Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984, Kenny Everett, Pamela Stephenson, Vincent Price) – Classic Movie Review 13,872

The 1984 British comedy horror film Bloodbath at the House of Death stars Kenny Everett, Pamela Stephenson and Vincent Price.

‘The movie it took a lot of guts to make…’ Mmmmm, yep!

Co-writer/ director Ray Cameron’s slack and amateurish 1984 British comedy film Bloodbath at the House of Death stars Kenny Everett, Pamela Stephenson, and Vincent Price, along with Gareth Hunt, John Fortune, Sheila Steafel, Graham Stark, David Lodge, Don Warrington, Cleo Rocos, Pat Ashton, Oscar Quitak, Tim Barrett, and Barry Cryer.

Sad to say that Bloodbath at the House of Death is a dispiriting, unfunny, poor-taste horror spoof from TV comic and DJ Kenny Everett. It is a nonsensical mess of a miserable movie.

The sorry story by his TV scriptwriters Ray Cameron and Barry Cryer has doctors Lukas Mandeville (Kenny Everett) and Barbara Coyle (Pamela Stephenson) sent with several other scientists to investigate radioactive readings and inquire into a series of ritual deaths at the creepy Headstone Manor.

It is possible that Everett’s fans might like it, and he is typically exuberant and silly as the mad doctor Lukas Mandeville, but otherwise it is only watchable for Vincent Price’s outrageously camp performance as the 700-year-old sinister satanist, the Sinister Man.

It is bloody and very rude, but Carry On Screaming did horror spoof much, much better.

It was released by Columbia-EMI-Warner Distributors in the UK in March 1984 with an 18 certificate, but it was released on DVD in the UK in July 2008, re-rated with a 15 certificate.

Running time: 88 minutes.

It was shot on location in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, England.

Kenny Everett, Ray Cameron and Barry Cryer wrote the popular 1978-81 Thames Television comedy series The Kenny Everett Video Show and the BBC’s The Kenny Everett Television Show, which ran from 1981 to 1988.

It was being made in the wake of Kenny Everett’s rabble-rousing appearance at the Young Conservatives conference where he bounded onto the stage and shouted ‘Let’s bomb Russia!’ and ‘Let’s kick Michael Foot’s stick away!’ to loud applause (the dignified ageing Labour Party opposition leader used a walking stick). Supposedly this led to film critics reviewing the film harshly. That wasn’t because the film was dim-witted at all, was it?

Cleo Rocos often appeared on TV with Kenny Everett, using her glamour and curves for comedy.

Incredibly, a novelisation of the film was also published.

Kenny Everett (born Maurice James Christopher Cole; 25 December 1944 – 4 April 1995).

Everett supported Margaret Thatcher’s right-wing Conservative Party and infamously appeared at the Young Conservatives conference in 1983. As a gay man, he did a lot of damage by publicly supporting a Conservative government that enacted Section 28, a clause of the Local Government Act that made it illegal for councils to promote gay rights. He was diagnosed with HIV in 1989, developed AIDS in 1993, and died in 1995, aged only 50.

The Young Conservatives is the youth wing of the Conservative Party in the UK for members aged under 30, originally formed in 1906 as The Junior Imperial and Constitutional League.

© Derek Winnert 2026 – Classic Movie Review 13,872

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