Ghosthouse (1989)

Good start, but then it gets ruined

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Blistering performances.

This should be in a bargain bin. I have rarely seen such idiotic characters. If they would not have died I would kill them myself for such bad acting, makes you want to punch them and kill them yourself. Especially the 3 girls, actually forget this, all characters are acting like dumb idiots with no brains and no nerves.Besides the cast that keep screaming at everything, they don't react. None of the actors in this movie seems real. NO ONE would react like these pathetic zombies, and if they do; they deserve to die!The movie plot is good and with good acting and directing this could be a very strong movie. The directing and acting makes this version so lame that it should be burned.I love B movies cause there is something in them you don't get in the Hollywood big flicks; soul. This movie however has no soul, no body, not much besides the amazing story idea. I wish someone would pick it up and make a real movie with real actors. (Is is so bad that you need to really want to see the end to endure the acting, again, it is soooooooooooo bad I couldn't believe it.)A movie to watch, painfully, just to get the story behind it, good story, destructive acting and directing.

From director Umberto Lenzi (using the riotous Americanized pseudonym of Humphrey Humbert) comes this dopey, low grade, but engagingly dumb haunted house flick.Things begin with a prologue of young Henrietta (Kristen Fougerousse) being chastised by her father for butchering the family cat, and then being locked in the cellar. Soon after the parents are brutally murdered. Flash forward 21 years, and HAM radio operator Paul (Greg Scott) picks up radio signals of what sounds like people being terrorized. He traces the signals to an isolated manor, meeting up with other young adults. Soon these unfortunate souls are set upon by the demonic forces residing within the walls.A banal script (by Cinthia McGavin), truly silly dialogue (by Sheila Goldberg), lame attempts at horror, and some delicious moments of gory violence combine in this enjoyably bad movie. The acting is likewise lousy from most everybody concerned, although it's nice, as it always is, to see the great character actor Donald O'Brien (a.k.a. Dr. Butcher, M.D.) as a hilariously unsubtle, menacing axe-wielding caretaker.The young actors *are* attractive, in any event. Lara Wendel of Dario Argento's "Tenebre" is top billed as she plays Paul's girlfriend Martha. The adult performers don't fare much better, but there are some great character faces among them: William J. Devany as a detective, Alain Smith as Henrietta's father, Robert Champagne as a mortician.The music, by Piero Montanari, is very bad, but amusingly so, while cinematographer Franco Delli Colli works to give the movie a decent look. At least "La Casa 3" ("La Casa 1" and "La Casa 2" being the Italian titles for the first two "Evil Dead" movies) gets much mileage out of a creepy clown doll, much like "Poltergeist" did six years previous.Filmed in the same house as Lucio Fulci's "The House by the Cemetery".Six out of 10.

Umberto Lenzi's Ghosthouse just about has all the trademarks of a late era Italian horror. A haunted house. "Teenage" victims. Gore. Cheesiness. Bad acting. It's all there, and it's all good.Back in 1967, a crazy father discovers his cat murdered in his basement, and his daughter holding a pair of bloodied scissors. Understandably losing the rag, he locks his daughter in the basement and goes upstairs, and that's when things get weird. A bulb expands and explodes and a maggoty thing appears and splits his head open with an axe. When mother comes to investigate a mirror explodes in her face, performing the good old Italian eyeball trauma, and then she gets a knife through her neck for her trouble.Fast forward to 1987, where CB enthusiast Paul is discussing Simon Le Bon and Kim Basinger over his radio. He catches a strange signal where a man is crying for help, followed by a weird tune and indecipherable vocals, and using his computer, somehow, he manages to track down the signal to a house in the country. Now brace yourself because this is a big surprise – it's the house from the start of the film.Grabbing his girlfriend Lara Wendel (who hilariously spends most of the film in a bad mood with him), Paul heads out to the house, where he finds CB operator Jim, his girlfriend, his brother and his Jim Carrey lookalike sister/pain in the arse Tina. Problem is, Jim acknowledges that the voice on the tape is his, but he's only just set up his CB rig and hasn't used it yet. That night, Jim is drawn to the basement, where a small girl and a creepy looking clown doll appear, and Jim finds himself uttering those words that Paul taped the day before…and ends up dead.I like Ghousthouse for many reasons. First, there's the cast, including Lara Wendel (Red Monks, Killing Birds), Donald O'Brien (Mannaja, Zombie Holocaust) and Bob Champagne (Witchery). Then there's the fact that the film splits into two plot threads rather than have everyone just stuck in the house being chased by ghosts. That does happen to some of the characters for the remainder of the film, but two characters never actually return to the house, and instead try and investigate the origin of the haunting, pursued by O'Brien (who plays a deranged caretaker in slasher mode). Then there's the sheer amount of haunted house action Lenzi pours into the film, from the usual taps pouring blood, appearing/disappearing ghosts, moving objects, disembodied laughter etc, to the more surreal basement full of quick lime and an appearance by the Grim Reaper.Gore wise it's pretty good. You've got the messy killings at the start, someone being stabbed with shears, a hammer killing, and a character being cut in two. There's also the sub plot involving the homeless black thief guy that's maybe not worth dwelling on too much. Ghosthouse is for me one of the finest of these cheapo horror films the Italians were churning out before the industry gave up, and further proof that Lenzi can be a good director if he wasn't too obsessed with killing animals for jungle flicks. Check out his seventies gangster movies – they're all gold.I've seen posted on the 'goofs' section here that Lenzi made the mistake of putting Henrietta's date of birth as "1938" on her tombstone, but it clearly says "1958" – give the guy some credit.

