The House That Screamed

And it screamed “Parsnips!” No one knows why.

1969

Review: July 1, 2008

Director: Narciso Ibáñez Serrador

Starring: Lilli Palmer, Cristina Galbó, John Moulder-Brown, Mary Maude

You betcha.

THE SETUP:

Students are disappearing mysteriously in this creepy boarding school.

DISCUSSION:

Lately I am enduring this syndrome where I watch movies in two parts, which is usually fine, but sometimes you find that you’ve seen enough after the first hour, and can’t generate any interest to see how it turns out. This happened with Street Trash, which I had an almost visceral revulsion toward finishing, and the supposedly life-altering Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring, as I just couldn’t gear up for a life-affirming tale of some old Korean grandfather and his tender relationship with his grandson or whatever. Now, girls being brutally slaughtered in a creepy boarding school, that’s for me!

This is from of the Elvira sets I got, which are becoming must-haves in terms of quality control. The other movies on the other disc I watched were the creepy Blue Sunshine and wonderfully horrid Monstroid. And Elvira did me right [and then some] with this delightfully cheesy and genuinely spooky gem.

We begin with an introduction as a guardian brings a new pupil to the school in a carriage. While this is going on we notice an extremely lush and pretty score in the Pino Donaggio vein by Waldo de Los Rios—although later I can’t say I noticed the score much. Then we’re in a big class of girls, where the headmistress, Mme. Fourneau, is leading the girls through a writing exercise. One of the girls, Isabel, is refusing to work and throwing a great deal of snot in Fourneau’s direction. She is sent to some wicked punishment, and Fourneau goes to see this new girl, who is Therese. The guy bringing her is her “uncle.” Turns out Therese has a fairly scandalous provenance, but then do many of the girls. In fact, the school is kind of meant for illegitimate children others would prefer forgotten.

Therese is spooked by noises as they tour the school, and at this point I thought “There HAS to be a hunky but retarded handyman hanging around or something like,” and we shall whether I was right. After Therese is menaced by a beetle and experiences further spookiness, she joins the other girls for bed. The girls are very nice at first, and the whole thing turns into a big Spice Girls pajama party, until bad influence girl Isabel starts ragging Therese on her mother’s past, and quickly turns shockingly nasty and exploitative as the other girls close in and rip off her clothes as Isabel grabs the WHIP! And guess what else—assistant headmistress Irene is watching!

Meanwhile, Mme. Fourneau finds her son, Luis. She keeps Luis hidden away from the other girls, because he’s adolescent and horny and those girls, being illegitimate and all, not to mention being cooped in up in a girls’ school, are understood to be S-L-U-T-S. It was Luis spying on Therese and causing the spooky noises. You see—I KNEW there had to be a creepy male goon around here somewhere. But Luis is actually very mild-mannered and milquetoast in reality. Anyway, Mama Fourneau tell him that he must wait to find the right girl, “a girl like ME. Who will love you and take care of you as I do.” You know, a little incest subtext at the right time can work wonders.

SPOILERS > > >
Well get THIS, bitches! The reason Isabel is in such a snit is that she and Luis have been carrying on a clandestine affair, and Fourneau suspects. Furthermore, there is discussion of this other guy Henry [I don’t think we ever see Henry] who the girls TAKE TURNS SECRETLY MEETING TO ATTAIN SEXUAL SATISFACTION. They are apparently quite equitable about it and even switch dates if one doesn’t work for someone. Hmm, progressive school.

So after assistant headmistress Irene has a little chat with Therese, saying that life will go better for her if she will “Just obey me in everything,” Isabel, in solitary confinement, gets whipped by Fourneau for her insolence. She goes to say goodbye to Luis, then leaves him and tries to escape in a long and very suspenseful sequence that I would describe as Argento meets De Palma, and ends up getting repeatedly stabbed!

Soon after, Luis starts spying on and becoming interested in Therese. Hmm, he didn’t seem to spend long mourning poor Isabel, huh? Then his mom pops round again to once more tell him that he should find a nice girl, one like her.

But I wonder if you’ve had your fill of lesbian-tinged sexual humiliation? No? Well, lucky for you, Irene goes up to have a little chat with Therese. She asks questions about her mother, which grow more and more pointed as Therese grows more upset. Then she forces Therese to don the clothes her mother used to wear as a prostitute, and to sing for all of them. It is a really horrifying scene of torture, essentially. Genuinely disturbing.

Okay, there are going to be some big-ass spoilers now, and if you don’t know more about the movie [and I would advise you not to read more about it elsewhere], you should really watch it before finding out what happens. Seriously, because the ending has some really good twists and shocks in store.

BIG-ASS SPOILERS NOW > > >
Therese decides to run away. She, too, goes to see Luis before she runs, and he gives her a key, and tells her “You’re the only friend I ever had.” You at home might be asking yourself “…Right, what about all the other girls you’ve had little affairs with all this time?” She leaves, making a daring escape by climbing along rickety ledges. This way she makes it back in to the front part of the school, but finds the window there locked. Irene is outside, trying to catch her when she runs. Then we have the kid of old-fashioned technique I just love, as we have a looooong zoom all the way across the room into a door knob—and then suddenly a hand creeps around the door! Poor Therese has her throat slit! And Irene, waiting outside, saw something suspicious!

Irene finds Fourneau in her study, and informs her that Therese ran, but never made it out of the house. She confronts her that strange things have been happening, leading Fourneau to force her to relinquish her keys. After some tormenting of the not-entirely-stable Fourneau in class the next day. Irene decides that she will make a run for it. But she has no keys—and it seems that someone is pursuing her, trying to prevent her escape, and—that’s all I’m going to tell you!

I will say, however, that the identity of the killer turned out to be a real surprise to me. I can be dense, however, and I’m sure others will guess it—BUT, I doubt even those keeping ahead of the story will guess the final twist, which shocked even jaded old me. And the thing is, looking back, it all fits in beautifully, was well-prepared for, and makes perfect sense. This movie is genius!

But, while we are still in the spoiler zone, let us step back to admire the unusual narrative whammy this movie hits us with. We introduce Therese, but for a long time, Therese is just an observer, and it seems that Isabel is going to be the main character. Then Isabel is killed, and Therese moves into the center as the main character. Then THERESE is killed, and Irene moves into the center! Amazingly, it all works really well and keeps the energy of the movie up. It’s also remarkable that the film is able to suddenly shift into Irene being our sympathetic heroine, given the all-out nastiness of her humiliation of Therese earlier. You gotta hand it to this movie, it’s scary AND interesting.
< < < SPOILERS END

Ultimately, a home run! The spooky girls’ school genre is so overdone it’s difficult to think of anything new there, but this film finds a way to set up a bunch of interesting characters and scenarios, to give us genuinely shocking and unexpected scenes, and to set up a bunch of surprises and twists that are unforeseen, yet upon looking back have been prepared for well in advance. This is all in addition to the intriguing narrative gyrations described in the spoiler section. I also like the slow, De Palma-esque technique of a lot of the suspense sequences. As I was rejecting heartwarming Korean films in favor of this one, I said to myself “I want something scary,” which is sometimes not to be expected from cheesy movies, but this one delivered cheese and scares in spades! I am SO all about this movie.

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

Yes! It’s just a very good, very lurid shocker with just enough cheesy lustrousness to keep it fun.

RELATED MOVIES:
WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? Is another well-regarded horror film from the same director. Others love it, but I found the main characters too stupid.