House (1985) review

(7/10)

10% war movie
20% comedy
70% horror
100% unique

PLOT:Roger Cobb (William Katt) is a famous horror author who's wife (Kay Lenz) divorced him and son went missing at his aunt's house. When his aunt commits suicide, he takes the house over to start work on a novel about his experiences in the Vietnam War. His aunt was a raving loon, saying that the house was haunted and that it will trick you. Roger didn't believe it, but when he starts finding freakish monsters in the house and inanimate objects come to life, he starts to believe. Now he has to get to the bottom of it while avoiding his annoying new neighbor Harold (George Wendt) and other problems. Questions still remain though: Are these all personal demons released through the house? Is it really haunted? How is this all connected to his missing son? I'll leave you there. It's a very unique plot executed in a pretty different way.

ACTING:The acting isn't really the best part of the movie, truthfully. Katt I found to be a bit bland at some parts. Wendt did a pretty awesome job for this movie. Everyone else was just ok, except for Richard Moll as Big Ben. His acting was truly overdone.



SCORE:The score was mainly composed to set the mood for a cheesy 80s horror, but it actually has a pretty spooky theme that I find classic.

EFFECTS:The effects are what make this thing worthwhile. The monsters may be made from low budget costumes and stop motion effects, but they're designed to look like no other movie monster and to enthuse the laugh-scare factor (as seen in The Evil Dead). I said long ago in my first review for Beetlejuice that I love the cheesy effects used in it; well, these are present in here. I find the effects what mainly make it what it is.



OTHER CONTENT:Now this film has a lot of flaws (such as the somewhat lazy acting), but they all come together to make a campy 80s classic that borrows inspirations from all the right places. One problem that I found pretty cruddy was that I found the movie rushed in production and editing because we get placed into certain situations quicker than imagined and when a flashback comes along, we have to infer based on the brief cut-in. Even though this made the movie a little wild, it never tried to be anything special but a cheesy comedy, which it was.

OVERALL,an awesome comedy horror with a unique plot, lazy acting, cheesily spooky score, cheesily funny effects, and a rushed production.