The grot of the old house

I have a weird fondness for the old houses that were used as locations in British 70s films, that are just so fucking gross. All the 100 year old dumps, with warped walls and peeling wallpaper stained with tobacco, doors that look like they're made of cardboard and ancient mould everywhere. Just rickety as fuck. 

I've seen it recently in a bunch of Hammer House Of Horror episodes, where working class horror takes place in working class homes, and I've seen it in a most recent re-watch of the most excellent Get Carter, where Michael Caine's lodgings and the homes of the locals are all yuck as fuck.

We don't have the history to have that sort of accumulated squalor here in New Zealand - the closest I've seen of it in real life is when we first visited the UK in 2007, and stayed in the back rooms of a pub that smelt of 200 years worth of gas leaks. And so much of it was swept away by the brutalism of the late 20th century, as terraced houses full of ruffians were bowled down, and they were shoveled into apartment blocks.

It also felt - with many notable exceptions - that a lot of low budget films moved out of these cold locations and onto sets, which didn't have the lived-in nastiness. (Although the set for The Young Ones legitimately looked like one of the most disgusting dwellings in the history of fiction.)

In the digital age, everything shines in sparkling detail, and even the grossest abodes can have a strange beauty. But that aesthetic can still be found here or there over the years, in the filthy flats of Trainspotting in the 90s, or in the sheer squalor of the main house in Matthew Holness' Possum.

I wouldn't live there, because I'm not insane, but I'll always love stories in houses that are falling apart and haunted by their own history.