The House of the Dead (1978)

I love this movie so much

Sorry, this movie sucks

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

"The House Of The Dead" is only a few steps up from the quality of your average home movie. I guess in a way that's inspiring: if this movie can get distribution (and DVD printing), then why not yours? It's a four-part anthology: the first two parts (the teacher stalked by vampire kids, the camera-obsessed woman-killer) are a complete waste of time, the other two (the rival British and American detectives, the guy who gets trapped in an empty building) are slightly more tolerable, and the wraparound (the lead comes face to face with his fate) is actually decent, but three things they all have in common are poor production values, tedious scripting, and amateurish acting. * out of 4.

An adulterous businessman gets lost in the rain and a mortician gives him shelter in his funeral parlour, who shows the man some of the corpses being embalmed on the premises. Each one has a tale about how they met their untimely demises: a school teacher who hates children is frightened to death; a predatory photographer who kills his unwitting subjects on-camera is eventually caught and executed; a self-inflated criminologist meets his British rival and in trying to out-do each other, discovers his nemesis is prepared to kill to be the best; and finally a selfish office worker is lured and held captive by an unseen assailant for an extremely long time but soon dies after he is inexplicably suddenly released. The man is told they all were victims of their own errant ways. When he asks about a final empty coffin, the mortician replies it is for him!The individual stories and the main framing story are written in a very comic-book or pulp-novel way. The second one about the photographer is probably the worst one but is fortunately brief enough not to be a problem. Despite some really awful music, ropey acting, and what appears to be lighting supervised by a blind man, this collection of shorts is fairly well directed enough to be entertaining. I am confused with the movie's original title of 'Alien Zone' - there are no aliens at all in it! Clearly they were actually going for something like 'The Twilight Zone' and were meaning 'Alien' in a more literal sense, as in "unknown" rather than "being from outer-space"! Even still, it's not such a great title; 'House Of The Dead' makes more sense.

This one isn't too bad per se, it's an anthology film with five stories, most of which zip by fairly quickly. The real problem is that the stories are barely there at all! A guy's been knocking boots with another man's woman and heads off to find his hotel, only to find himself at a morgue run by a bad actor. Within, he finds the coroner telling stories relating to the corpse he holds there. Sounds like a good set-up, but...well, most of the stories aren't any good at all. The first is concerned with a woman who hates kids, who then finds her home attacked with deformed kid monsters. Good for atmosphere, but I've just described the story fully with one sentence.The next describes a guy who kills women on camera and gets caught. That's the plot. Don't get confused.The third is actually not too bad. Two criminologists try and outwit each other. I'll leave it at that, as this one actually has a plot, of sorts.Number four makes even less sense. A chug nut gets trapped in a room and hooked on booze. That's...uh...the plot...Story five is what happens to the cuckolder. I'll leave it up to you to imagine what happens to him...The things is, the movie ain't terrible. It kept me going, and it did have atmosphere at several points. It's watchable enough, but your not going to be declaring this to be any more than the fluff it is. Watch it if you get desperate one night. It won't offend you.

I still remember seeing this as a teenager on late nite Creature Feature when in an altered frame of mind and being totally freaked out by what now watching as an adult is a pretty interesting 1970's Amercian made "Anthology Horror" bit -- Which I saw in the form known as HOUSE OF THE DEAD. And, amazingly, a budget line DVD company called Treeline Films has a nice little tape sourced $5 DVD release of the film for sale as part of their "Chills Pack" collection. It's worth a look.Made in 1978 by a woman director named Sharon Miller (who had begun her career as an assistant editor on some of Ralph Bakshi's films & would later direct countless episodes of shows like KNOTTS LANDING and BAYWATCH), HOUSE OF THE DEAD has a decidedly "Made for TV" movie feel to it even though I have been assured that it did play theatrically & is endowed with an MPAA rating for some violence. Treeline's DVD appears to feature an edited for TV full frame version which does look edited for content in a couple of spots with violence though it's nudity-free & relatively staid demeanor as a film speaks to me of what might have been a failed TV pilot episode.The film is made up of four stories linked together by a central piece about a philandering husband (John Ericson, who looks familiar) who gets lost on his way back to his hotel from his mistresses' house while in an unfamiliar city for a plumbing convention. Right. Through a series of mishaps too mundane to outline, Ericson finds himself brought in from the rain by a man who turns out to be a mortician, played by ubiquitous 70's & 80's television character actor Ivor Francis, who's sleepy, macabre demeanor is the film's most redeeming quality. I always loved him on BARNEY MILLER, and his presence also underscores the "TV friendly" nature of the production. Francis proceeds to relate four stories about the occupants of four caskets in his parlor, each of which has a "Poetic Justice" twist ending that is very reminiscent of Rod Serling's NIGHT GALLERY series.And like NIGHT GALLERY the stories shown are more sort of macabre fables on human qualities by shorthand sketches of characters who might deserve having something horrible happen to them in a way of having the world pay them back for being such insufferable bastards. The first sketch is probably the most "horrifying" in the traditional sense, with a shrew-like schoolteacher literally haunted in her own home by mutant green lighted children who appear with Halloween masks on their faces in the film's single best image. Watching her scurry around like a frightened rodent with her hair mussed under a cap from an aborted shower is actually quite amusing, though the absence of a proper "splatter" conclusion for the piece is disappointing -- Even though director Miller does go all out for the 70's Psychedelic Effect during certain scenes, and I can easily see how it blew my mind. Like, wow.Part two is also an interesting quasi-horror bit that anticipated HENRY - A PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, Buffalo Bill from THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and every other personable serial killer while ripping off PEEPING TOM in presenting us with the ironically amusing tale of a young schlep who invites young women over to his very neat bachelor pad where he murders them while filming the fun on a camera that he, his victims and the police all address at various times. It is short, funny and to the point, though it really isn't that scary, with the most interesting quality being that it is all shot from the single, unmoving perspective of the murder camera. Part three is the best acted section, telling the tale of two world class criminologists (played by likewise ubiquitous 70s/80s character actors Charles Aidman and Edward Fox) who pit their wits against each other in a deadly game of detective work, that while not that exciting gets the job done in padding out the length of the whole film to feature form & maintaining our interest with a clever little story. I definitely got a bang out of the end.The last section is the one that really freaked me out and why I sought the film out at all: An office worker Ebenezer Scrooge type who thinks everyone else is an annoying time waster gets subjected to a bizarre series of psychological tortures after wandering into a vacant store and falling into a trap -- Just who puts him through his ordeal is never revealed, but at the end he emerges as a disheveled street person. I'm not sure exactly just what lesson was supposed to be learned, but then again I am not sure exactly what the motivation for the entire movie was, and hence the suspicion that it was a TV pilot for a related series (possibly intended to be called ALIEN ZONE) that was aborted, and the whole thing was shoved onto movie screens instead as HOUSE OF THE DEAD in an effort to tap into the LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT infamy, still quite potent in 1978.I am honestly not sure what to make of the film as a single piece and can understand why some of the other commenter's may have objected strongly to the film -- It seems to exist without real purpose, not being frightening enough to really be called "horror" and too bizarre, warped & twisted to be thought of as standard drama. I "like" the movie because of my personal history & how it intersected with me at the right moment, stuck with me for two decades after wards, and now seeing it as an adult find it to be interesting enough to watch again and write about. If that doesn't qualify a film for some sort of cult status I have no idea what would.