Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Scott LeBrun Leonard Maltin describes this Pete Walker film as a "lurid melodrama" as if that's a bad thing. Really, this is quite entertaining and appropriately infuriating, as story author / producer / director Walker uses it as a means of giving the Catholic church a scathing indictment. His main character is a priest, Father Xavier Meldrum (Anthony Sharp) who uses the institution of the Church to do such things as tape record confessions (for the purpose of blackmail) and serve up a poisoned wafer at communion! Troubled young Jenny Welch (Susan Penhaligon) becomes the victim of his machinations, while a progressive young priest, Father Bernard Cutler (Norman Eshley) might possibly discover what Meldrum has been up to."House of Mortal Sin", a.k.a. "The Confessional", is a very well made and engrossing picture, telling a story that is certain to push some buttons. Yet, he dares to make Meldrum a more than one dimensional character, one that could even earn some sympathy, despite the basic fact that this guy is a murderer. Of course, Meldrum doesn't quite see himself as the bad guy (although he does feel some guilt, especially after a case of mistaken identity). He naturally believes that he's on the side of Good, and this, coupled with the fact that people give little credence to Jenny's accusations, ensures that Meldrum seems to be untouchable. Walker gives the excellent Sharp and his favorite actress, Sheila Keith (as a nursemaid to Meldrums' bed- ridden mother), some real showcase moments towards the end, and they are riveting. The whole cast is fine, though, with Penhaligon, Stephanie Beacham (as Jenny's sister Vanessa), and Eshley delivering personable performances.This sordid story does flirt with genres such as horror (and gets pretty gory), Giallo (the priest does wear black gloves sometimes), and exploitation (there's a tasteful moment of nudity from Penhaligon), and keeps on track thanks to its storytelling, themes, and uncompromising attitude. Walker does also adhere to at least one trope of the horror genre by having the climactic action take place on a dark and stormy night.The ending is inevitably going to anger some viewers, but it's not exactly that unbelievable.Eight out of 10.

hwg1957-102-265704 Pete Walker set his films in pleasant English settings but in those settings something horrible is always going on, His masterpiece 'Frightmare' superbly mixes the domestic with the cannibalistic. Here it is the local priest who takes services and hears confessions in a dowdy looking suburban Catholic church but he is also obsessive about sexual behaviour and commits a few murders too. This mixture of the ordinary with the transgressive is the director's forte and he makes Hammer films look a bit tame. The murder of Mrs Davey at the altar rail is a fine example of this.The priest is played by veteran actor Anthony Sharp who has a unique voice and he is excellent. Yes he may be mad and homicidal but he is also pitiful. As his mother another veteran Hilda Barry has no lines of dialogue but conveys her fear adeptly with her eyes and hands. The great Sheila Keith with one eye (the character that is not the actress) as Miss Brabazon is not in it enough but she commands the screen as usual when she is on. Towards the end she gives a smile that gave me goosebumps. The other cast members are adequate.It is perhaps a little longer than the material can bear but it keeps one's attention and Stanley Myers provides another excellent score.

Coventry The events in "House of Mortal Sin" make it more than clear: repressing your sexuality can have serious consequences!! This third collaboration between controversial director Pete Walker and scriptwriter David McGillivray is lesser known than "Frightmare" or "House of Whipcord", and maybe also not as good, but it still is very inventive exploitation with some twisted themes and exhilaratingly horrific sequences. Walker and McGillivray openly assault the Catholic Church here and associate the "holy institution" with hypocrisy, sexual perversion and even murder. Walker's intention clearly was to shock audiences and to stimulate an angry reaction from the Church. Perhaps he couldn't achieve all this, but "House of Mortal Sin" nevertheless remains an enjoyable and schlocky horror movie, surely worth purchasing in case you're into unhinged 70's cinema. The story follows a troubled young girl who hesitatingly goes to confession at her local church. The priest, Father Meldrum, is quite out of his mind and starts stalking the girl and even killing the so-called sinful men in her life. No matter who the girl turns to for help, Father Meldrum stays above suspicion at all times because he's a respected man of the Church and she's just a mentally unstable blonde. The main storyline gets a little tedious at times but there's a delightfully insane sub plot involving the priest's seemly 273-year-old senile mother and the disturbing housekeeper played by Sheila Keith! Eccentric characters and the downright oddball relationships between them are still Walker's greatest specialty and also the unhappy ending is present. The gore and violence is less outrageous than in "Frightmare" but the priests' killing methods are quite ingenious and, of course, religiously themed, like poisoned sacred wafers and rosary strangulations. Recommended!

world_of_weird Coming hot on the heels of the sleazy HOUSE OF WHIPCORD and the outrageously gruesome FRIGHTMARE, veteran exploitationer Pete Walker and his puckish screenwriter David McGillivray decided to stir up some more mischief, this time aiming their vitriol at the hypocrisy of the Catholic church, with a blackmailing killer priest who uses the tools of his trade (incense burners, rosary beads and communion wafers) to deal out death to non-believers. Given the hoo-hah the Monty Python team caused with LIFE OF BRIAN four years later, you'd have expected the controversy to rage as Pete and David had hoped it would, but HOUSE OF MORTAL SIN barely raised a murmur - most likely because it's a rather dull and restrained affair compared to their earlier exercises in wonderfully hideous terror. Anthony Sharp is fine in the lead as the crazy cleric, alternating between pompous bumbling and trembling mania at the drop of a hat, whilst Susan Penhaligon makes a memorably vulnerable victim, but the film feels too much of a cut-and-paste catalogue of borrowed elements (the mother fixation from PSYCHO, Sheila Keith basically reprising her WHIPCORD role as Sharp's demented housekeeper, the dysfunctional family business from FRIGHTMARE) to really ring true. The set-piece murders are impressive, and the ending is as bleak and as desolate as you'd expect, but the film contains more padding than a cheap mattress and Walker seems to have confused tension with tedium in several scenes. Still, it's entertaining enough for a slow evening.