The Houses of Doom: One star on Yelp.

This weeks entry in the Houses of Doom series is House of Lost Souls (1989), with story and screenplay by Umberto Lenzi who also directed the movie.

Central to the story is a group of five geology students and the kid brother of one of them, who have been camping in the hills doing a survey for their university. On the way back a terrible landslide closes the road. They find an old hotel and though it seems closed, the owner lets them stay for the night as it's quite cold outside. Then terrible things starts happening as the mystery unfolds.

This is in many ways a paint by the numbers horror movie, but with some neat twists on the theme of a haunted house. Everyone tries their best and the final result is decent enough. I wouldn't go so far as to call it good, but that might be expecting a bit too much from a low budget, made for Italian TV movie.

As it is Italian, the dialog is dubbed and fairly awful. Some of the actors are alright, but most of them were too green to pull it off convincingly. The kid brother is annoying as he talks like an adult and everyone always laughs at his unfunny quips, but he is nowhere near as bad as the kids in last weeks entry.

The gore is actually good, even though some of the kills are utterly impossible, but one can't let that get in the way if you watch a movie like this. Some things you just have to let slide. What is harder to let slide are some of the dialog.

One of the main characters, Carla, suffers from horrible visions of murder. Understandably this terrifies her which leads her sort of boyfriend Kevin to say “Hey, the doctors gave a good explanation. You're psychic!”

I don't know who she visited, but I doubt it was a real doctor...

Later on, when people have died and at least two members of the group are somewhere in the scary hotel Kevin again pipes up: “Wait, I'll bring the metal detector!” Of course, it turns out he needs it, but who stops to bring a metal detector when your friends are in mortal danger inside a house?

Finally, and a bit of a SPOILER here, at one point the ghosts manage to seal the hotel in concrete. Thick slabs of hard concrete that blocks all the windows and doors. I mean, I get that the story needs them to be trapped, but why concrete? It's the least spooky material there is!

Do I recommend this movie? Yes, to fans of the genre it's not a bad hour and a half. I was pleasantly surprised overall. Some of the effects are a bit cheap, but I get the feeling that Lenzi knew how to do the most with the budget he had. All in all House of Lost Souls feels complete and, I guess, honest. It's not a masterpiece, but it is good enough.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!

The Houses of Doom: The Sweet House of WTF?

 

Last week I talked about The Houses of Doom – The House of Clocks. Seeing as I committed myself to watching all four films in the series, I watched the second Lucio Fulci entry: The Sweet House of Horrors (1989).

Okay, this is not fun for me as I hate tearing down the hard work of others but I'm not going to sit here and lie to you so here we go. Oh boy, where to begin? Alright, my usual unwillingness to include spoilers is not in effect here so if you want to watch this (don't), go watch it now and come back later. SPOILERS from here on.

The opening scene shows a burglar sneaking around a mansion, trying to open a wall safe when the couple who owns the place comes home. Because he's the worst burglar ever, a sloppy fight breaks out, ending in some patented Fulci gore and murder before the burglar runs away. We are then introduced to the children of the dead couple together with their aunt and uncle at the funeral of said couple.

These kids are some of the worst child characters in any movie, but it's not the fault of the actors, they only did as they were told. The spend half the funeral sobbing (understandable) and half popping bubblegum and giggling at the priest (ludicrous) going back and forth between both. We quickly deduce who the burglar/murderer is as he is the only one at the funeral who acts suspicious. What?

Once back home “strange” things happen, pushing the aunt to want to sell and move. Obviously the kids are against this, but when the real estate agent falls and breaks his leg the kids laugh gleefully and mock him through song, while he's writhing in agony on the floor. Again, what?

Eventually the kids parents manifest as ghosts and play with their children, but not before tormenting the murderer to insanity so that he jumps under a truck and dies. For some reason there is also a ghost dog that is otherwise never mentioned.

The aunt and uncle who can't see the ghosts are understandably worried about the kids so they hire a melodramatic exorcist. He in turn yells a lot, poses dramatically and finally picks up a magic rock causing his hand to melt as he screams in pain while the kids laugh and point. The End. Double What?

The Sweet House of Horror is undoubtedly one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and I've seen some real stinkers in my time. The story has no focus. Is it a mystery who the killer is? No. Is it a ghost story? No, not really. Is it a... screw it, it's just sloppy, badly acted and lousy all around. When the killer tries to cover up the murder by staging it as a car accident, you can clearly see that the car is empty before it's pushed off a cliff. No dummies, no nothing. A different camera angle would have sufficed, but no.

If this had been someone's first movie, I could maybe understand, but Fulci had 55 director credits before this and 61 writer credits, so there is just no excuse. Even a tight budget doesn't explain all the crap this movie contains. I skipped a lot in the synopsis above, but it's mostly the children spouting nonsense. Nothing of interest happens after five minutes. Like House of Clocks there isn't really anyone to cheer on here. In a similar film you might root for the kids, but they are too unlikable and cruel. They actually rival the Bob from House by the Cemetery in terms of sheer irritation. 

Do I recommend this movie? No! The initial gore could be of interest to a gore-hound, but unless you are a completionist who absolutely has to see every Fulci movie, avoid this like the plague. It's only a horror movie in the loosest sense of the word apart from the early gore.

I really hope the next two movies directed by Umberto Lenzi are better.

 

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!

