House (1986)

“Five years and 200 million dollars after Friday the 13^th”, itself an insipid cash-in of John Carpenter’s Halloween, Sean Cunningham is back with yet another opportunistic money-maker, and a transparent attempt to cash in on both the popularity of the Amityville franchise, and the recently released Ghostbusters, making for some very confused schlock starring a grossly miscast William Katt as an ex-Vietnam vet turned bestselling horror author. And while the film went on to spawn three sequels, just seven short of Friday, it is only because the material at hand was so generic that I could be combined with any type of sauce before more shameless producers could reheat it and serve it again. Even the simplistic title seems to have been chosen for its versatility, and uncanny complementary with a myriad of corny taglines such as “Ding dong, you’re dead” and “HORROR has found a new HOME” as well as hypothetic sequel titles, such as the marvelous House II: The Second Story.

Surprisingly enough, the film starts with a sumptuous tracking shot around the titular building, ultimately catching a young delivery boy as he proceeds to carry a bag of groceries through the front door. Unfortunately, everything goes downhill from there. Seeing how the elderly woman expected to answer the door fails to show, the boy allows himself in, slowly making his way up to the bedroom. That’s where he finds her lifeless body, hung and swinging wildly from a noose tied to the ceiling lamp. That’s also where this uninspired outing loses all pretension of credibility as the rocking corpse displays such momentum as to remind one only of a hyperactive pendulum or some defunct prop from a traveling house of horrors. Cut to the old woman’s curly blonde heir, a successful horror author confronted with writers’ block in the process of writing his memoirs from the Vietnam War. Luckily for him, he now stands to inherit a rather large and quiet house in which to concentrate on his work away from his starlet ex-girlfriend and his legions of eccentric fans. But creative proficiency is not easily achieved in the house for he is soon plagued by lively memories of his missing son, painful flashbacks from his war days and the disquieting presence of Empire-type beasties emerging from closets, all of which will become intricately tied during the implausible final act of the film.

House is riddled with contradicting intentions. Here
the decapitation of a monster cues the start
of Betty Everett's soulful "You're no good"'.

Being at once a serious family drama, an effects-driven supernatural horror film and a nutty comedy, House is constantly at odds with its many contradictory objectives in trying to establish a definitive mood for itself. It is as if screenwriter Ethan Wiley wished to corral all possible genre film fans with one fell swoop. The result is absolutely appalling, a constant overbid of ineffective pathos, lame attempts at humor and underwhelming brushes with the occult. The constantly switching gears are such that gutsy dramatic scenes are often immediately followed by would-be hysterical bits of comedy in a constant cycle of self-defeating mediocrity. Case in point is an early scene in which protagonist Roger Cobb phones an FBI agent to inquire about his missing son only to play a lighthearted prank on his girlfriend scant seconds later. Then, there is that later scene in which Roger is first attacked by a flying closet beastie, a close encounter with death that is immediately followed by a comical sequence in which Roger prances around in military garb for the enjoyment of a speechless neighbor. Then, there is that other scene where he narrowly survives an attack from a grotesquely bloated monster woman with the help of head-chopping flying shears only for Betty Everett’s upbeat “You’re no good” to suddenly blast through the speakers and create a surprisingly whimsical mood. It goes on like that for nearly the entire duration of the film, with the construction of a certain atmosphere being swiftly deconstructed thereafter. And while such mood swings necessarily increase the camp value of the ensemble, they come in stark contrast with many dramatic sequences (most notably the Vietnam flashbacks), which are treated with utmost seriousness, further perplexing the viewer as to the filmmakers’ actual intentions when putting together this ungodly mix of heterogeneous influences. Later attempts at creating some well-needed dramatic depth are expectedly transformed into awkward misunderstandings as Cobb tries to hide various corpses from cops and neighbors, providing even more proof of the film's self-defeating nature.

But despite its constantly contradictory narrative prowess, House is plagued by another crippling contradiction, which it also forced upon itself, and that contradiction is called William Katt. Despite some prominently marketable features, the baby-faced star of the film is absolutely incapable of delivering the goods in such a highly dramatic and ultimately contradictory role. Sure, he looks pretty appetizing for gourmand ghosts and famished females alike, but his register is so limited that he actually needs full makeup to come off as sad onscreen, trying vainly to usher an elusive tear right after inadvertently shooting down his girlfriend. More to the point, he is highly unconvincing as a horror author, let alone a Vietnam vet. Not only do his feathery golden locks and winning smile exude all the wholesomeness in the world, but his incredibly soft traits suggest a typically pampered lifestyle fit only for a trailer-dwelling movie star. Hell, I probably have more scars on my left arm than this guy has on his whole body! So, when I saw him totting a machine-gun in some makeshift Vietnamese forest, it was hard for me to repress some jittery giggles.

Hairless pretty boy Katt is totally unconvincing
as a horror writer, let alone a Vietnam vet...

And while Katt personally fails to convey any sort of deep-seeded emotion, the confused screenplay is equally to blame for his failure, with its constantly shifting moods and atrocious lines of dialogue. One of my personal favorites comes as he’s fighting a squirming swordfish hung on the wall of his mother’s study. “Come on! Stop moving for chrissake!” cries poor Roger as he struggles to contain the pugnacious predator. Hell, it’s hard to fathom just how such a line found its way into a “serious” Hollywoodian screenplay. But then there is the title of Roger’s book, which also seeped through the hands of several proofreaders before it was okayed for production. The title of this book, which is constantly showcased on the screen of his prehistoric PC is, and remember we’re talking about a best-selling author here, “One Man’s Story: A Personal Account of the Vietnam War”. While it’s impossible to believe, even for a millisecond, that a literary genius could come up with such a nondescript title, especially for such a personal endeavor, this perfectly exemplifies the generic nature of the film.

Luckily, the film’s conclusion is quite satisfying as it neatly wraps up many loose narrative threads in a sufficiently coherent whole with Roger conducting the daring rescue of his son by courageously stepping into the dark void lying just beyond the threshold of his bathroom mirror and a kaki-clad zombie with a bad case of Lundgren-itis providing some truly inane theatrics. As for some of the corniest special effects, most notably the murderous flying tools and squirming swordfish, as well as the tacky Empire-like monster design, most notably the bloated female demon, they help create a well-needed camp feeling that goes a long way to help wash away one’s dissatisfaction with the film’s bland mise-en-scène, simplistic score and constant narrative shortcuts.

Semi-comical antagonist Ben prefigures the inanity
of Dolph Lundgren's Andrew Scott.

1.5/5  A miscast, confused and dishonest formula film with some redeeming camp value.