The House That Screamed (1969) aka La Residencia aka The Boarding School aka The Finishing School

3.5 / 5 Jan '09
Tagline: Only the killer knows why and how and who is next
Directed by: Narciso Ibanez Serrador
Written by: Narciso Ibanez Serrador, Juan Tebar
Actors include: Lilli Palmer, Cristina Galbo, John Moulder-Brown
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Drama
Length: 99 minutes
Banned: Nope
Country: Spain

Review:
This was a rather odd Spanish flick that was relatively lifeless until it's fantastic ending. It reminded me of "House Of Whipcord" in that it's a discipline school where the girls are whipped and treated rather cruelly for misbehaving. The headmistress is evil looking well and she isn't the nicest behavior-wise either. She also has a mistreated Son who crawls around in the ducts and stuff spying on the young girls at the school. The girls at the school aren't very nice either blackmailing and threatening one another. When girls start running away (or are they) what happens? It's set in olden times, and the sets and everything are quite nice, only the actual film quality isn't very good, it's a bit blurry (according to my print anyhow). Also for the longest time it's a strange movie most definitely but not much happens. We barely get to see any killings, most stuff is cutaway, and for you nudity freaks, you won't get to see much of anything either. Still this is definitely worth watching through to see the completely surprising and perfect ending, it actually makes the film a heck of a lot more interesting, but I really shouldn't say any more. It's a strange film that wasn't quite what I expected (particularly for an exploitation film) yet I'm really glad I did watch it, even if it does lag a bit.