For the wholly uninitiated, Seven Keys to Baldpate concerns a writer of melodramatic fiction who makes a bet with his publisher that he can knock out a novel in 24 hours. This undertaking is set to take place at Baldpate Inn — a closed-for-the-winter summer resort — in order to assure he can work undisturbed. The whole idea is that the writer is in possession of the only key to the place, but as the title suggests, that’s a lot of hooey, and as a result the writer is besieged by a parade of weird characters. House of the Long Shadows sticks to this concept, but changes the locale just a bit — and the weird characters have gotten decidedly weirder. Where the originals were a lady in distress, crooked politicians, runaway wives, a woman-hating hermit who plays ghost, etc., we get the last members of a decadent family gathering for a kind of party and some unknown event that happens at midnight, and involves someone or something locked away in a tower room. Oh, yes, the lady in distress is retained. The switch to horror trappings works quite well, and while it certainly doesn’t bring the film up date, it makes it more palatable in a 1980s setting. (Much more so than Desi Arnaz’s 1970s disco look does.) It’s just easier to believe in the campy horrific melodrama than in the old mystery. And the blood-and-thunder climax definitely outdoes the earlier versions.
Of course what we’re really here for is to see the old horror troopers together in one movie, and House of the Long Shadows does not disappoint here. Even for 1983 it has a nicely retro feel — as its PG rating suggests. It carries the sense of being something that might have been turned out in the 1960s, which is reasonable given its stars. Vincent Price is the best served of the cast. His flamboyant Lionel Grisbane suggests nothing so much as a washed-up ham actor with a checkered past, which means it was clearly written with Price in mind. But the others are well-served, too — even good old B picture stalwart John Carradine — just not quite as extravagantly. After all, Price is the only one who could get away with an entrance (backed by a fog machine working overtime) where he’s waxing philosophical to such a degree that he cuts off Arnaz by telling him, “Don’t interrupt me while I’m soliloquizing!”
The Thursday Horror Picture Show will screen House of the Long Shadows Thursday, Nov. 5, at 8 p.m. in Theater Six at The Carolina Asheville, hosted by Xpress movie critic Ken Hanke.
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