Houseboat Horror (1989)

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Blistering performances.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

In this extremely low-budget ( I've seen home movies made with better production value) Australian utter rip-off of "the Burning" & "Friday the 13th", a band is planning to make a music video while on a houseboat. They're stalked by a serial killer who was burned years before. This movie is even proclaimed to be 'the worst Australian film ever made' in it's DVD promotional material. That's it's only selling point! Complete and utter rubbish in every considerable way. Perhaps a few chuckles here and there for bad movie lovers, but it still made me want to burn out my retinas.Eye Candy: a quick flash of barely existent itty bitty titties in a lame shower sceneMy Grade: F

Before I begin, allow me to refer to the theory of Mr. Charles Montgomery Burns to describe my opinion about this movie."I don't really understand art, but I know what I hate. And I don't hate this..."I don't really understand the appeal behind this movie. I can think of no more daggy an era than the late 80s in Victoria to locate a film. Secondly, I can't understand why a creditable actor such as Alan (you're off my detail) Dale would lend his talent to this film, having also built the image of a decent family man on "Neighbours". What I enjoy about this movie is the fact that I know no worse. Only recently, I have started becoming interested in cinema, and I have found that there is a demand for perfectionism in all films. If Kevin Smith had released "Clerks" today, he wouldn't have won a solitary award for it. That's modern cinema at work.Only Australia could write, direct, produce and release a film like this. Only Australia could gather some very notable stars and draw from them drawl about "walkabouts" and "bar up". Only Australia would bother. So think of film as an expression of the true Australian psyche, that things don't need to be perfect. That people can and will enjoy even the most pointless and lazy film. That Australia has the most creative and surreal cinema in the world. That John Michael Houson appeared in a movie he would have canned the following day with Bert...

Australian horror movies aren't very popular, but that doesn't mean that they're inferior. There have been some good ones, the very tongue in cheek "Cut", the bizarre "13th Floor" and the interesting "Out of the Body." Of course, there have been some really terrible ones, the worst of which is "Houseboat Horror." This movie was made in 1989, a time when horror films were running out of steam. Making a movie like "Houseboat Horror" was a mistake at this time. It recycled all the cliches used in 80's horror and recycled them badly. The movie looks to be extremely low budget, and seems to be shot on videotape. That doesn't matter though, a movie can still be low budget and be brilliant. But "Houseboat Horror" uses it's low budget for gore effects that look disastrous. You can't help but wonder if the money could have been used for something better, like a decent script. The story revolves around a film crew that travels to Lake Infinity to film a music video. But in the woods lurks a mad killer, who slaughters the film crew when they are stupid enough to split from the rest of the group. The killer's motive? Kill film crews because he was nearly burnt to death by a film crew some thirty years ago. Sound ridiculous? It is. Oh, and they're on houseboats, hence the title. The characters are not well written, I could hardly distinguish one from the other and I didn't even know their names. When they're murdered, am I supposed to care? Probably, but there's no emotional impact.On the technical side of things, the photography was decent enough. But annoyingly, there are so many POV shots that it made my head spin. There is, on average, about one every five minutes. It gets tiring, and boring. The acting varies, some people are okay, I suppose. There are some funny one liners hidden in there. Some of the actors are really horrible, looking like they want to get out of there as fast as they can. But probably the most important part of a horror movie are the death scenes. For a movie that wants to be a gorefest, "Houseboat Horror" doesn't cut it (pardon the pun). Most of them have no suspense, and just cut away to a wall being splashed with blood. In my opinion, that is the weakest of murders in films.So, if you can find a copy of this, watch it if you must, but don't expect to have fun. It's not even good in a 'so bad it's good' way. It's just bad.

It is very unfortunate when a movie such as this is made. A great deal of work and money has been put into a film that is amateur at best.The editing drags on, there are obvious mistakes that could have been corrected easily in a second take, and the soundtrack is unimaginative. So much more could have been done with this video movie. I guess they ran out of time, or videotape.Hand-held shots have a distinct amateur feel to them.