Paul Martin is a novelist who rents out a secluded cottage in the British countryside in order 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 she is raped by the youths 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 he and Linda work on completing the novel, Paul asks Suzanne to come back only to have Linda seduce her. As Linda and Suzanne have sex, Paul then crashes his car into a river, the brakes having been tampered with. Suzanne is murdered in the shower and everything erupts into a pandemonium of violence.
The house being used for the film was, at the time, being rented by the director, James Kenelm Clarke. The house is situated on Spring Elms Lane, Little Baddow and is a private residence. The rape scene and the final scene were filmed in the wheatfield adjoining the back garden. Other locations used around Little Baddow were Mowden Hall Lane and its junction with North Hill, the bridge on Church Road as it crosses the River Chelmer, and the ford in Hurrells Lane. The station scenes were filmed at Hatfied Peverel Railway Station In a documentary on the DVD of The Blood on Satan's Claw Hayden says that this is the only movie she regrets making and was not the film she had made originally.
The current 18-rated UK DVD version has around 51 secs of cuts, with edits to the rape scene, some of Suzanne's death, and the shot of her dead in the shower.
In 2013, Severin Films released a Blu-ray and DVD double-disc set of Exposé under the title, House on Straw Hill. In the preamble on the disc, Severin state that this version was created using the original negative and two prints of the film to give it its uncut form. The quoted running time is 84 minutes.
Remake
The film was re-made in 2010 as Stalker , directed by Martin Kemp, starring Anna Brecon as writer Paula Martin and Jane March as Linda, and with original star Linda Hayden as "Mrs Brown".
