HOUSE ON STRAW HILL

Paul Martin is a novelist who rents out a secluded cottage in the British countryside to complete his new book, a pretentious sex romp. Plagued by recurring paranoid nightmares, he has split with his girlfriend, Suzanne, and is having problems writing his book. Paul employs a secretary, Linda Hindstatt, to type the manuscript for him. Paul meets Linda at the railway station, where Linda is intimidated by a couple of youths, prompting Paul to give them a battering. After settling into the house, Linda takes a walk in a field where the men rape her, but soon gets revenge when she shoots them both with a shotgun.

Meanwhile, Paul keeps having nightmares, and all his advances on Linda are rejected. Linda insinuates herself into the household, displacing the housekeeper, Mrs. Aston. When a suspicious Mrs. Aston returns to the house at night, she is murdered: her throat slashed with a knife. As Paul and Linda work on completing the novel, he asks Suzanne to come back, only for Linda to seduce her. As Linda and Suzanne have sex, Paul then crashes his car into a river, the brakes having been tampered with (assumed) by Linda. Suzanne is murdered in the shower by Linda, and everything erupts into a pandemonium of violence.

The secretary reveals her motive and kills those around the novelist, unleashing a spree of violence that culminates in pandemonium and death.

The ending brings the simmering hostility and secrets to a violent head, with Linda’s quest for revenge leaving no one unscathed. Her actions expose the destructiveness of betrayal and obsession, turning the isolated house into a stage for both psychological and physical devastation. The film’s conclusion cements its reputation as a controversial and unsettling entry in the seventies horror-thriller canon.