Customer Reviews

House of Blood

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

What do you get when you combine The Fountain, the Village, Con Air, and Evil Dead? House of Blood, a surprisingly great horror movie.

Plot: Escaped convicts in desperate need of shelter come across a small house in the middle of the wilderness filled with people from a century past. Quickly the convicts learn they are not the biggest, baddest creatures in the wilderness. That honor belongs to ninja deadites. There is also an unlikely, non linear love story intertwined throughout, that makes the film even more interesting.

Points of interest: The monster make-up and special effects aren't bad at all! Much worse has been in Hollywood lately (Cursed with Christina Ricci anyone?) The editing and cinematography add rare depth to this direct to DVD jewel.

Overall: The fast pace, non-linear nature of the story, and decent acting combine with wickedly cool monsters and just the right amount of gore and spatter. This is easily the best direct to DVD release I've been in over a year (and I watch every B-D rate horror movie I can get my hands on). Highly impressive and Highly recommended.

Olaf Ittenbach is a GORE director- Now don't let this put you off- His directing skills are more impressive than most directors in the genre (Andreas Snaas, Timo Rose etc)-

Look out for some TERRIBLEover acting from the 'first' lead baddie- it's hilarious- and his brother- (with a different accent!?) excellent stuff!

This film has a twisting plot involving shape shifting demon god worshippers (yes i was confused too?)

The story revoles around a doctor in the wrong place at the wrong time- over and over again (hence the 'Chain reaction - original title)

Weak parts are the vague storyline link between the womanm at the house in the woods (with demons) and the Doctor- bit pointless and adds nothing to the story-

But the gore is excellent as you'd expect from Olaf (FX artist on many a gore independant film)

But i would look out for the uncut version as the R rated U.s one only has the gore on screen for a short time- (unlike the excellent "Beyond the Limits- Olaf's best to date- directing wise)

If you enjoy your gore then this is for you.

Photographed well, this story kept my attention. Some of the actors weren't up to standard, like the over acting of the gun happy convict, but when the real terror takes place at the cabin, the real fun begins. The language of the cabin dwellers is interesting.

It does have alot of gore in it, but it fits into the overall theme and flow of the movie. I reccommend it for fans of Evil Dead and the like.

House of blood is like a mixture of movies like Con-air,The Village,Evil Dead,The Exorcist, and a Vampire movie. A convict bus crashes and the convicts clip the guards(con-air) and escape. Lead by a ruthless trigger happy loud mouth convict, the convicts head off into the woods going north as to go to Canada. Among the convicts is a doctor who is endlessly butting heads with the loud mouth convict leader. Eventually they all wonder far enough into the woods and stumble upon a old english looking manor house. Inside the house they find the folk who dwell within the house. The folk (The Village)dress like colonial and speak biblical language (thy shalt leave ith thou place of livith, blah, blah, blah)or like their in a ren fair. Soon enough the convicts realize that the control they had on the holy rollers has turned around when the colonial bible people turn into (The Exorcist)evil possessed creatures after chanting. The make up work on the demonized people look a lot like the possessed people that where in the movie "Evil Dead". The demon people are really Vampires! They can't die. One was smashed in the face with a steel mallet only to have its face turn back to normal and get back up again and kill. Bullets have no effect on them either. The violence and gore get pretty good at this point. The Vampires ripped and shredded through the convicts till only the doctor remains. The Doctor has a connection with one of the colonial bible possessed vampire people. You have to watch and see what that connection is. To make a long story short, the Dr. was caught in the woods by the SWAT unit and police who can't seem to find the mysterious vampire manor after the Dr. told his story of what happened. The good Dr. is then sent back on a convict bus with other convicts to transport back to Seattle when.......... the bus crashes and deja-vu all over again but with a dif group of convicts which, yes, end up back to the same Vampire manor house again with pretty much the same results starting again but with a dif ending this time, an ending you'll have to see when ya rent it.