"Ghost House" is a really enjoyable supernatural haunted house film.**SPOILERS**Working with a radio receiver, Paul Rodgers, (Greg Scott) keeps receiving strange transmissions over the radio, which begin to get to Martha, (Lara Wendel) his wife. Tracking the source to a small town-house in the country, he finds that Jim, (Martin Jay) Susan, (Mary Sellers) Mark, (Ron Houck) and his girlfriend Tina, (Kate Silver) are living in the house where he received the transmissions, and after looking around, they all get a weird vibe from the house. When they suddenly start to die mysteriously, they discover that the house is haunted by the spirit of a young girl who was driven insane and murdered her grandparents years ago, and that the spirit doesn't take too kindly to them coming in her house. As the deaths continue, they try to find out how to stop them before they all wind up dead from her rampage.The Good News: This was a really nice supernatural entry. One of the best facts is that there's a great ability to remain so creepy while it's so cheesy. The main house where everything takes place is incredibly creepy, with the basement set-up, the decorations placed down there and the way that they're set-up make this a wonderful setting. From the great method of letting the main hauntings get started, with the demonic-looking clown that is just down-right creepy because of the twisted smile and the white face paint being involved it has a just never-ending manner of setting up an atmosphere to this that manages to make the real haunting scenes all the better. The scene in the bedroom with the dolls coming to life and then all the other stuff reverting back to hide the truth manages to make the scene great. The last assault on the friends stuck inside is even better, from the howling wind to the really great method of the supernatural instances coming to life and the simply incredible scene where the hooded figure comes down the stairs carrying a knife, and it's revealed to be a skull-headed grim reaper with the bony features melting down. It's a great scene, and combined with everything else the film throws into the last half of the film, it's got a lot to like about it. The other thing that really works for this is the great deaths, which are really nice and bring about some nice gore. There's a fan blade flying on it's own to slice a throat open, an ax rammed into the top of the head, a knife impaled in the neck, a guillotine slicing in half at the waist, stabbing in the back with hedge-clippers and another is run over by a bus, among others. These here are all the really good parts to this.The Bad News: There really isn't all that much wrong with this one. The only flaw in this is rather big but non-detrimental, is the film's incredibly slow burn to get going. There's some nice stuff early on, but the film does take it's time to get to the great areas that occur in the second half. The encounter with the hitchhiker, who disappears after a couple minutes, the long walk-through of the house when they first arrive, and especially the scenes of him playing around with the noise transmissions are full of scenes that go on for a long time before they lead into anything of excitement, which really works here to make the first half a little slow-going. There's a really big problem there, and it's the biggest and most impacting on the film.The Final Verdict: A rather enjoyable entry that really has a lot to like about it with only a few mild flaws to bring the film down. Give this a shot if you're into creepy haunted house films, a big fan of European horror fare or the creative cast or just plain interested, while those who aren't into this type should heed caution.Rated R: Graphic Violence and Language