I wish he spent half as much time developing his characters as he did coming up with disturbing sex scenes for his female characters. But Matheson kept doing it to such an extent that I stopped being disturbed and became bored. As I said, there are some effective scenes. I'm not a prude about revulsion horror when it's done well. Rather than building up dread and terror, Matheson goes all-in on gore, demented sex, gross-out scenes, etc. I think this length hurt the book's tension, too.there's nothing worse for a horror movie than watching it go on too long, and that principle applies here. You could have cut about fifty pages and I do not think it would have made much of a difference. At 301 pages, Hell House is not super long, but I think it dragged throughout and it failed to justify its length. I don't mind long novels when the length is warranted. I could have been great and it just isn't. This is the kind of book that is not really outright bad, but it's just really disappointing. There are some well-done, scary scenes, and Matheson writes some good lines and dialogue.īut the novel just isn't that good. The characters all have potential-the skeptical, scientist, the scientist's repressed wife, a medium, and a survivor of the prior attempt to visit the house.
The set-up is great (billionaire offers four people $100,000 each to stay in a haunted house for a week prove whether or not there's life after death), and the set-up also eliminates a common problem in bad horror movies where you wonder why the characters don't just leave the haunted house. I will say that I found it to be a very readable book: I finished it in about four days. Here's some examples:īased on my prior Twilight Zone experience with Matheson and by the fact that Hell House kept showing up again and again on these "Best of" lists, I decided to check it out. Looking up lists of Best Horror Novels and Best Haunted House novels, I saw Matheson's Hell House frequently show up. I decided that I should read a horror novel as part of my summer reading since my experience with the genre is so limited. Hyde (a favorite of mine), which I reread last fall. The most recent book I've read that could be classified as horror is Dr.
I read The Shining years ago, probably when I was in early high school. Yet despite my love of horror movies and shows like The Twilight Zone, I have barely read any horror books. Nightmare at 20,000 Feet is one of my favorite episodes ever. I am a huge fan of the original Twilight Zone, which is how I discovered Richard Matheson.
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