House on Bare Mountain (1962) User Reviews

Pretty bad, yet still fun at the same time.

[Boba_Fett1138 · 5/10 · 2 February 2012]

OK, I admit! This movie was pretty fun to watch at times and it certainly wasn't as bad as I had feared.

At first this seemed to be just another one of those sleazy '60's productions, that involved little money and little clothes for the female characters in it. And while the movie was still being a typical '60's sleazy one, it was a surprising lot of fun as well.

It's a movie that is really aware of itself and what it is trying to be and do. It has no illusions about it that it's is a great movie and the cast luckily also seemed to realize this, so they simply decided to have some fun with it. Everybody was working with a smile on their face it seemed and it must have been really fun to work on this movie, even for the girls, who of course get exploited heavily in this movie.

It's comedy really saves this movie and makes it a more or less watchable. Since otherwise, this movie has very little to offer. I literally had no idea what the story was all supposed to be about but it really didn't mattered at all for this movie.

But even while this is only a 1 hour short movie, it still manages to feel a tat bit overlong and the movie even starts to drag toward its end, when all the gloves are off and the movie decides to go completely crazy. It starts to repeat itself at that point and the movie even becomes too silly for its own good.

However, as far as these type of cheap and simplistic genre movies go, this is definitely one of the more fun ones I have ever seen!

5/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Fun, short, and good starter.

[thekiddouglass · 5/10 · 1 December 2018]

If you're new to cheeseball sexploitation films, this is a great jumping off point. Cheesy, ridiculous, and overall just a fun 60 minutes. I'm glad this was restored.

I like Nudie Cuties, but this is hard to watch except on fast forward

[ministerwithoutportfolio · 4/10 · 24 August 2010]

I like the Nudie Cutie, and find the dopey plots kind of fun, but this was just too dumb. Granny Good, doing a bad Jonathan Winters impersonation (or did Winters and Bob Cresse both draw the Granny/Maude Frick character from a common source? I don't know), is insufferable. Then there are the cheesy made-up monsters that are really pathetic. As a kid born in 1959, I love early 60s monsterdom, but even I have my limits. Of course also as a kid born in the 50's I love massive mammaries. This movie *does* have that, in the person of one platinum blond who manages to walk across a landing and down a staircase twice. The subtle movements of her breasts, en route, suggest that breasts, when challenged by gravity, have a mind of their own. Said generously endowed blond has a little bit of a Lorna Maitland look, except with a little too much of a pooch stomach and not quite as nice eyes though still real cute (anybody know who she is? Please pm me.) Back to ripping on the movie. The acting and especially the direction is unnecessarily bad. Just a little more work would have made this movie a keeper. E.g., one man in a business suit investigating Bare Mountain walks in and sees a topless woman sitting on a desk and calmly asks her for directions. Then, later, he walks by another topless woman and is totally surprised. The police 'work" in the movie is totally boring and is probably bad leftover vaudeville shtick, without the redeeming quality of being delivered with expert timing live on stage.

One crazy monster mash!

[Wturnerbill · 30 June 2002]

This is one of the oddest movies I've ever seen. Bob Cress is perfect in the role of the rotten old bat, who keeps a werewolf (yes, a werewolf) enslaved in her basement still. The (naked) girls of Granny Good's prep school sure do know how to throw a party! The punchline at the very end of the movie is absolutely hilarious.

Silly horror-themed exercise in endless nudity

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 1 August 2016]

Incredible! Not necessarily in a good way either. HOUSE ON BARE MOUNTAIN is a (perhaps for the best) forgotten movie which combines some terrible comedy with a nudie cudie-style film, of which there were hundreds being made during this period (the genre is probably best exemplified by the works of Russ Meyer, H.G. Lewis, and Harrison Marks). It's certainly a one off film on which the production levels are about the same as an average Ed Wood epic. The "plot" - if you can really call it that - concerns Granny Good and her school for special girls, which is really a front for a bootlegging operation run in the cellar. An undercover girl is sent to investigate while the police close in. That's it.

Bob Cresse - a strange chap to be sure - plays the film entirely in drag as Granny Good. His character can really be seen as the logical predecessor to our own Benny Hill, and he takes great delight in delivering bad jokes and puns. The rest of the comedy seems to be taken from ancient slapstick routines, with the film being sped-up at some points. The music is incredibly cheesy and shots of a mountain-top castle are interested in order to give the film it's title.

