I tracked it down, actually, since I'm continuously on the lookout for hidden gems in the horror genre. "House of Mystery" is an extremely obscure and unknown little film, but if you do eventually encounter a review for it on the internet left or right, it's always very positive and praising. This is one obscurity that won't let you down when you find it. There isn't, of course, any rules to horror and people keep seeking that elusive formula of fright, but here's a quiet little piece that, with no evident artistic effort, presses just the right buttons. The finale, though not terribly surprising, delivers in terms of campfire tale creepiness. She starts with another couple who put up with insidious supernatural events, and came to learn, in a flashback within a flashback, the nasty happenings that turned this place into what it is. A pair of newlyweds show up to buy a house, and a shadowy lady tells them, in flashback, of the place's history. Won't one of you obscurity specialists find it and put it on the market? An hour long (and thus consigned to the late show from word go) it's the best of Vernon Sewell's numerous little ghost stories. I saw this movie many years ago and thought it lost, but recently it showed up on a station listed but just out of range, so it's still around somewhere.
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