La Residencia aka The House That Screamed (1969)
A young girl arrives at an isolated boarding school in the south of France where several students are believed to have run away, but it appears a mysterious assassin is stalking the dark hallways of the ghostly manor....
One of the best Giallos that I have seen so far and it comes with a intriguing plot but minimal amount of gore & body counts! Still this is a pretty underrated (as I haven't heard of it before!) masterpiece of its kind where pure tension & great level of suspense appears lurking in many secret rooms and passageways of that Gothic mansion of the boarding school. From the beginning to end it builds & hold an eerily fantastic level of atmosphere that you can only find in the films of brilliant directors like Bava, Argento or Hitchcock who was the master of portraying such a subtle terror on screen. Lilli Palmer as the head of the school was solid with the given role and most of the beautiful girls as her students with well developed characters & acting contributed to make it a gem to watch with a pretty simple but twisted & effective storyline. Overall, a perfect mixture of Giallo mystery with Hammer-style Gothic set pieces....my kind of tea!:)
Highly recommended for all the HDC Giallo/slasher fans.
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