La residencia (1969)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Director:

Narciso Ibáñez Serrador

Writers:

Narciso Ibáñez Serrador (writer)
Juan Tébar (story)

Release Date:

1 January 1971 (Sweden)

Genre:

Horror | Thriller

Tagline:

The Suspense is Sheer Torture in ... "The House That Screamed"

Plot:

Lilli Palmer owns and runs a school for wayward girls in France. Her absolute discipline has fostered a social order among the girls with rampant sex...

Plot Keywords:

Girl | School | Sex | France | Repression

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Lilli Palmer	...	Mme. Fourneau
Cristina Galbó	...	Theresa
John Moulder-Brown	...	Luis
Mary Maude	...	Irene
Cándida Losada	...	Mlle. Desprez
Tomás Blanco	...	M. Baldie
Pauline Challoner	...	Catalina
Teresa Hurtado	...	Andree
Conchita Paredes	...	Susana
Víctor Israel	...	Brechard
María José Valero	...	Elena
Ana María Pol	...	Claudia
Blanca Sendino	...	Cook
Paloma Pagés	...	Cecilia
Sofía Casares	...	Margarita

Also Known As:

The Boarding School (International: English title)
The Finishing School (USA)
The House That Screamed (USA)

Runtime:

99 min

Country:

Spain

Language:

Spanish

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Argentina:16 | Sweden:15 | USA:GP

Filming Locations:

Comillas, Santander, Cantabria, Spain

Company:

Anabel Films

Trivia:

Contains the first ever close-up slow-motion murder in Spanish cinema history.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Mad Ron's Prevues from Hell (1987) (V)

Gothic set designs, fantastic widescreen visuals

THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED (La Residencia)

Aspect ratio: 2.35:1 (Franscope)

Sound format: Mono

(35mm and 70mm release prints)

A young girl (Cristina Galbó) arrives at an isolated boarding school in the south of France where several students are believed to have run away, but were actually the victims of a psychotic killer...

Odd mixture of giallo mystery and Hammer-style Gothic, set in a labyrinthine girl's school where principal Lilli Palmer struggles to contain the passions of her youthful charges, all of whom she considers 'marked' by their sublimated sexual desires. However, Palmer is quickly revealed as a hypocrite with an incestuous crush on her handsome teenage son (played as a child-like simpleton by John Moulder Brown), and the students are forced to endure a regime which fosters cruelty, rebellion and murder. Palmer dominates the film with effortless grace, and there's solid support from Mary Maude as the ice-cold beauty who makes life miserable for heroine Galbó. Memorable set-pieces include a slow-motion murder in the school's greenhouse, Galbó's doomed attempt to flee the building at midnight, and - believe it or not - an erotically-charged sewing circle! But the film reaches an apex of horror in its closing moments, when the killer is unmasked during a showdown in the attic, staged with stunning conviction by debut director Narciso Ibáñez-Serrador (¿QUIÉN PUEDE MATAR A UN NIÑO?).

But the *real* star of the show is cinematographer Manuel Berenguer (55 DAYS AT PEKING, KING OF KINGS, etc.), whose prowling camera-work makes a virtue of Victor María Cortezo's Gothic set designs, and the widescreen compositions are judged with startling clarity (indeed, Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA owes an obvious debt to the style and tone of Ibáñez-Serrador's movie). For all its virtues, however, THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED is a little too leisurely in places, and the film's sumptuous visual aesthetic disguises a fairly routine plot line, spiced with 'subversive' trimmings. Flawed, but beautiful.

(English version)