The House of the Dead

After a quick night of kanoodling with mistress Leslie Paxton, John Ericson is caught out in the rain, but kindly old mortician Ivor Francis allows him to get out of the cold and wet while he tells him job stories. And for Francis, being a mortician is a job he relishes.

The title Alien Zone is quite the misnomer because there are no creatures from another planet in this film. Unless you consider the perceptive Francis from another world. Because what Francis does is show him four coffins with bodies inside and tells him about how all of them got there. Apparently no one who is a client at the Francis Funeral Home ever died a really natural death.

The stories are of an uneven quality, the best being the third one which involves a couple of vain police inspectors, Charles Aidman and Bernard Fox, each thinking he's the world's best detective. The dialog is really good in that story. The others involve Judith Novgrod as a reclusive school teacher who hates kids, Burr DeBenning as a psychotic murderer, and Richard Gates as a selfish yuppie. They all get a good comeuppance in the end.

Despite a misleading title Alien Zone is not a bad anthology film and how does Ericson and his story fit into all this. Not really hard to figure out even if you don't see the film.

"Alien Zone" aka "House of the Dead" features four creepy stories told by a creepy embalmer.A man lost on his way to hotel listens to his tales.The first tale about a school teacher who hates children managed to creep me out.This nervous woman is being stalked by little children hidden behind their disturbing clown masks.The second story about serial killer of women,who enjoys filming his victims is quite boring and tedious.The stories number three and four are worth checking out.I still don't know why this film was titled "Alien Zone",because there are no aliens or galaxy invaders in it.A passable "Twilight Zone"-ish anthology.7 aliens of of 10.

Under the title "Alien Zone", this sci-fi anthology seems a misnomer, the film concerning an adulterer on a business trip (Ericson) who takes refuge from a storm in a dilapidated building where he's shown an odd hospitality from undertaker (Francis) who introduces him to his most recent corpses and tells of their last moments.

Ericson and Francis essentially introduce each vignette, the first concerning a teacher (Novgrod) who despises her occupation and is taunted by an alien presence in her house, Burr DeBenning stars in the second story as a psychopathic peeping tom who invites single women to his home and films them being murdered, Charles Aidman and Bernard Fox are a pair of super detectives seeking to outdo one another in the third instalment, and Richard Gates plays a self-centred businessman who is dealt a lesson in humility by an unknown force when he's held captive in a derelict building.

The strands are neatly woven together by Francis, who alludes to Ericson's own atonement for his infidelity, which fittingly becomes the fifth and final chapter. Aidman and Fox have the most material with which to work and probably come off best with their witty dialogue contests, but the other stories are equally compelling if only too brief to resonate. While the title might be somewhat misleading, the stories display a concise, consistent narrative that is entertaining and the film is generally better than one might expect.

John Ericson ventures out in the rain after having been left off by a cab at the wrong street. Soon he finds refuge in an old building with a friendly mortician that gives him tea and shows him some of his "clients." There are some easy clues early in the wrap-around story for this anthology to tell you where that story is going, especially after having just seen the man prior to getting in the cab have an adulterous pleasure period with someone else's wife. But the frame story is really just a means to allow mortician Ivor Francis to tell his stories about his clients. I always liked Francis for his calm presence and subtle humour, yet here he is given some really bad dialog but does manage to put some life into this otherwise drab little film. The problem with this, also known for some inexplicable reason as Alien Zone(I saw House of the Dead copy), is that the budget here is really minuscule and the stories, what special effects there are, and acting quality are all directly affected. Nothing is shown. I was shocked that we never even got to see the faces of the dead corpses in the coffins - now that is low budget! The first story deals with a teacher who it seems dislikes children - based on one scene of her walking from her car scowling. She then goes home and the supernatural effects of red tinting children wearing masks and wearing what appear as shark teeth begins. Truly terrifying. (Yawn.) The second story has some real bad actor lure women into his apartment so he can film them being killed. It's done in an almost comedic fashion and has virtually no substance at all. Then there is the one story that I did really like and does have a bit of budget and real actors. The third story has Charles Aidman and Bernard Fox as two great detectives out to outwit the other and become the leading criminologist in the world. This episode has some humor and clever dialog and of course both Aidman and especially Fox have acting ability. You get an idea where it is going but should enjoy it nonetheless. It ends way too abruptly though. The last story is pretty decent too as we see a man who seems to be a person that doesn't care about the society around him get locked into an abandoned building and fed on booze until he becomes a boozer like the one he snubbed earlier. Despite its ridiculous story, the effects of despair are not all that bad. Then of course there is the obvious conclusion to the frame story. This movie was cheaply made and has that real cheap feel to it, but it isn't that bad and a couple of the stories are relatively interesting and none so bad as they are not watchable.

If you're looking for another Tales From the Crypt or Creepshow, The House of the Dead will disappoint you pretty brutally. For all its flaws, it does have a striking low budget 1970's mood and they lay it on pretty thick, so it's hard to call the filmmakers untalented or hacks, because they clearly have talent - it just might have benefited them to have another few cracks at the script.

As with most anthologies, there's a wraparound story which is almost exactly the same as the one in Tales From the Crypt (and it would be used again, if reworked, in Tales From the Hood). A mortician tells a man 4 stories about his most recent clients.

The first story centers around a bitter schoolteacher who gets her comeuppance when she goes home for the evening. While it would help for us to see this teacher being a little bit more cruel (all she really does is yell at a kid to get away from her car and get angry at neighborhood kids for leaving their junk in her yard. Understandable.), this segment probably has the most suspense even if the pay off isn't really good. There are lots of creepy moments of the teacher wondering if she left this door unlocked or had that radio on before she left the room. It's subtle and builds tension pretty well.

The next is about a guy who kills women and films them. It's pretty dull. After that, we have the most boring of the stories with two detectives...talking...about stuff...for what seems like an eternity. The final story doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it's better than the previous one and involves an awful guy getting trapped in a building overnight as some supernatural force tries to drive him insane.