This very recognizable and enjoyable actor died in 2022. I have been very negligent in posting about some of the entertainers I have admired who passed away during the run of this blog (not just this year). I need to make amends in my own mind and list those who have passed that I have very badly neglected.
David Warner appeared in a number of memorable roles over the years. I was fond of his performance as the mentally challenged instigator of the societal clash in Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs”. He played the inquisitive photographer who stumbles on the supernatural forces at work on Gregory Peck’s family in “The Omen”. Warner played Jack The Ripper in the time travel adventure “Time After Time”. And he can be found in some of the theatrical and television series productions of the Star Trek franchise. Wow.
Cool career. Definitely an actor with a particular style. Equally at home playing good or evil characters.
I am trying to pinpoint the origins of how this movie was made. What haunted house film had come before that could provide “inspiration” to get this film produced? I have guessed “The Omen” (haunted in a different way) or maybe even “The Legend of Hell House” but I am not sure.
“House of Evil” is a mismatch of ghostly manifestations taking place in an abandoned mansion which has been recently purchased by a scientist as the site of a new research facility. A team of fellow scientists and assorted specialists join the professor in his new digs and then ultimately get offed in new and different ways through the course of this whackfest of a film.
The final moments of the movie are truly bizarre and, frankly, farfetched. A good way to pass a dark and stormy Fall night.
“What is this place?” It is not as if we haven’t been here before or heard this particular line repeated over and over again in a multitude of movies. I would have to categorize this sample of dialogue as one of the quite often imitated exclamations of myriad characters who become the mouthpieces of unimaginative script writers. Call it dependence on cliché, simple laziness or a belated regurgitation of all of the media crap they have ingested over the years but this particular example of puzzled profundity pops up a lot. Here’s just one example from one of The X-Men movies. I remember that The Omen (1976) used the term but way back then the line of dialogue was a bit more fresh.
A varied collection of unusual movie and music video clips.
