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!