Customer Reviews

House of Death [VHS]

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Although it may seem standard and cheesy, it's lots of fun to watch, and it's fairly gory, too. Nine teenagers who live in a small North Carolina town go to the local carnival and have lots of fun. What they don't know is: a killer is stalking them. They proceed to go to a cemetery, tell ghost stories, and camp out in a creepy old abandoned house. Could the killer be lurking inside?

Though predictable, "Death Screams" is rather fun, exciting, and scary. The music, I thought, was pretty good, and the actors weren't bad either. Many scenes are atmospheric and misty, and believe me, there are "Death Screams" aplenty in this one.

It's the early 1980s, and a slasher is stalking teenagers in North Carolina. You've seen it often, but I still liked this film.

It's fairly inept, low on suspense, and not too bloody. The film opens with the quick murder of two teens making out -- then nothing much happens for over an hour! A young girl is suffocated, but that's about it.

The whole first hour is just setting up events. Teenagers hang out, go to a county fair, smoke pot (some comic relief as a sheriff nearly catches them), and make plans for a summer night camp out.

They also invite their coach to their camp out. He's popular with the teens. There's even this big retarded boy who's unintentionally hilarious when he says that "it's bad to hurt coach."

Maybe we're supposed to think the retarded kid might be the killer? No, I'm not giving anything away. The slasher's identity surprised me. The choice seemed arbitrary. Really, it could as easily have been anyone.

So anyway, these kids camp out. Have sex. Drink. Tell ghost stories. Then the killings start. Only by now, there's only 20 minutes left in the film, with very few deaths so far. So the slasher kills quickly to rack up a large body count, as there's so little time left.

Then the slasher's identity is revealed, with a sudden flashback (right out of the blue) to "explain" why this person felt compelled to kill.

HOUSE OF DEATH was shot by E.O. Productions, which was Earl Owensby's low-budget North Carolina film company at the time. They also made DAY OF JUDGMENT.

HOUSE OF DEATH is an inept attempt to cash in on the slasher cycle about when it was beginning to peter out. Still, I liked this film. The women are pretty (one of them was a Playboy model). Some nice wide angle photography. Mediocre acting by a no-name cast troupe, but it suffices.

Slasher fans who don't mind a film that waits till the end for the body count to start rising should like this film.

This movie was terrible. The plot didn't make any sense at all. Even diehard slasher fans should not watch this movie. It's a complete waste of 90 minutes.