House of Blood (Olaf Ittenbach, 2006)

In the world of cruelly stupid, criminally low-budget, mind-numbingly bad horror movies, the half-brained man is king. Recently, the half-brained man in question has been Olaf Ittenbach, whose movies for the past few years have been fractionally better than the ones he started out making. (It helps that a new, and even worse, director has recently entered the scene. You all know him--Uwe Boll.) And when it comes right down to it, House of Blood is the best movie, to date, that Olaf Ittenbach has made. The best by a country mile, in fact. Not that that's saying much. This is, after all, the guy who gave the world such deathless cinematic classics as Premutos and Legion of the Dead, and has been doing special effects work on Uwe Boll movies since BloodRayne. What a great pair these two make. Still, House of Blood (also known as Chain Reaction--don't be fooled into renting it twice!), for all that is was co-written and directed by Ittenbach, actually has some sort of atmosphere clinging to it. It may be the kind of atmosphere one gets from eating too many beans, but trust me, if you've never seen any Ittenbach movies before, it's an improvement.

Plot: a group of convicts get into a horrible bus accident while being transferred between prisons. They, of course, see it as an opportunity to escape, taking hostage a doctor in a car affected by the accident in the process (one of their number, after all, is wounded. Only one. Despite the bus, you know, crashing). The band look for a place where the doctor can do some makeshift operation, and after stumbling through a fogbank, they come upon a remote cabin inhabited by a curiously backwards family/commune sort of group. They reluctantly allow the operation to take place, with one of their number, Alice (Martina Ittenbach), acting as a nurse. After the operation is over, they request the group leave. The convicts refuse, and quickly find out why the family wanted them to go...

Okay, so we're about thirty minutes into the movie at this point, but I can't tell you any more. That would really ruin the surprise Ittenbach sets up, Yeah, it's been done before, quite a few times in fact, but it still (after a rocky start) comes off here with some aplomb. For an Ittenbach movie, at least. You'll start asking yourself questions about the obvious sillinesses in the plot soon after this, but still, this is a lot of fun. (And I'm still marveling that such a bad director could land such a hot wife.) Don't take it too seriously and you'll have a good time. ** ½

Another horror movie that got a lot of bad reviews because of bad acting... Seriously, who cares about acting in gory movies? Ok, it got bad reviews for other reasons too, but I really don't think that it deserves such a low rating (it has 3.6 on IMDB)... Anyway, it's very entertaining and very gory and that's all it's supposed to be! Yeah, the acting/dialogue sucks and it's stupid in parts, but acting/dialogue isn't important in gory movies and stupidity can be a good thing! I understand why many people hate the plot (the fact that the same thing happens 3 times), but personally, it doesn't bother me at all.

Anyway, I recommend it to gore fans, but I don't recommend it to anyone else because it's a movie for gore fans only.

Note: This DVD doesn't have all of the gore. About 2 minutes of gore was cut and that's a lot because most of the gore scenes in Ittenbach's movies don't last more than 10 seconds.

I found this dvd hiding away in my garage. I read the synposis and was wondering why I havent checked it out yet. Well the first 40 minutes are beyond horrible. I swear but when someone swears every sentence I get annoyed. Anyways, after forty minutes we see some good gore action. Enjoy it because it switches to more talking for anther half an hour before anymore gore is seen. House of Blood is decent and you can probably find it for cheap. Not a bad movie but not if your looking for consistent gore.

some people will give this film 2 stars.i give it three because i loved the make up effects and im a horror fan. even though it has sceens of being repeted its a good film to watch if you like low budget films.

I don't even know what to say. The actors are horrendous, the script is laughable and the effects are subpar, oh yeah, the photography is lousy too. Nuff said.

I THINK THIS MOVIE IS GOOD AND IS FROM ONE OF MY FAVORITE GERMAN DIRECTOR OLAF ITTENBACH THE DIRECTOR OF PREMUTOS , LEGION OF THE DEAD ,THE BURNING MOON WE ARE TALKING ABOUT GORE AND FUN.IN THIS MOVIE YOU CAN SEE THE GORE WAS CUT , THERE IS MORE GORE THAN THAT ,THEY SHOULD COME WITH A UNCUT VERSION OF IT.JUST BUY IT OR RENT IT.