Review of The Ice House

A middle-aged customer discovers the sinister secret of a health resort situated in the remote English countryside. Last and oddest of the (original) series, too obscure and mannered for its own good but still managing a reasonable sense of dread throughout. In fact, what we have here are a curiously terrified masseur who, upon confiding to the hero that he intends to leave, promptly disappears; the siblings who run the spa harbor an unhealthy affection for each other and make no bones about it; our hero is somehow attracted to the titular building via the peculiar scent of a nearby vine; the Turkish bath is peopled by a sinister bunch of malevolent elderly gentlemen. Although our inquisitive hero does venture into the ice house, naturally all evidence of his discovery is concealed when the owners are confronted by it. The film joins a small band of contemporaneous films – like Arthur Hiller's THE HOSPITAL (1971), Alain Jessua's DOCTOR IN THE NUDE (1973), HORROR HOSPITAL, (1973), Michael Crichton's COMA (1978), Lindsay Anderson's BRITANNIA HOSPITAL (1982), etc. – that casts a suspicious look at the professional Health sector.