Rating: 
Summary: in a class unto itself ... wickedly enjoyable
Review: 'Hell House' is an enjoyable yet puzzling read. Without a doubt it is the most outrageous, tawdry, over-the-top haunted house story ever conceived. It is so utterly preposterous that one wonders if Richard Matheson wrote it as a farce/satire or as serious literature? I have to think the former since the author has written truly compelling horror stories before, such as 'I am Legend'. 'Hell House' is the polar opposite of that horror classic.
Yet still, 'Hell House' is compulsively readable. All the characters are deliciously strange or outright neurotic, the ghosts are all perverts, lesbianism pops up at the most unexpected times, and female nudity abounds. Again I didn't say all this makes any sense.
Bottom line: definitely falls into the "so bad that it's good" category.
Rating: 
Summary: To "Hell" and back
Review: The first night I started this book, it seemed like my heart was pounding the entire time -- for hours. I really got the chills when I read the seemingly endless list of Observed Psychic Phenomena at the "Mount Everest of haunted houses":
"Apparitions; Apports; Asports; Automatic drawing; Automatic painting; Automatic speaking; Automatic writing; Autoscopy; Bilocation; Biological phenomena; Book tests; Breezes; Catalepsy; Chemical phenomena; Chemicographs; Clairaudience; Clairsentience; Clairvoyance; Communication; Control; Crystal gazing; Dematerialization; Direct drawing; Direct painting; Direct voice; Direct writing; Divination; Dreams; Dream communications; Dream prophecies; Ectoplasm; Eidolons' Electrical phenomena; Elongation; Emanations; Exteriorization of motricity; Exteriorization of sensation; Extras; Extratemporal perception; Eyeless sight; Facsimile writing; Flower clairsentience; Ghosts; Glossolalia; Hyperamnesia; Ideomorphs; Ideoplasm; Impersonation; Imprints; Independent voice; Interpenetraton of matter; Knot tying; Levitation; Luminous phenomena; Magnetic phenomena; Materialization; Matter through matter, Metagraphology; Monition; Motor automation; Newspaper tests; Obsession; Paraffin molds; Parakinesis; Paramnesia; Percussion; Phantsmata; Poltergeist phenomena; Posession; Precognition; Presentiment; Prevision; Pseudopods; Psychic photography; Psychic rods; Psychic sounds; Psychic touches; Psychic winds; Psychokinesis; Psychometry; Radiesthesia; Radiographs; Raps; Retrocognition; Scriptograph; Sensory automatism; Skin writing; Skotography; Slate writing; Smells; Somnambulism; Stigmata; Telekinesis; Teleplasm; Telescopic vision; Telesthesia; Transcendental music; Transfiguration; Transportation; Typtology; Voices; Water sprinkling; Xenoglossy."
I loved the understatement that followed: "Edith put down the list numbly.... What kind of week was it going to be?"
Understandably, I made myself go to bed at 2:55 a.m. -- just before the 'witching hour.'
The second night I started reading earlier so perhaps that's why there wasn't the same level of adrenaline. Or it could be that the book just couldn't ultimately live up to the terror it was building up to. The above list makes one anticipate all sorts of horrors, but most turn out to be of "Exorcist" ilk (and more than a touch of "Caligula"). Which is still quite scary. But inclusion of more of the above phenomena would have been truly petrifying.
Rating: 
Summary: Tells More About Author's Sexual Obsessions
Review: I feel myself fortunate having seen the movie first, because if I had read this book I would have had no inclination to see the film, which would have meant missing out on an excellent horror flick.
It appears that the author has used the haunted house theme as an excuse to fill a book with sexual obsessions and an intent to shock people with lurid, obscene religious images. One has to wonder what Mr. Matheson has against women, as the sexually explicit and very painful attacks upon the character Ms. Tanner indicate something not quite normal and were totally unnecessary in building the suspenseful horror so prominent in books of this type.
Because the film downplayed the sexual elements, while not totally covering them up, a truly scary story was told. With the book and its almost soft porn thread which runs throughout the narrative, the horror truly takes a backseat to the perverted sexuality so apparent on almost every page. That Belasco was a deviant in all conceivable aspects may be a necessary component of the story. But the reader could do without the intense descriptions of both the depraved acts committed in the house as well as the above-mentioned attacks on a principle female character. Her older counterpart, the researcher's wife, fares better only because her apparently suppressed sexuality is explored in place of the actual and vividly described attacks on the medium.
I don't consider myself a terribly religious person, but Matheson even managed to offend me with the description of Belasco's perverted crucifix and what eventually occurred with this item of worship. Simply terrible and totally unnecessary.
