Review: THE HORRORS OF HELL HOUSE by Tim Connery at Bridge House Theatre, Penge 5 - 23 May 2026
‘affectionate homage to the glory days of Hammer horror’. ★★★
The 1970s were another country and they did things differently there. Not least in the world of British cinema where the twin warhorses that had kept the domestic industry going for 50 years were beginning to run out of puff.
On the one hand, the kind of cheap and cheerful comedy exemplified by Kenneth Williams and Barbara Windsor was soon to stop Carrying on.
On the other, camp horror classics populated by granite-jawed heroes and diaphanously clad heroines fleeing a nameless dread through ‘Transylvanian’ forests (that could not more clearly have been the back of Berkshire) were teetering beyond self-knowingness into self-parody.
And so to The Horrors at Hell House, an affectionate homage to the glory days of Hammer horror that brings four actors and a director together in 1970 in a dilapidated house to rehearse a forthcoming film shoot. The staples are here: the grand actor who needs a job, even this job, to pay for his drink; the Swedish ingenue who wants to be a serious actress when she’s finished running around in a nightdress; the solid English rose (Ellie Ward); and the good looking young dummy who’ll play the hero (Alfredo Mudie).
The milieu of the Hammer productions is excellently recreated. Cue a dark and stormy night. A screeching violin. A clap of thunder. Blood-red credits on the back wall announcing the title and the cast. The visuals of the show are brilliant, with Bridge theatrical director Luke Adamson’s audio-visual backdrops creating sets of wallpaper, bookshelves, grand halls and dark basements.
And the performances are strong – Paul Winterford’s messianic (or is it satanic?) director, Jay Joel’s booming-voiced, seen-it-all, didn’t-like-it, fading star actor, and Julia Thurston’s serious and intelligent bit of fluff in particular.
The play, for all its wit and erudition, is, though, a bit of a shapeless narrative that meanders through a series of quite talky (if often funny) situations until a plot emerges from the fog well into the second half. Characters are too often required to deliver long soliloquies that deliver more exposition and research than story or character development. Tension’s ratched up nicely through visuals and surprises, with the right level of comic undertone – the unexpected arrival of a man without a face (who’s come to fix the window), for example. But it falls again, not least as some characters (the fading star who always seeks another drink, the young male hero who worries repeatedly about his hair or his dimness) become a little repetitively static.
The author’s love for and knowledge of the 1960s horror movie are profound and enjoyable, and digressions into the worlds of the likes of Aleister Crowley and Dennis Wheatley are just the kind of thing for an audience who’ll know what they’re getting into here. n to be cinematic about it, a few cuts and a fair bit more action could help the more general viewer. If there’s one bit of Hammer-style iconography not captured in a long show, it’s the 75 to 90 minute running time of the likes of The Devil Rides Out or The Curse of the Werewolf and To The Devil a Daughter. This canters past the two-hour mark, and a tighter plotline and a bit more pace wouldn’t hurt, but it’s still fun and beautifully produced and performed.
THE HORRORS OF HELL HOUSE by Tim Connery
Directed by Andrew Hobbs
Bridge House, Penge – 5 May to 23 May 2026
Box Office: https://thebridgehousetheatre.co.uk/shows/hell-house/
Reviewer David Weir’s plays include Confessional (Oran Mor, Glasgow) and Better Together (Jack Studio, Brockley, London). His novel The Honourable Member for Murder will be published by Allison and Busby on 20 August 2026.
