Right, this is going to take a bit of explaining for non-UK and slightly younger readers. Kenny Everett was a popular DJ and later comedian in the UK for many years, having lots of radio shows, his own sketch show, lots of panel show appearances and many more things. However, he did have a bit of a habit of causing a lot of backlash against himself; this film was meant to be his big break into an all new world, but it got overshadowed by an incident where he turned up at the 1983 Conservative Party conference yelling stuff like "let's bomb Russia!" whilst wearing a pair of novelty giant foam rubber hands. Yes, really. So apart from being a Tory supporter (which did get him quite a bit of criticism since he was gay, and this was the time of Section 28), you can think of him a bit like the Russell Brand of his day.
As for the film itself, it's pretty clearly a horror spoof, which was probably done specifically because the whole Video Nasties debacle was going on at the time. Written by comedian Barry Cryer (who lives not to far from me in Hatch End; maybe I should go ask him about this?) and director Ray Cameron (Michael McIntyre's dad!), it does pull a lot of direct references, including from Poltergeist, The Shining, the Amityville Horror, and quite a few more. I must really question the taste of one extended reference though; several times there's a gag featuring the main female lead (Pamela Stephenson) which is referencing The Entity, which if you don't know is basically a supernatural rape narrative. Making that a subject of saucy comedy is more than a little... yeah, that would not fly today! Overall though, it's a great big ball of horror cliches ready for mockery, thrown together to such a degree that in early cases, people thought the reels in the wrong order as it lurched to one thing to another. Seriously, the film goes so far to completely change genre at the end, purely for the sake of more gags.
I'm not going to lie, this film is all over the place, it doesn't really work as a whole but it does have it's moments. Surprisingly for how irreverent it is, there are some parts where the horror actually does work, and have some surprisingly chilling effects, like the reveal of the doppelgangers of the main characters, and the opening attack by a cult of satanists. Vincent Price is a complete delight, he seems to know exactly what kind of spoof this is, and clearly is having fun poking fun at is horror image. There's quite a few well known faces in the cast too, including Don Warrington and Gareth Hunt, who all get their moments, it's not just Everett all the way through. And yes, there are quite a few gags, as dumb as they are, which made me laugh, like the "argh, a bat!" moment, or the singing in the bar. Bloodbath at the House of Death is a complete mess of a thing, but not an entirely unenjoyable one, I say it's worth a curiosity watch.
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