The House That Cried Murder (1973)
An accountant is forced to deal with the repercussions for his actions involving an heiress.
Genre
Characters/Groups
Girl at the Wedding - Kathy McKenna
Boy at the Wedding - Paul Crafin
Wedding Guests - Ed Lally, Ellen Wyan, Izzy Singer, Jackie Page, Jim Quinn, Rudy Cherney, Lydia Schmidt, Mary Chamberlain, Richard Marshall
Wedding Band - Don Murray Orchestra
Character thumbnails with links to profiles
Detailed Synopsis
Barbara shows David the house she designed which is currently under construction. She tells him the house reflects her and she could live in it forever. She takes him inside and tells him the story of how she was driving with Roger and saw a neighborhood development and decided to build a house. She talked it over with The Father and begged him for the money to build it, until he relented. They have a picnic outside and Barbara asks David when he is going to ask The Father for permission to marry her. He tells her, she should be the one to bring it up to The Father. Days later, Barbara insists to The Father that she wants David and intends to have him. The Father tells Barbara that there is something negative about David's character and doesn't think David really loves her. She tells him, she is going to marry David no matter what and tells The Father to have her stepmom make the arrangements.
On the day of the wedding, the Wedding Guests cheer Barbara and David on their marriage, while the Wedding Band plays. Helen shows up to the wedding to the surprise of David. Girl at the Wedding tells Boy at the Wedding that if she gets married, she isn't going to have a wedding, but run away somewhere. Boy at the Wedding tells her it is hard to know what is relevant or irrelevant theses days. Boy at the Wedding flirts with Helen and repeats his assertion that it is confusing times and hard to know what is relevant or irrelevant. David butts in and tells Helen to meet him upstairs in five minutes. David and Helen meet in a room in the house and start kissing. Barbara notices David has been gone for some time and goes into the house. She catches David and Helen together, grabs a pair of scissors and slashes David in the arm with them. She tells David that The Father was right and walks outside covered in David's blood. She yells at the Wedding Guests and smashes the wedding cake and runs off, before getting in her car and driving away.
Two weeks later, The Father and David have a meeting at a restaurant. David asks The Father if he has heard from Barbara, but The Father tells him, Barbara is probably hiding. The Father warns David that Barbara has a cruel streak and has a propensity for violence. He goes on to tell David a story of when Barbara tormented her pet chicken until it pecked at her and then brutally murdered it. David goes home and tells Helen maybe she should move back to her place for the time being, but she refuses. David and Helen go to a fair and are followed by a private investigator. When they return home, David gets a phone call from an answering service who tells him Barbara is watching him. The Father has another meeting with David and tells him he hired a private investigator to find Barbara. The Father then brings up Helen and David starts to make excuses for being with Helen. Someone drops off a package at David's house and Helen takes it inside and opens it. David gets home and finds Helen dressed in a similar wedding dress as the one Barbara wore at her wedding. Helen tells him, she thought he had it sent, but he tells her to take it off. That night, Helen has a nightmare in which Barbara strangles her and David has a nightmare of being trapped in the house that Barbara built. In the morning, Helen wakes up next to a bloody chicken head. She screams and throws it in the tub and as she opens the refrigerator, she finds the rest of the bloody chicken. The phone rings and the answering service taunts Helen. Helen hears a noise upstairs and grabs a pair of scissors. She goes upstairs and finds a prop skeleton wearing the wedding dress. The phone rings and Helen tells the person on the other end that they won and she is leaving David. David comes home and finds Helen gone and sees the wedding dress. He goes into the bedroom and sees the blood from the chicken and finds the chicken head. The phone rings and the answering service tells him, Helen left and he should visit Barbara at the house she built.
He drives to the house and goes inside. He finds The Father inside, who tells him the house is a monument to Barbara. The Father then shows Barbara's embalmed body resting in a coffin. He tells David, he found Barbara dead from having hung herself. He admits to David, that he is the one that has been harassing him and Helen. The Father takes David to the coffin and as David is staring at Barbara's body, The Father attacks him with an axe. David wakes up and hears Barbara laughing. He finds her and is upset and accuses Barbara of playing a prank on him. David tells her he is going to divorce her and Barbara shows him their corpses lying on the ground. Barbara then tells David that they will be together, forever in the house and David screams.