Reviews
This is probably the best scary story I’ve ever read. I think short story writers who write novels are my favourite.
The amount of times I rolled my eyes... Some "classics" deserve to stay in the past!
sexist as hell, homophobic as hell, got nothing on shirley jackson . MAN this guy hates women. especially lesbians. giving “she breasted boobily” 2 GENEROUS stars for some (rare) well-done scares. such a blatant, unsuccessful copy of the haunting of hill house !!
A classic Horror novella that hasn’t aged well, full of gratuitous objectification
**This review contains minor non-plot spoilers related to content issues**
I wanted to get a jump start on spooky reading, so I pulled Hell House from my TBR backlist.
Initially, my thought was that this was basically a knockoff of The Haunting of Hill Housewith lots of gratuitous violence and sexual content thrown in. Both are about four people confined to a haunted house that drives them mad. But whereas The Haunting of Hill House was wonderfully atmospheric, Hell House was an obnoxious combination of tedium and sadistic sexual fantasies.
Frankly, I was bored during most of this book. I had absolutely zero interest in any of the characters. Which also meant I did not care what happened to them. For such a short book, it had a lot of dull periods – which in turn only made the horror sequences feel like they were trying so damn hard to be shocking and failing to do so. For example, there is a part that lists out all of the supernatural phenomenon that has occurred in the house. It was a massive list no apparent reason other than to prove that this is the scariest of all haunted houses because every possible paranormal occurrence has been recorded there. The list was one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read. And far from creeping me out, it just made me want to laugh. You know when you are watching an ad for some medication and they start listing a gargantuan amount of ever-more-dire side effects? That is how this list felt! I truly think Matheson looked up every little thing ever conjectured to be tied to the paranormal and plopped it on that list. “Apports, Asports, automatic painting, bilocation, clairaudience, crystal gazing, glossolalia, metagraphology, obsession, parakinesis, radiesthesia, skotography… these are just a teeny, tiny sampling of the gems on this honking list. And yes, I had to look some of them up. Then there were other odd ones like “book tests, paraffin molds, and slate writing.” The list was also needlessly fluffed out with every possible physical sight, sound, and sensation: “Breezes, percussion, raps, smells,” etc. As if someone would say, “No, don’t go into that house. There are smells.”
If you found the previous paragraph tedious, then you have an inkling of what reading the whole thing was like.
The story, set in 1970 and published in 1971, was also glaringly a product of its times. And while I can gloss over some of the casual sexism, ableism, and general language that is no longer PC, there were some things that were too blatant to ignore. The first being the level of homophobia in this book. The second being the male gaze rape-fantasy violence to which the female characters were submitted.
The haunted house in question was owned by a psychotic man who created a hedonistic cult there where people participated in increasingly violent orgies before eventually devolving to murder and cannibalism. In the present day, the four characters are returning the house to document the phenomena. Despite being decades since the house was sealed up, people who enter it start to experience a rapid descent into hedonism – often in the form of uncontrollable sexual urges. The descriptions of previous people in the house describe homosexual acts as uncontrollable urges caused by the location and seemed to imply that these were corruptions to be lumped in the with the sadism, torture, and cannibalism. Then one of the female characters started to have lesbian urges and was disgusted with herself, and then there was lots of praying to get rid of the evil ghosts controlling people. Because of course there had to be a religious element to go with all the puritanical sexual repression.
Then there was all the objectification. One of the women happened to be one of the most pathetic, subservant female characters I’ve ever read. To add context to this statement: she is the wife of the researcher and only goes on the trip because she says she will kill herself if she has to be separated from him for even a week.
The objectification of the two women rapidly increased throughout the book. And all of it felt like a display for the sexual gratification of men. The male characters suffer violence from the ghosts. The female characters suffered a wide range of sexual things from being uncontrollably horny to sexual assault. And yes, sexual objectification and violence against women often go hand in hand in horror stories. If there is a hot chick in a horror movie she will get murdered either in the shower or right after having sex. Heaven forbid sexy women die with their clothes on. So while the snuff film fantasy is far from exclusive to this book, that did not make it any more palatable to read.
Also, I cannot take any book seriously when it contains quotes such as, "Let his God cock sink into my mouth," she said. "Let me drink his holy, burning jism."
Overall, Hell House was a bizarre combination of boring and gross. But not scary. Other than the shock value when this was first published, I do not understand the hype at all.
Oh, and I am still confused on how a haunted house can cause “paraffin molds.” That just makes me picture a ghost spending its afterlife doing arts and crafts.
RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 2 Stars
Writing Style: 1 Star
Characters and Character Development: 1 Star
Plot Structure and Development: 2 Stars
Level of Captivation: 2 Stars
Originality: 2 Stars
Bastante previsible a decir verdad. Al menos logra crear cierta atmósfera opresiva.
Me hubiera gustado que no alargaran la historia y le dieran tantas vueltas a lo mismo. Al inicio del libro iba todo muy bien cuatro personajes con creencias diferentes y una casa maldita todo tenía muy buena pinta pero todo se va al traste a la mitad del libro, siempre es lo mismo y hasta en algunas partes puede resultar denso al final del libro mejora un poco, pero me paso lo mismo que en Gótico el final no me termino de convencer.
Better than I thought it would be. Also far more violent and sexual than the movie they made of it. Excellent wrap-up.
Hmmm...so this book was interesting. I kind of waffled between giving it 3 or 4 stars. I think it probably would be a solid 3.5 stars at this point. Once I got going with it I tore through the book because I wanted to know what happened, but at the end of the day, even though it was on countless lists of being one of the scariest books people have read, I really didn't find it all that scary. That probably says more about me than the book. Now to be fair, I made a point to only read it during the day because again, many people said it terrified them. . It was still an enjoyable, fun read though, and I am certain there are some people it will scare the bejeezus out of.
The first half was painfully slow and hard to get into, the second half was more fast-paced but also filled with an uncomfortable amount of sexual torture/assault of the women in the house. I like Matheson's writing but this is something I don't think I'd be able to recommend widely.
Wow. You know, while reading this at first I wanted to quit. It took such a long time to wind up that I was bored and worried that I would just hate it. I read reviews of how sexualized it was and got worried. I haven't been this scared by a book in a long time. It wasn't perfect. I actually have a lot of qualms with how the women were portrayed as being weaker and how Edith was very much infantile in how she communicated and how her role was written. Definitely not a book for you if you dont like gore, if you don't like sex being aligned with sin immediately (or with corruption). But if you liked American Horror Story, I don't see how this is that much worse in terms of content. Honestly even AHS goes farther than this book does when it comes to depicting sex and violence together. I definitely could not watch this as a movie.
This was overly sexualized for me (not even in a good way) and I found myself bored with the story. Most of the “horror” that I felt stemmed from the grossly sexualized components of this story. Not for me.
Oh my GOD, that was just 300 straight pages of the best kind of agony. Hell House read like a horror movie on paper, which is exactly what I was in the mood for. There is some explicit sexuality in these pages, and some legitimate spine-tingling scares. I think the worst part for me was when the story seemed to be wrapping up, but there was still twenty or so pages left to go. You just knew everything was about to fall apart, and not everyone was going to make it out of that house alive. If you're in the mood for a straight-up adrenaline ride, something thrilling, indulging, and damn creepy, I'd recommend you take a look at Hell House. It was kind of awesome.
