House (1985)

June 26, 2018

House was a movie that was written as a haunted house horror with a PTSD theme and then turned into a comedy. Unfortunately what all this resulted in was a film that was all-over-the-place. The $3 million dollar budget and incredible practical special effects are overshadowed by the rambling plot and goofy acting.

So a guy's aunt kills herself in a house, guy inherits house, and finds out the house is haunted. Guy is famous writer and movies into house to write a Vietnam memoir. Guy battles Vietnam flashbacks in the midst of the house trying to kill him. Oh, and he has a missing son that he keeps flashing back to. Eventually he finds his son and burns down the house. But don't worry, the house will come back for several more sequels with pun titles.

The plot is like if Deer Hunter, Evil Dead II, and Poltergeist had a movie baby. The film really needs to just pick a lane. The Vietnam parts were really distracting to the film and really didn't need to be in a haunted house/missing child movie. It is also hard to take the topic seriously (despite being such a serious topic) when it is sandwiched between slapstick horror gags. The same goes for the special effects. Whereas Evil Dead II blended the perfect amount of comedy with their gore, this film's really well done special effects were overshadowed by the slapstick. Among other things, this movie was lacking a Bruce Campbell. It is unfortunate too because the monsters are really amazing and would've been really scary in a different movie (there's a cool scene where floating/flying garden tools are chasing the main character that was pretty great).

The main character, played by William Katt (the nice girl's boyfriend from Carrie), is a goofball. As he's trying to write his memoir in solitude he keeps running outside in cartoonish Vietnam flashbacks (who knew PTSD could be so funny?). After rescuing his son from a cage in Vietnam (the House had captured the kid, I guess) he sends him back outside, assumingly to Vietnam, to look for help. The final boss battle is between the writer and a zombie version of one of his Vietnam buddies that was killed in action. His buddy looks just like Bill Paxton as the big brother in Weird Science.

At least the film had Norm from Cheers in it. I hear Cliff is in the second one.