PTSD | 366 Weird Movies

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DIRECTED BY: Steve Miner

FEATURING: William Katt, George Wendt, Richard Moll, Kay Lenz, Mary Stavin

PLOT: Horror writer Roger Cobb moves into the house left to him by his aunt following her apparent suicide, only to find it infested by malevolent forces that challenge his biggest fears and anxieties.

Still from house (1985)

COMMENTS: Poor Roger is having a pretty rough go of it. His agent is eager for him to churn out the next big hit in his Stephen King-like career, but he’s got an awful case of writer’s block. Whyfor? Well, it might be the collapse of his marriage to a successful TV star, which itself is probably due to the mysterious disappearance of their son. (Roger’s repeated calls to the FBI and the CIA get no results.) And it could be the haunting memories of that time in Vietnam when the muscleman of the platoon saved Roger’s life and lost his own to some extras from a community theater production of Miss Saigon. Plus, his beloved aunt did just hang herself in the upstairs of her beautiful Victorian mansion, the very same place where his son went missing, and her ghost has turned up to say that it’s all the house’s fault. So naturally, Roger decides that very house is the perfect place to get out of his head and finally finish that wartime memoir (which he has titled, with all due vagueness, One Man’s Story). It quickly becomes obvious that this was not the best place for a distraction-free retreat: intrusive neighbors lurk outside , including the guy next door who ignores boundaries and the Scandinavian sexpot down the street who stops by to use the swimming pool unannounced. Meanwhile, the TV always seems to be airing his ex-wife’s show, and the walls are covered with his uncle’s hunting and fishing trophies and his aunt’s disturbing paintings. Honestly, it’s probably a relief when the monsters in the closet and the flying knives show up; at last, the man can focus.

As the description above should indicate, House has more plot than it knows what to do with, and that’s a shame, because when it settles down and focuses on one or two things, the film hits its stride. For example, after confronting a monster performing a grotesque parody of his ex-wife (one of the film’s excellently cartoony creature effects), Roger slips into a slapstick routine as he attempts to hide the beast’s body (and later, various pieces of said body) from the police. A perfectly serviceable piece of dark comedy. But a return trip to that well, in which Roger attempts to pry the monster’s disembodied hand off a toddler’s neck while simultaneously peacocking for the boy’s hot mom, falls terribly, as the wacky loose-hand hijinks don’t mesh with the child’s wretched crying. House is unable to pick a lane, and this is a recurring problem. Should we see Roger as the one sane man in a world gone mad, or as a troubled individual very steadily beginning to crack under the pressure? Are George Wendt and Richard Moll here to show off their sitcom-honed comedic chops, or to play against type? The movie can’t figure out how to walk and chew gum at the same time, which means we have a comedy and a horror film trying to occupy the same space, and the emotional wires get seriously crossed. An inherently ludicrous scene, such as a mounted swordfish coming to life like an enormous Big Mouth Billy Bass, is treated as an intense moment of fear and conflict (despite the fact that the thing is, you know, stuck to the wall). Meanwhile, Roger’s PTSD-laden Vietnam flashbacks look like someone saw Sands of Iwo Jima once. (House’s version of ‘Nam isn’t so much shot on the backlot as it is in someone’s backyard.) We never get a true sense of this experience as a lifelong trauma, let alone the source of the film’s Big Bad.

One has to acknowledge that film’s most obvious forebear: House feels like a cheap knockoff of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead (the irony being that Evil Dead probably cost the same as this film’s catering budget). The truth is that if Miner and Cunningham ever watched Evil Dead, they couldn’t figure out how to replicate the formula. You can feel them getting awfully close to their goal. Director Miner, a veteran of the second and third entries in the Friday the 13^th series (producer Sean Cunningham directed the first), wants to tap into the fun of watching people running from their fears, only you’re expected to care about these characters far more than any of the denizens of Camp Crystal Lake. And those monsters are disgusting, but gleefully so. The hideous beast lurking in the bedroom closet, that Lady Gremlin-esque deceiver, even Moll’s hellish soldier back from the dead to avenge his betrayal all go for gross in the most fun way possible. It’s not scary, exactly, but it’s funhouse scary. (Quite frankly, there’s nothing in this film nearly as unsettling as the movie’s own poster.) Plus, casting Wiliam Katt proves a savvy choice; he’s not exactly dripping with personality, but he’s game and never sells out the absurdities with a wink or a shrug, which means scenes like his journey into the dark void that lies just the other side of his bathroom medicine cabinet are surprisingly strong.

To damn it with faint praise, House is… fine. It’s not especially scary, but it does have moments of surprise or amusing disgust. It’s not particularly funny, although there are chuckles here and there. It doesn’t make all that much sense, yet I can see how remaking it as a six-part Netflix series could give the story’s many ideas the space to take shape and resolve. As it stands, House is a pleasant diversion. But that’s one man’s story.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The film may in fact offer at least a few more laughs than actual scares, but it is certainly one of the weirder examples of a horror comedy hybrid simply by dint of the fact that it utilizes PTSD (whether caused by war experiences or the disappearance of a child) for some of its humor.” – Jeffrey Kauffman, Blu-ray.com (Blu-ray)

(This movie was nominated for review by Matt. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)