Be prepared for withering lows when approaching the snooty Public Domain horror picture Wuthering Heights: House Of The Damned, directed by Becca Hirani with a screenplay by Liana Failla, based on the novel by Emily Brontë. Poor sod Lockwood (Ross Townsend-Green) arrives at Wuthering Heights, with stableman Joseph (Gordon Joseph Miller) taking his horse in a very undignified way. Joseph tells him not to bother knocking, but Lockwood, having proper manners, insists on knocking his little heart out at the entrance, to no avail. He opens the door and starts to go into the parlor. Behind him, the brooding master of the house, Heathcliff (Sky Cheema), comes out of the shadows. He mentions to Lockwood that he understood it was good manners to knock before entering a house, so why did he have none?
“Her death makes Heathcliff more and more unhinged, lashing out in homicidal fashion.”
Because of a storm that rolled in, Lockwood is forced to spend the night. Outside the window of his room, he sees an apparition of the ghost of Catherine (Elle O’Hara), screaming in the rain. During later visits back to the castle, Lockwood finds out from the servant Nelly (Nicola Wright) that even though she was married to another, Catherine held a burning love with Heathcliff before dying in childbirth. Her death makes Heathcliff more and more unhinged, lashing out in homicidal fashion. Lockwood soon finds himself further tortured with indignities, all the while finding out more of the secrets in that damn house.
If Wuthering Heights: House Of The Damned had been a better movie, it could have been the next frontier of the Public Domain horror movement. While converting Disney properties into splatter operas has an obvious naughty appeal, the notion of dark versions of classic literature offers even more intriguing possibilities. We could have three flesh-eating musketeers, Robinson Crusoe goes to Hell, or even five little homicidal peppers. Also, many of these novels already have horror elements that have been watered down in previous adaptations, so the nasty versions can be nasty merely by sticking more closely to the source material. So I was excited for Wuthering Heights: House Of The Damned, as I always found Brontë’s novel gothic AF and felt it deserved a cinematic portrait in black. And it still does, as this sure ain’t it.
"…a long slog up and down Buggery Hall until you fall flat. "
