House of the Long Shadows (1983)

American writer Kenneth Magee (Desi Arnaz Jr.) goes to a remote Welsh manor on a $20,000 bet – can he write a classic novel like Wuthering Heights in 24 hours? Upon his arrival, however, he discovers that the manor – believed to be empty – actually has several, rather odd, inhabitants.

House of the Long Shadows is historically important because it’s the only film to co-star a classic quartet of horror cinema: Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine.

The screenplay allows each one of them to make a grand entrance, as they enter the house one by one on a stormy night for a rather strange family reunion.

Price is the very flamboyant Lionel Grisbane; Lee is a rich businessman named Corrigan who wants to buy the house; Cushing is the fussy Sebastian Grisbane, who speaks a lot like Elmer Fudd; and Carradine is Lord Grisbane, the family patriarch.

For them alone, the film is well worth watching.

However, the producers also cast Desi Arnaz Jr. in the lead role. To say the young Arnaz is out of his league is to put it mildly. Although he has moments of charm during the course of the film, he mostly comes across as a young punk who is barely believable as a best-selling author.

Rounding out the cast is Sheila Keith as dotty old Victoria, who plays the piano and sings off-key; Richard Todd as Sam Allyson, Magee’s agent; and Julie Peasgood as Mary Norton, Allyson’s attractive young secretary.

There are also a couple of stragglers who end up stranded in the old dark house, Diana (Louise English) and her boyfriend Andrew (Richard Hunter).

Once everyone is assembled, the murders begin, and we have a sort of And Then There Were None situation in which the characters are bumped off in various gory ways, one at a time.

Nothing is quite as it seems, however, and there are several plot twists.

One is that Corrigan is the murderer, actually a mad member of the Grisbane family himself; then it’s revealed that Lionel was actually the mad one who had his brother put away in his place.

Before long, however, we discover that every murder has been staged and all of the characters are actors from a local theatre.

In the final twist, it turns out that everything we have just witnessed is, in fact, Magee’s novel – he has succeeded in writing his book overnight, and he collects the wager from his agent.

Lionel Grisbane
Vincent Price
Corrigan
Christopher Lee
Sebastian Grisbane
Peter Cushing
Kenneth Magee
Desi Arnaz Jr
Lord Elijah Grisbane
John Carradine
Victoria Grisbane
Sheila Keith
Mary Norton
Julie Peasgood
Sam Allyson
Richard Todd
Diana Caulder
Louise English
Andrew Caulder
Richard Hunter

Director
Pete Walker