The Houses of Doom: Tick Tock

 I recently discovered a quartet of Italian made for TV horror movies called The Houses of Doom. These movies were commissioned by TV network Reteitalia which was run by Silvio Berlusconi before he got into politics.

The idea seems to have been to create a series of horror movies with a unifying theme in the vein of The Twilight Zone or Tales from the Crypt, but obviously longer. They quickly realized that this wouldn't work even for Italian TV due to the graphic blood and gore. The solution was to make them as regular movies and sell them that way instead.

Yesterday (as of writing this) I watched The House of Clocks (1989) by Italian Horror maestro Lucio Fulci. I'll be as spoiler free as possible.

The titular house is the home of a strange elderly couple with a crazy amount of clocks as well as some seriously weird skeletons in their closet. Or corpses in the basement to be precise. Along comes three ne'er-do-wells, two men and a woman. They drive a stolen car, smoke copious amounts of weed and steal to support themselves. They have heard of this isolated mansion and intend to rob it.

I feel I should add a trigger warning here: There is a scene where a cat is stuffed in a plastic bag and suffocated. This scene was actually difficult to watch due to it's realistic effects. Obviously no real cat was harmed but it disturbed me considerably more than anything else the movie has to offer.

The trio breaks in, things go incredibly wrong and then the supernatural stuff starts happening. Okay, minor spoiler: The titular clocks can turn back time but either because of some cuts or due to mistakes made, the plot has some weird holes vis-a-vis the reversed time. I'm mentioning it because the movie was a bit hard to follow at times. I advice to just roll with it.

With the time twists in effect it becomes a struggle for survival that ends in a, I wouldn't say twist, but somewhat deus-ex-machina ending.

So what did I think? First off, this is undoubtedly Italian horror. The scenery, the dubbed dialog etc. I may have seen a slightly cut version, as there are a couple of minor elements that I didn't see that Wikipedia claims are in the movie, but it was bloody enough and nothing major was left unexplained. There are a few really good shots that are both creepy and wonderful, so it absolutely feels like a Fulci movie, but more in the way of Fulci-lite. After all it was made for TV and shot in only four weeks. It shows but not so much as to be a problem.

Plot wise, this was an interesting variation of elements we have seen in many other movies. The sinister house, the intruders, the robbery gone wrong etc. It's not a question of reinventing the wheel but it is a very nice wheel nonetheless. What was odd is that there is actually no good guy here. There is no one to root for as everyone is awful in some way, which is either wonderful or annoying depending on how you feel about it.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised. I recommend it to all lovers of Italian horror and older horror in general. I had a good time and I'm looking forward to watching the other three movies in this series.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!

Bad times continue

 

The awful story of Activision-Blizzard continues.

I wrote about the sexual harassment, discrimination, frat boy attitudes, on the job drinking etc. two weeks ago, and I'm not going to repeat it here.

In the weeks since a lot has happened. The CEO of Activision-Blizzard, Bobby Kotick released a statement condemning such behavior and vowed that anyone doing so would be fired, even executives. (We'll see if that holds true). He also hired a law firm to act as a third party watchdog that employees can approach safely with such problems. The problem is however that the firm in question is WilmerHale, a company famous for union busting. So, the employees have protested that choice in no uncertain terms, particularly since there has been a lot of talk of unionizing.

Blizzard president J. Allen Brack has left the company. One can only assume that “left” means “get lost before we have to fire you without benefits”. As the man in charge, it is obvious that this whole mess falls on his shoulders so it is possible that he is getting out of Dodge while he still can. Either way, it is no loss. He's being replaced by Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra as co-leaders of the company. Jesse Meschuk the SVP and senior people officer has also left Blizzard.

Several high profile sponsors have pulled out of the Esports leagues for both Overwatch and Call of Duty. Such sponsors include T-Mobile, Kellog's, State Farm and Coca-Cola. The last one is a bit funny as Kotick is also on the Coca-Cola board.The company has other sponsors who haven't pulled out yet, but time will tell if they also jump ship if for no other reason than to not have their brands associated with such reprehensible behavior.

As if it isn't bad enough that they are being sued by the State of California, Activision-Blizzard is also being sued by their own investors for failing to disclose that the state investigation was taking place. Since the investigation has being going on for the better part of two years, it's kind of hard to try to claim they forgot... I for one am looking forward to the fallout from this.

Twice now, there has been a group of investors who have tried to deny Kotick his ludicrous $100 million bonuses, but they have failed. Failed so far, that is. I can't imagine there is a single investor who is happy with the entire board of Activision-Blizzard right now. Lying to employees is one thing. Lying to customers is another, but lying to the investors is illegal and stupid. Some big heads may yet roll for this.

There is more to this story, so much more but I'm running out of time. Check out these articles if you want to know more:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-08-06/activision-blizzard-atvi-news-culture-of-misbehavior-festered-before-lawsuit

https://www.polygon.com/22613315/overwatch-league-sponsor-kelloggs-pulls-ads-activision-blizzard-lawsuit

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great and safe week!

Horror Parody Time

 Hello and welcome back to Eccentric Spheres! Today I have a ghoulish trio of horror parody sketches for your entertainment. 

First up is what it would look like if Wes Anderson directed horror instead of Wes Craven: 

Then in the style of  SAW, Key and Peele shows us how a positive outlook on life can help: 

Finally, don't get I.T. confused with IT: 

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a safe and great week!