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Introduction
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THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR
The original screenplay was entitled The Dark, which Armstrong wrote in the early part of 1960 shortly before his sixteenth birthday and the UK release of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. “The whole Psycho experience proved so overwhelming,” he recalls, “that I humbly put my script of The Dark in a drawer and tried to forget I’d ever written it.” The screenplay lay forgotten until 1967 when Armstrong had already embarked upon a film career with his short, The Image and found a small commercials company prepared to produce a feature provided he could secure the majority of the finance. With nothing immediately to hand, he re-wrote The Dark and returned to one of his earlier backers of the non-realised feature, The Initiate. When the production house then insisted upon him securing a distribution guarantee as well as an advance agreement for certification from the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors), a frustrated Armstrong sought advice from its Secretary, John Trevelyan. They had met a year earlier when the BBFC had warned there would be a refusal of certification on earlier screenplays, The Initiate and A Floral Tale, should a company choose to film them. Trevelyan had, nevertheless, been sufficiently impressed with Armstrong’s writing to take a personal interest in his career from that point on and, now, hearing of his plight “It really was a case of my being in the right place at the right time,” Armstrong points out. “I met with Tony on Thursday and gave him the script to read. He called me on Saturday and asked me to meet him on Monday. When I went to his office, he told me he wanted to purchase the script and make the film. I told him I wanted to direct it. A contract was signed and I walked out of his office with a cheque for £300. It was as fast and as simple as that.” At that time, the idea of an unknown in his early twenties with no experience directing a feature film was unheard of. The prime reason for this was that in 1967, in England, due to the closed shop operated by the Unions, it was virtually impossible to break into the film business in any capacity whatsoever - not even as a runner - let alone as a director. It operated the Catch-22 principle: You couldn’t get a job unless you were a Union member and you couldn’t become a Union member unless you had a job. The few who managed to surmount that hurdle were then forced to remain working in that particular field until a job situation opened up in another field and when no other Union member was available to take the job on offer. In other words, if after maybe 2 or 3 years of being on the Union’s waiting list, you managed to land a job as a Runner then, from that point on, you could only ever apply for other Runner jobs. If you wanted to move up the ladder and become, possibly, a 3rd Assistant Director - then you could only do so if no other 3rd Assistant Director in the Union happened to be available to take that job on offer. Predictably, opportunities to change job titles seldom occurred and when they did, it was usually after years of waiting for appropriate vacancies to arise. With such a rigidly enforced system in place, it meant that the dream of becoming a film director only happened to a few veteran Union members after decades of considerable patience and slog through numerous delineated job areas. Besides, how often are director’s jobs on offer to untried people? - especially when a Union insists that all registered directors must be approached and offered any available job first. In such an environment, therefore, the idea of a young man in his early twenties being allowed anywhere near directing a feature film in the UK was a true phenomenon in the film industry. Michael Reeves was one such. Coming from a moneyed background, he had solved the Union problem by seeking employment outside the UK (as Assistant Director on The Long Ships and as writer and 2nd Unit Director on Il Castello dei Morti Vivi). Then, in order to direct his first feature film, (Lago di Satana/Revenge Of The Blood Beast UK/She-Beast US) he wrote and produced it abroad. Having thus established himself, he was able to repeat the process in the UK for his second feature, The Sorcerers which Tigon distributed. He was directing his third and, tragically, final feature, Witchfinder General for Tigon and American International at the time Armstrong signed to direct The Dark. If Michael Reeves was exceptional in the industry at that time, then Michael Armstrong was even more so. He was a year younger and, unlike Reeves, from an ordinary working class background with no money of any kind behind him. He had only been able to go to RADA because of a local Council Grant. At the time of meeting Tony Tenser, he had barely been out of drama school for two years and had no experience or track record in the film industry whatsoever. When Tigon announced Armstrong had been employed to direct The Dark from his own screenplay as a British/ American co-production, it was not only ground-breaking it was a historical first which served as an inspiration and opened the gate for others. “At the time, I was so unaware of just how extraordinary the situation was in which I’d landed,” Armstrong recalls. “When you’re that young, you tend to take everything for granted and think it’s your right to get opportunities to do what you want. I don’t mean I got particularly big-headed or anything like that - at least, I hope I didn’t and The circumstance which had provided such opportunities to people like Armstrong and Reeves was the collapse of the studio system in Hollywood and the rise of small independent companies specialising in low-budget exploitation movies to feed the new teenage audience which had emerged in the ‘50s; insatiable for taboo-breaking sex, horror and rock‘n’roll. By 1967, the addition, to the aforementioned, of drugs, freethinking and the hippy revolution had finally placed youth culture ahead of everything else in the marketplace. Being young and talented was “in” and as far as these new small independent movie companies were concerned, cheap. These companies only paid lip service to the Unions, broke every rule in the book and were responsible for launching the careers of many young untried film-makers. American International led the way in America and Tigon Films in England. It was a brief co-production deal between these two companies, which provided Reeves with his third feature, Witchfinder General and provided Armstrong with his first. As with Mark Of The Devil, much speculation and misinformation has evolved over the years regarding The Haunted House Of Horror and Armstrong’s battles with front office interference. It is only in recent years that he has spoken publicly about those events, in particular during his director’s commentary on the UK 2005 release of the film on DVD. 
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The Haunted House Of Horror was made in 1968.
with The Dark, arranged for him to meet Tony Tenser of Tigon Films. Tenser had already found success through investing in one young talent, Michael Reeves and was primed to take on another. Armstrong fitted the bill perfectly.
I don’t think I did - but I did believe I was now on my way to fulfilling some kind of destiny thing and that from now on it would be nothing but fame, fortune and world-wide recognition of my genius. Of course, once I started, all that crap soon got knocked out of me - which, in some ways, is a bit sad, really, because with the loss of that naivety went a certain kind of innocence.” |
Copyright © 2004-2005 Michael Armstrong |