This film may have some interest for horror fans due to the inclusion of the Wolf Man, Dracula, Frankenstein and a Ghoul, or their no-budget equivalents. The latter three are just normal guys either wearing cheap makeup or masks, although the Wolf Man has "official" makeup by a guy who worked on PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE - there's a claim to fame! Events culminate in a drunken party where the cops, monsters, and girls chase each other around. It seems even members of the public, friends, and production team were dragged in. In the end, HOUSE ON BARE MOUNTAIN simply serves as an excuse to show an endless parade of naked girls which it does at every opportunity.

MAN I LOVED THIS!

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 11 September 2020]

You've never seen more! Let us prove it to you when the monsters meet the girls! The nudies meet the nasties! No monster ever had it so good! See Frankenstein do the twist with Miss Hollywood! The gayest girlie spree of all time! Everything's off when the horror boys meet Granny Good's girls! The biggest bevy of beauties ever laid before your eyes! For adult adults only!

Get ready for 62 minutes of sheer wildness as directed by Lee Frost and Wes Bishop. If you wonder, with scumbags - and I say that term with the utmost of respect, admiration and love - like this were at the wheel, how far away was Harry Novak? Oh, he was there. He was there.

Granny Good's School for Good Girls is really a front for girls to get naked and make booze for Granny Good, who is played by producer Bob Cresse. She also employs a werewolf named Krakow. Yes. A werewolf. And when the girls throw a party, that's when Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster show up.

Ann Perry, who plays Sally in this, was originally going to be a nun before she met her first husband Ron Myers. After starting her career in Cresse's softcore films, she went fill hardcore and started her own production company, Evolution Enterprises, in the 1970's, becomingone of the only women to write, direct, and produce her own hardcore movies. She was also the first female president of the Adult Film Association of America (AFAA).

The adult films of 1962 are incredibly odd affairs today, featuring little to no sex and mostly women taking off their clothes and doing things like reading topless. I find them incredibly charming, almost time capsules of a more innocent time, a place where small movies like this could find an audience of raincoaters who found something, anything erotic in what we would now see as just plain silly.

Sadly for Frost and Cresse, the advent of hardcore would put an end to their films. Then again, Frost would go on to produce and direct one of the oddest - and roughest - films of the golden age of adult films, A Climax of Blue Power. He kept on working right up until 1995's direct to video softcore thriller Private Obsession. I'd also recommend his mondo films Witchcraft '70 and Mondo Bizarro. Oh yeah! He also directed The Thing With Two Heads and The Black Gestapo. He also made Love Camp Seven, which also features Cresse acting as a commander of a German prison camp. Wow. I know more about Lee Frost than some members of my family.

You can download this on the Internet Archive. Even better, Nicolas Winding Refn's ByNWR site has a totally cleaned up version straight from the director's archive. Man, I want to sit down and talk to that dude someday.

Ultimate Cheese

[antiprice · 9/10 · 12 January 2006]

This film is for ultimate cheese freaks. I can guarantee that you've never seen classic Hammer monsters, frat party freakin', and fourteen tons of topless women in one flick.

Granny Goode "educates" young nubile females in the art of sophistication. Granny looks more like Uncle Fester than my mongoloid grandmother. There's plenty of whips, monsters, booze, and an odd jump rope scene. If HGL hosted a frat party, it would be this film.

What story you ask? None. It's really just a jiggle fest drenched in vodka. Here are the highlights in order of importance: 1. A woman with catheter bag-sized breasts wobbles down some stairs.

2. For no reason a woman zooms down a train track backwards with her ass exposed.

3. Fifteen pairs of breasts align side by side for "stretching" exercises followed by copious amounts of jump rope.

Russ Meyer meets Benny Hill!!

[Jens-28 · 18 June 1999]

The hilarious Bob ("Love Camp 7", "Erotic Adventures Of Zorro" etc.) Cresse in drag as Granny Good is the saving grace of this VERY infantile tale of a girl school threaten by undercover cops and monsters. The girls are, of course, in the nude for like 90% of the movie and that's okay by me cuz there's some major poontang. The tall wolfman's make up is done by Harry Thomas who worked on Ed Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space"! If your girlfriend is a hardcore feminist, watch it with your buddies over a case of brew - you'll burst with laughter!

Poor Sexploitation

[Michael_Elliott · 27 February 2008]

House on Bare Mountain (1962)

* (out of 4)

Early nudie sexploitation flick about G.G.S.F.G.G. (Good Grandma School For Good Girls), which comes under attack from Frankenstein's monster, Dracula and The Wolf Man. This is your typical sexploitation film as it contains non-stop nudity and plenty of dancing. As usual, there's very little going on in this film and everything that does happen is just happening so you can see young women with their shirts off. The monsters contain as bad as a make up job that you can have considering they just wear store bought masks, although the Wolf Man actually has its own style. Needless to say all the performances are bad, direction laughable but what did you expect?