The House Where Death Lives (1981)

As Good As It Gets

An Exercise In Nonsense

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

"Delusion" is a slasher film...and I rarely choose this sort of movie to watch. It's not totally mindless, keeps you guessing and isn't altogether awful!When the film begins, Meredith (Patricia Pearcy) arrives at a mansion to become the new nurse for an elderly invalid (Joseph Cotten). The job seems pretty easy and she fits in well. However, when the old man's weird grandson arrives, things start dying...starting with the family dog but not stopping there! Who's behind all this...and are the confusing plot elements going to make sense by the end of the picture?The film suffers a bit from Pearcy's zombie-like performance during much of the film. It also occasionally makes little sense...such as why the police aren't more alarmed with all these deaths. But it does offer plenty of false leads, dead ends and twists and so if you like this sort of film, it will fit the bill. I respect what they did with this picture, though I wasn't especially thrilled with seeing it.

An attractive nurse named Meredith moves to the Langrock estate to take care of her patient:a crippled old man.She falls in love with sixteen year old grandson of Langrock named Gabriel,who returned from some kind of desert commune.A series of brutal murders in the gloom of the night is set in motion...Slow-moving but well-made and competent psycho slasher that often drags.The death scenes mostly involve head bashings and are pretty bloodless.I liked the main performance of Patricia Pearcy as I remembered her from Jeff Lieberman's "Squirm"."Delusion" is worth checking out for completists of 80's US independent horror.6 out of 10.

To be fair, I have to admit to something up front: just before e I saw "Delusion/The House Where Death Lives", I happened to see the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" for the first time at a midnight movie showing. TCM knocked my socks off, and I was hungry for more rousing, scary movies that I had never heard of. In my naiveté, I assumed that "TCM" was only the tip of the iceberg, and that there many more, dozens more, as good or better, if only I were able to track them down. So when a friend and I saw this was playing at a local movie house (since gone under), we decided to take a chance, even though we'd heard nothing about it and had no idea where it came from. My reasoning was: I'd never heard of "Chainsaw" before I saw it, and it was great. I'd never heard a single thing about "Delusion" either. Therefore, it might be great, or at least interesting. The fact that absolutely no one else bought tickets for our showing should have clued us that there might be a problem, but alas, it did not. 40 minutes into the movie, both of us were sitting slumped in our seats, unable to move, brought almost to the edge of death by the boredom and sluggish pacing and dead-weight performances of this movie. I am not kidding. We both later agreed that the sensation was not unlike being drained of blood while floating in a quagmire of cooked farina. While the movie was playing, no hope or joy or animation was possible. summoning the energy to talk back to the screen or hoot in derision or make wisecracks was inconceivable. The movie went on and on and on, and nothing happened, and nothing happened, and then there was a moment where a guy was stuck in a storeroom and was scared and yelling and it was almost exciting, but then he got killed and the movie went back to being an exercise in excruciating boredom. Because we were young and vital (20-year-olds), we managed to hang on until the credits rolled. And once the movie stopped sitting on our heads and trying to kill us, we were able to summon enough energy to leave the theater and, eventually, to get on with our lives. I know I am not being fair to this movie. I went in hoping for the visceral thrills of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and got something entirely different, and HWDL suffered greatly in comparison to my 20 year old tastes. (Perhaps if it had appeared as "Delusion" instead of the alternate title, my expectations might have been different.) And I certainly wasn't used to dubbed movies or moody Gothic pieces.So if I were to watch it again (say, catching it on cable), I might have far more tolerance for the movie than I did in 1980. But I will always remember the way "The House Where Death Lives" seemed to suck the life right out of my body.

It's very difficult to put into words just how poor & tedious this film is to watch. It was a chore to sit through such a dire, tiresome and insultingly substandard cinematic effort - I want to claim back the time it took to watch this, and the small amount of cash I bought it for. (Even though I think i picked it up for £1:99)