The House that Bled to Death is episode five from the 'Hammer House of Horror' TV series. This is one of the more famous instalments as its name seemed familiar to me before even having seen it. It's set in a house where an elderly man gruesomely murdered his wife some time earlier, a young couple and their daughter move in and supernatural events immediately follow. As you can probably assume from this synopsis, this is the entry from the series that took influence from the then very recent blockbuster horror hit The Amityville Horror.
Like the others in this series it has on location photography, this was for budget-based reasons but it definitely adds something given the mundane nature of the house makes it more believable. But of course in keeping with others in the series, the events are far from normal. The old rusty machetes used in the historical murder mysteriously show up time after time, the family cat is violently killed and, most memorably of all, a children's birthday party is interrupted when a pipe breaks and sprays all the kids with gallons of blood. All of this is directed pretty well by Francis Megahy, who helmed the previous entry Growing Pains, which was a much inferior episode to this one. And to top things off it has a very effective twist ending which even has a twist of its own. Some people aren't so keen on this ending but I thought it was genuinely good and unexpected. Not only that it can be read as a comment on the real Lutz family whose spurious claims founded the Amityville book and movies. A good episode overall.
Like the others in this series it has on location photography, this was for budget-based reasons but it definitely adds something given the mundane nature of the house makes it more believable. But of course in keeping with others in the series, the events are far from normal. The old rusty machetes used in the historical murder mysteriously show up time after time, the family cat is violently killed and, most memorably of all, a children's birthday party is interrupted when a pipe breaks and sprays all the kids with gallons of blood. All of this is directed pretty well by Francis Megahy, who helmed the previous entry Growing Pains, which was a much inferior episode to this one. And to top things off it has a very effective twist ending which even has a twist of its own. Some people aren't so keen on this ending but I thought it was genuinely good and unexpected. Not only that it can be read as a comment on the real Lutz family whose spurious claims founded the Amityville book and movies. A good episode overall.