The House Where Evil Dwells (1982)

Sadly Over-hyped

Fantastic!

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This movie seems to still get no respect, so let me chip in and say give it a look. The movie has some real atmosphere which really matters in a ghost story. A big part of this is the sound which features constant bug noises whenever at the house and the other aspect of the effective sound is a very good score by Ken Thorne. It's a scary score, I'd say Thorne's best and the sound design of the film uses it well and also uses Japanese language screams and grunts effectively. The scares are here and if a few times the scare is followed by something that gets a bit silly, you have to say it gets you.The film is also part travelogue of Japan and it does this well too. The ghosts are fairly authentic to Japanese culture--including the face in the soup ghost that others have thought silly. What's interesting about the ghosts in this film, that is pretty unique, is that we the audience see the ghosts but for the most part the characters in the film don't. I can't think of another ghost story that has done this. The movie moves pretty quickly though in the middle it loses a bit of steam and it's also in the middle that the ghosts get a bit silly, but most of this can be forgiven with the uncompromising and memorable ending toping it all off. Also there is nudity and sexual elements and the female Japanese ghost is genuinely creepy as is the dialog free opening of the film.Must be said that the existing DVD of the film has a soft looking 16 by 9 image, if you watch the full frame version the image is sharper and you see more image top and bottom, so the widescreen is just a slightly sloppy blow up of the same video master. The trailer to the film also 16 by 9 looks much better than the movie! But it's still worth watching.Director Connor does one of his best jobs here, it's too bad that in the middle part of the film he has the ghosts run around in scooby Doo fashion, but it's a relatively short lapse in his effective film. George bugs her eyes out one too many times but otherwise gives a good performance as do the 2 male leads. The daughter character is fairly poorly written and acted but that's a smallish part of the film.It's a unique ghost story it's got exploitation elements to keep you going as well. Hey at least it makes sense, which is more than you can say for THE GRUDGE. Those 2 films pretty much stand alone, well along with THE MANSTER for genre films made by Westerners in Japan.

At the beginning of the film, you might double-check the DVD cover and re-read the synopsis a couple of times, but no worries. It's NOT "Memoirs of a Geisha" that you purchased; just a movie with an intro that is much more classy and stylish than it has any right to be. Still, the opening is by far the best thing about the entire movie, as it shows how in the year 1840 a Samurai sword master catches his wife committing adultery. He decapitates the two lovers before doing some hara-kiri (ritual suicide through disembowelment). Cut to present day, when the American Ambassador in Japan welcomes a befriended family and drives them up to the same house where the aforementioned slaughter took place nearly one and a half century ago. From then onwards, this becomes a seemingly routine haunted house flick yet the utterly retarded and implausible script still makes it somewhat exceptional. Let's start with the good aspects, namely the original Japanese setting and the presence of the delicious Susan George who is my all-time favorite British horror wench (well, together with Britt Eckland, Linda Hayden and Ingrid Pitt). The bad aspects simply include that the screenplay is incoherent, imbecilic beyond repair and full of supposedly unsettling twists that only evoke laughter. The restless spirits of the house soon begin to entertain themselves by perpetrating into the bodies of the new tenants and causing them to do and say all sorts of crazy stuff. The spirit of the massacred adulterous woman particularly enjoys squeezing into Susan's ravishing booty and transforming her into a lewd seductress! In this "possessed" state, she even lures the American ambassador outside to have sex in the garden of a high society diner party full of prominent guests. So, strictly spoken, it's not really "evil" that dwells in the house; just a trio of sleazy ghosts with dirty minds and far too much free time on their long-dead hands! Obviously these scenes are more comical than frightening, especially since the light-blue and transparent shapes remind you of the cute ghost effects that were later popularized in "Ghostbusters". "The House Where Evil Dwells" is probably the least scary ghost movie ever. Throughout most of the running time, you'll be wondering whether director Kevin Connor (who nevertheless made the excellent horror films "Motel Hell" and "From Beyond the Grave") intentionally wanted to make his movie funny and over-the-top, like "Motel Hell" maybe. But then again, everyone in the cast continues to speak his/her lines with a straight and sincere face, so I guess we are nevertheless supposed to take everything seriously and feel disturbed. "The House Where Evil Dwells" is never suspenseful or even remotely exciting and it doesn't even contain any grisly images apart from the massacre at the beginning. I am fully aware of how shallow it sounds, but the two scenes in which Susan George goes topless are the only true highlights. Well, those and maybe also the invasion of cheesy and ridiculously over-sized spiders (or are they crabs?) in the daughter's bedroom. How totally random and irrelevant was that? If you ever decide to give this movie a chance notwithstanding its bad reputation, make sure you leave your common sense and reasoning at the doorstep.Trivia note for horror buffs: keep an eye open for the demon-mask that was also a pivot piece of scenery in the brilliant Japanese horror classic Onibaba.