A poor excuse to use a haunted house theme to hide a soft porn book. This book tells more about the inner depths of the author's mind then it does about the terrifying Belasco House.
I guess I gave it two stars simply because it spawned a very decent and frightening horror film. I actually was not only disappointed by the book, but it is one of the few in my life that I have even regretted reading.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Read
Review: This is a good book if you know how to comprehend the material. Smart people will appreciate this book, even if they don't like it.
This book will probably bore you when it trys to be scary in the traditional sense WHICH IT DOES. But the majority of the book explores the minds of the characters and the history of the house making you wonder what would happen to you if you ever came across Belesco, freaky stuff(at least to those of us with moral fiber).
I would read more reviews if I were you There is much more information to be read
Rating:
Summary: Great Writer, Great Story
Review: Ive read a few of Mathesons books before this one and I loved each one of them. I knoew a little of the story line before reading it, I mean, its just your basic haunted house book. It was more than that I found. It was very well written, very spooky and weird at times, and even a little erotic. The ending was surprising, and I thougt it was a great read. Not the best Matheson book Ive read, and Im sure its not the best hauted house book ever written, but its totally worth checking out!
Rating:
Summary: Matheson's tribute to Jackson still has bite
Review: "Hell House" isn't your typical gothic terror novel. Writer Richard Matheson's novel attempts to create a haunted house novel without the gothic trappings that have so dominated the genre. With a tip of the hat to Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Matheson takes many of the same themes and gives us a more modern, updated version. It's a pretty daring move and not one that was done out of the need for money or laziness. Think about it--do tackle a type of story that had been done definintely by another talentd writer. The challenge must have kept Matheson up at night as he tried to figure out ways to spin a story just as riveting using the same basic plot device and yet make it uniquely his own.
I have to disagree with other reviews here regarding Hell House; while it isn't Matheson's most accomplished novel (I Am Legend is a better written novel of terror as is his fantasy novel Bid Time Return which was made into the movie "Somewhere in Time")but it does exactly what it sets out to do--create a sense of foreboding and menace. Like Stephen King's The Shining (which actually is an inversion of the haunted house formula; it's about a haunted man triggered by a house filled with evil spirits), Hell House digs in deep into the characters and what ultimately drives them to seek out the house. These characters are as haunted in some respects as the main character in Jackson's novel and King's. Like all great haunted house novels, Hell House is about the changes the house triggers in these haunted, scared individuals not the evil spirits possessing the house itself.
There are only 36 dramatic situations in the world. The Greeks created all 36 and every variation on these 36. We live in a time of mass media where great writing is devauled. Matheson's novel develops characters and puts them in a difficult situation where their own Ids are allowed to play and contributed to the mayhem of a house at once possessed and possessive of the people it "takes".
Hell House becomes the vehicle to explording the dark side of these seemingly "normal" individuals. It's a credit to Matheson that the characters are so distinctive and yet he can still pay tribute to the genre, one of the best novels from the genre and still create a spooky experience. It may not be raw (like many of Clive Barker's well written novels) or nasty enough for some folks, but that's part of its charm as well. It's designed to instill terror not absolute horror. Terror is about anticipation horror is seeing the thing you anticipate. The former can instill greater, more powerful emotions because you haven't seen yet what might be stalking you and it's larger than your imagination. Just like Matheson's book.
Rating:
Summary: A fairly good read
Review: I was compelled to keep reading, although grew weary toward the end.
The beginning seemed to offer promise of some real scares, but it devolved into bloodletting and stupidity. Also, the plot is too close to Shirley Jackson's
The Haunting of Hill House -- which is far superior -- too many horror story writers think that over-the-top gore and explicitly bloody and "perverted" (please - lesbianism? Isn't this the 21st C.?) sex will carry the book, when I find that what scares me is exactly the opposite - subtlety, ambiguity, the feel of someone perhaps looking over your shoulder -- that's the scarey stuff of nightmares.
Read Shirley Jackson and the Turn of the Screw instead.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I held high expectations for Hell House after tearing through I am Legend and viewing old Twilight Zone episodes. Unfortunately, the stunning turn of events I waited for with every turn of the pages never came. Maybe I read the book through the eyes of someone in 2004 instead of 1970, the year in which the book is set.I agree with several other reviewers: the sexual overtones just didn't work for me. The history of the house was creepy as hell (pun intended), but I had virtually no connection to any of the characters aside from Fischer; I even felt his character wasn't explored far enough! I'll give it this: there are a few good moments of sheer freakout, but overall, it's a letdown. Fortunately, it's a quick, easy read.
|
