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Hillbillys in a Haunted House
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - VCI Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (9th December 2024). |
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The Film
 On the road to Nashville for Jamboree, country western singers Woody Wetherby (Ferln Husky) and Boots Malone (Touch of Evil's Joi Lansing) along with their business manager Jeepers (Don Bowman) get caught up in a shootout between local law enforcement and foreign spies. With night falling quickly and a storm coming, the trio are unable to find accommodations in the ghost town that is Sleepy Junction and stumble upon the crumbling antebellum Beauregard Mansion. Locals inform them that the house is supposed to be haunted, and that people who have investigated the strange sounds and lights emanating from the property have never returned. Woody and Boots are not so willing as Jeepers to believe in ghosts and they settle in for the night, and things do indeed go bump. Of course, the haunting is a front for the secret basement operations of spies Miss Wong (Dimension 5's Linda Ho), Dr. Himmel (House of Dracula's John Carradine), Gregor (The Hound of the Baskervilles' Basil Rathbone), Maximilian (The Wolf Man's Lon Chaney Jr.), and gorilla Anatole who are acting on behalf of foreign interests to steal a formula from the nearby Acme Missile Base. On their trail is agent Jim Meadows (Out of the Past's Richard Webb) of M.O.T.H.E.R. (Master Organization to Halt Enemy Resistance), and both sides suspect the country music trio of being enemy agents. A sequel to Las Vegas Hillbillys which also starred country singers Husky and Bowman – along with Mamie Van Doren (The Navy vs. the Night Monsters) as Boots competing for screen time with Jayne Mansfield – Hillbillys in the Haunted House has a title that explains it all but does not deliver in execution. The film opens with a singalong on the road which establishes musical sequences that play less like lip-synching the recordings than miming them – particularly since the production seems to have utilized fully mixed studio recordings with backing instrumentation and vocal effects baked-in – followed by a poorly-staged action scene that also sets the tone for subsequent locked-down camera tussles, mismatched day-for-night shots, and then some half-hearted old dark house atmospherics before a flip of a switch drenches the sets in flat bright lighting for the remainder. The spy subplot is given away early so the corridor wandering by the main trio is just time-wasting in between musical numbers, including a bizarre attempt by Husky to serenade Bowman to sleep, Lansing imagining herself in the old South wearing gowns from the 1940s, a pair of numbers by Sonny James and his band who just happen to wander over from town to investigate the trio's presence in the house, a number by Merle Haggard on Jeepers' television set that requires no plug and gets great reception during an electrical storm, and another one by Husky to prove to government agents that he is a singer and not a spy. Even worse is that everything gets resolved at the seventy minute of this eighty-five minute film and the last fifteen minutes consist of seperate Jamboree performances by the trio, other artists, and one more by Haggard (whose numbers are the only good ones). Husky is wooden while Bowman only shows comedy chops while singing – during his 'fraidy cat scenes he just trails off – although Lansing seems like she was capable of more than just reacting to the musical numbers and screaming. Rathbone and Carradine manage to retain their dignity, developing a banter between their characters as a means of coping while Chaney does not get much to do but at least gets regular dialogue than some of his other later roles (particularly his last ones for Al Adamson a couple years later), and Ho is relegated along with Allen Jung (The Mask of Fu Manchu) to the evil Asian role. Helmed by jobbing director Jean Yarbrough who moved from lower tier Universal horrors like House of Horrors and She-Wolf of London to Poverty Row horrors like The Brute Man and The Devil Bat and then to episodic television, Hillbillys in the Haunted House was not only his final feature but also that of Rathbone. While country western fans might get a kick out of Hillbillys in a Haunted House, it possesses little replay value for horror fans. 
Video
Released theatrically by Woolner Bros., Hillbilllys in a Haunted House has pretty much always been with VCI on home video from VHS to DVD and this more recent Blu-ray/DVD combo edition featuring a 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer. The new transfer looks better than what came before, and indeed it looks better than VCI high definition transfers in general but it is not without flaws. In addition to some digital noise reduction, the grading is inconsistent with the bright interiors sporting rich colors – the saturation of which bleeds into the skin tones making Husky's face look almost the same color as his hair – while the day-for-night tinting of the exterior scenes differs from shot to shot (this is partially a fault of the original shoot but some shots look very blue and flat while others look like dusk). There is at least one night-for-night shot in which the noise in the crushed blacks in the frame appears frozen. 
Audio
The sole audio option is a 16-bit LPCM 2.0 mono track which sports clear dialogue and effects while the source music throughout always sounds like recordings laid onto the track rather than the actors singing with instrumentation underneath. Optional English SDH subtitles are included. 
Extras
Extras start with an audio commentary by film historian Robert Kelly who provides background on the film's director and its cast, noting that much of the publicity around the time focused on propping up Husky as a lead rather than its supporting cast of horror character actors (Kelly also expounds upon the ways that the film fails to capitalize on its horror elements despite its title). Kelly also provides information on the country music performers who might be less familiar to the disc's target audience despite their notable achievements in music – revealing in some cases that we are more likely to have heard some of their songs even if we have never heard of the singers themselves – as well as the prolific career of gorilla suit peformer George Barrows in ape roles.  The disc also includes a photo gallery (6:06) and a trailer for Las Vegas Hillbillys (1:20) which is due out on Blu-ray in December despite being the earlier film.
Overall
While country western fans might get a kick out of Hillbillys in a Haunted House, it possesses little replay value for horror fans. 
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