70s sexual objectification lol

The scariest thing about this book was when my sky light window decided to smash as I was reading it and I dismissed as it being my overactive imagination deciding to spice up this boring book, while I was in a dark house by myself. Yeah, it was the only inside panel so spooky.

This book is from 1970 and apparently being lesbian was the scariest thing possible. Or this was written by a man who wants to fetish woman so it's just someone being sexually oppressed. This book is compared to Shirley Jackson beautiful novel, however, they not that similar except both have a group of four people investigating ghosts. Also, lesbians. One makes me want to dig up a body, just to disrespect it, in the way the author disrespects women. This novel falls into "Men should be banned from writing horror" camp. I found the writing of the women very annoying especially as the men were not sexually haunted. 

Disability is treated interestingly here and interesting, I mean it's definitely has ableism. A slur even and disrespectful to intersex people. 

Surprise, we have a disabled villain reveal at the end that rises several questions for anyone who knows anything about the dangers of amputation in 1800s.  

We have a disabled main character, but he also a constant sceptic in an haunted house so definitely mocked by the narrative. I don't think he disabled in the film adaption but I'm gonna have to re-watch that because I rated it very high and I'm curious to remind myself why. Possible because all the sex stuff is not there, but definitely had questionable things on disability too. 

The sexual nature of this book has aged it terribly. Frankly, now it would be comical for some of the tad bits.

Like Jesus's giant penis.

. Yes, Americans are still weird about sex but gay people exist in normality now and thanks to the internet, I treat kink in horror like an annoying jump scare. I think it would be funny to adapt it now, with modern people. Maybe that's just Scary Movie 2. 

The haunting is meant to be personal but I get the women confused and had to go back to figure out who was being sexually violated this time. 

The ending is too convoluted. Frankly, you can only do a fake out once, where this book does three times and expects me to respect it. 

The setting of Christmas is incredibly random and it's never justified, or brought up until the last line of the novel. Why start this thing five days before Christmas? I mean in real life, stuff happens whenever but story tend to have reasons for being set at Christmas. 

Anyway, Maine continues to be the most cursed place in Horror. Its funny seeing it appear pre-Stephen King who has a thing against his home state. I will probably read "I am legend" but probably done on the novel front for Matheson.

this definitely could’ve benefited from less sexual content and the general vibe of misogyny was a bit iffy, plus the casual lesbophobia but when you’re reading this in 2024 as something that was written in the early 70s you definitely have to expect these sorts of themes and executions

the book itself for the most part was extremely tense and the hauntings were really well written, the ending threw me a bit and made the horror of the house feel a little silly when you knew the real story, but overall this was extremely fun to read and a really good one for spooky season

i didn’t have any real connection to the characters and i feel like the women in this were treated incredibly poorly by the author, however it did work in the context of the house and the owner’s depravity and over sexual nature so swings and roundabouts with this one i guess! 

remember to keep in mind that this is not a modern novel when reading, and that a lot of the content is included probably for shock factor as well as being a product of the time period 

Although there were some genuinely frightening parts of this book and a few fun plot twists, Hell House was a strange blend of horny scenes and cheesy dialogue. Some of it can be chalked up to the 70s commercial horror writing style, but this really wasn’t for me.

More gross than it is scary, but with enough creepy moments to keep reading. The ending felt rushed. 

I did enjoy this more than I thought I was going to. I got this as a blind date with a book, so I didn’t know what is was(I wasn’t happy with it to be honest). It’s like the hunting of hill house, but I enjoyed this more because there was a lot of action. I was never scared, but I was disgusted. I don’t know why most horror has to have such gross sexual content in it. Honestly I would probably skip this, but it wasn’t horrible.