Ah yes, I remember my day bringing this home when I was roughly 5 years old. Though the film is self-described as a 'Comedy Horror,' I can't think of one instance where I found myself ever laughing during this movie as a child. There is some seriously stupid shit in this movie, but also some pretty creepy shit too. Sure it's a little hokey watching it today, but the imagery and creepiness of House still works on a number of levels for me.
The story begins with a crazy old woman living in a haunted house. When she's not busy being tormented by angry, floating gardening tools, she enjoys painting her terrible experiences within her home on canvas. She decides to hang herself, as many people during the 1980's were driven to do, and she leaves her entire inheritance (which is basically just the house) to her Nephew, Roger.
Roger seems like the perfect candidate for a large inheritance; he's a hallucinating, half-crazy Vietnam veteran who is a broke, failing author, half-assed father, his marriage is in shambles... you get the idea. The most hilariouos part about Roger is the fact that he actually LOST his son; not lost as in his son DIED, his son actually went missing during a visit to Roger's now-dead Aunt... inside the HOUSE!
As it turns out, living in Roger's house isn't ALL bad - his next door neighboor turns out to be Norm from Cheers (the character's actual name isn't important, so we shall just call him Norm from Cheers).
"Hey gang, we thwartin' some ghosts?"
Norm politely, but judgementally, befriends Roger in the most sensible way a fat guy could a hallucinating Nam veteran; he brings him snacks late at night and listens awkwardly to his fucked up stories.
The shit hits the fans pretty quick in this movie. One night Roger decides to blow a couple grand on high tech 80's cameras and dress up in army gear in an attempt to photograph a giant monster that previously appeared from the closet in his late Aunt's bedroom and scratched his chest.
Roger sees his Aunt's ghost, who goes on to hang herself as a ghost (sucks!).
A giant mounted swordfish comes to life and makes baby sounds?
The garden tools in the shed levitate and try to stab Roger.
One night his ex-wife shows up and turns into a giant, fat lady-monster (ohhh-kay?) who gets a lickin' from Roger's 12-guage. He then proceeds to dismember the bloated, rubbery corpse and buries in the safest, most well-hidden spot imaginable - his back yard.
As if Roger's life wasn't already hellish enough, his OTHER neighbor (a hot blonde) comes over and pretty much tells him that she'll pay him back in sexual favors if he babysits her son for a few hours. Roger, brimming with the confidence of a father who hasn't already lost his own child, agrees to let the son spend a few hours in his house filled with monsters and angry gardening tools and giant, fanged fat chicks. Well as one could imagine, a few more things go haywire for Roger and the dumb 80s slut's son; One of the hands of the dismembered woman-monster crawls its way back into the house and tries to get the boy. A bunch of freaky, cartoonish, giant-faced ghoul-children try to shove the kid up the chimney (creepy!).
Roger and his pal Norm team up to confront and photograph the monster in Roger's closet one night and Roger is accidentally pulled into the closet by the beast. For some reason, Vietnam is inside Roger's closet. He revisits his most terrible war memory; deciding not to kill his mortally wounded friend "Big Ben" who ends up being taken alive by the enemy and tortured to death.
Now I know what you're thinking - "This movie is great so far, but no true adventure is complete without a trip through the bathroom medicine cabinet." Well... fear not, good movie fans! Roger manages to repell himself (using just a plain, white rope, mind you!) down into the um... the abyss inside the medicine cabinet, where he meets a very unfriendly, claymation skeleton-bat-monster (i apologize for these terrible-sounding creature names, I assure you I'm shooting for accuracy and not just making up words). The skeleton-bat-monster steals Rogers trusty shotgun, shoots Roger's rope and sends him falling into the darkness.
Roger lands safely (and mysteriously) in water. He sees bubbles below the surface and swims down to investigate the source. When he resurfaces for breath, Roger finds himself... back in Vietnam? What the... Okay whatever. Roger finds his son in a cage on the shore and frees him. A man in the darkness is firing a machine at Roger as he rescues his son and goes back underwater to 1986 in America... you can probably imagine who Roger's final encounter of the film is by now.
"Hey dumbass, thanks for not killing me. Also, I found your fucking son."
Big Ben (undead version) follows Roger to his house and starts shooting the entire place up. In the end, Roger just tells Ben that he's not afraid of him or the House anymore, which magically renders Ben completely harmless somehow. Roger pulls a grenade from Big Ben's belt and shoves it into his guts. With the grenade blowing up Ben doing no exterior damage to the house, Roger and his family are re-united. I guess. Maybe he died right after the movie stopped, who knows?
No comments:
Post a Comment