From reading all of the comments posted here on IMDb, this movie seems to get ragged on a lot, but I didn't think it was THAT bad. I've seen much worse, actually."The House Where Evil Dwells" is a ghost story about a husband and his wife, Ted and Laura Fletcher, and their daughter, Amy, who move into an old house in Japan. Little do they know, a Japanese ninja brutally murdered his wife and her lover, and then killed himself 100 years earlier with a samurai sword. As strange things happen in the house, the ghosts of the previous residents begin to possess the bodies of the living, and plan on re-enacting the bloody murder that took place 100 years back.I saw this movie and decided to give it a chance, from the cover it looked like a decent ghost story. It was routine, and it was corny, but I've seen worse in my day. The ghost sequences were a little over-done, we get to see the translucent blue-tinted figures randomly pop up randomly around the family, and take over their bodies. To be honest, the ghosts in this movie kind of reminded me of the ghosts in the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland. I may be mistaken, but after watching this, it seemed to me that the Japanese horror film "Ju-On: The Grudge" and the American remake of that film ripped this off a little. The old Japanese home where a brutal murder took place, ghostly activity, curses put on the home, etc. But I may be wrong.To sum it up, this is a pretty corny ghost story. Don't go out of your way to see it, but if you like this kind of thing and it happens to come on TV you can give it a shot. 4/10.

In 1840 in Japan, a man has an affair with a woman in her husband's house. A "netsuke" (I think it was called) is prominently featured; it is a small ivory carving of a seated woman and man (or demon?) in a sexual embrace. The husband arrives home just as the adulterous couple have stripped and are getting started and he can observe their shadows through the translucent windows. In slow motion, the husband draws his sword and charges through the wall, swinging his sword wildly and ineffectively. Ultimately, he does chop one of the man's arms off, stabs him in the crotch, and decapitates him. After slashing his wife's throat and getting in a few more strikes on her, he commits hari kari.This is a fairly standard "awful thing happens in a house, and a new family moves in" sort of horror story, but it gets points for the location photography. Beautifully decorated houses, gardens, etc. In a way, this prefigures this year's The Grudge remake, with the Americans moving into a house haunted by Japanese ghosts.An American couple and their daughter arrive in Japan. Their Japanese-speaking American friend who works for the American consulate has arranged for them to rent the house. He actually does tell them the cheap price he got for the house was due to stories of its being haunted. Initially there are just some mild signs of its being haunted, but nothing they particularly note. The couple has sex that night with lots of half-fades and schmaltzy music. The next morning, a zen monk politely and calmly warns them the house is haunted, and they should leave, and he will wait for them to ask for help.The ghosts start appearing, as blueish figures, shoulder-to-shoulder. They are no longer each others' enemies, but it proves evident very quickly that they intend for the new couple and their friend to re-enact their own deaths. The ghosts can step into people's bodies and make them speak or act differently.The husband actually sees the ghosts sometimes, while his wife more often just observes poltergeist behavior. He also sees the female ghost looking as she did when alive (i.e. not blueish and transparent) in other locations through his camera, but she does not show up on the developed film. There's a nice scene where he is photographing some female divers and she shows up there.The wife finds the netsuke, which she keeps with her, and she also buys some Noh masks with her daughter, as well as a demon mask and a devil-god mask. The demon mask looks similar to the mask in Onibaba (1964).I can see how people would see the movie as silly in parts or overall slow, but I guess I was in the proper mood to enjoy it: I liked it.