The Nesting - Haus des Grauens

An agoraphobic writer somehow gets enough control of her issues to drive up a secluded country estate where she can rest and get some writing done only to find out it used to be a whorehouse and the scene of a few brutal murders. Naturally, the ghosts begin calling to her, but can she be trusted?

The Nesting has its heart in the right place and, perhaps, with a less annoying protagonist, it could have worked better than it does, but the simple fact of the matter is that no one wants to spend nearly 2 hours with someone this whiny. I can't tell if it was the writing or the actress, but she got on my nerves. The house location is really impressive and there's some mood to be milked from that, but not many of the scares land and it feels like it takes forever to get going. Still, it's not badly made and worth a watch.

Lauren Cochran (Robin Groves) is an agoraphobic novelist who leaves the hustle of the bustle of the city to rent an isolated house in the country, where she hopes to concentrate on her next book. Fat chance, for soon after arriving, the writer suffers a series of terrifying visions that lead her to suspect that the place is haunted. She's correct, of course: her new abode, a whorehouse during the war, was the site of a terrible, bloody massacre, and now the spooks want revenge!

For a film about a haunted brothel, by a film-maker best known for X-rated 'roughie' porn, The Nesting is surprisingly less exploitative than one might expect, taking a comparatively reserved approach that concentrates more on delivering atmosphere and scares than simple shock value.

To director Armand Weston's credit, the result isn't all that bad, with an intriguing basic plot, reasonable central performances, and one or two well constructed death scenes that benefit from the sparse but effective use of gore (the demise of a nasty hick at the hands of a sickle wielding Lauren is especially fun); but although the finished product ain't a total disaster, it's not a complete success either, suffering from a poorly developed script in desperate need of judicious pruning (the film is way overlong at 102 minutes!), a couple of irritating characters (most notably, Lauren's wise-cracking boyfriend Mark), some blatant silliness that should have been fixed before filming commenced (how the hell does Lauren's self-help tape know the layout of her apartment?), and a daft ending that just doesn't know when to quit.

It's a shame, because one can't help but feel that with such a salacious premise, the whole affair is something of a wasted opportunity: if Weston had stayed true to himself by allowing his film to be even half as depraved as his X-rated output, The Nesting would have been a far more satisfying film—a sleaze fan's idea of heaven instead of a fairly entertaining, but ultimately forgettable ghost story.

5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

Armand Weston's "The Nesting" (shot under the title "Phobia" but losing that monicker to John Huston's coterminous pic) is an effective tale of supernatural horror introing a most appealing actress, Robin Groves, as lead. Almost derailed by an overplayed psycho-amuck, pic resolves itself convincingly as an atmospheric haunted house thriller.

Groves stars as Lauren Cochran, an author of gothic novels, latest of which gives pic its "The Nesting" tag. Her intense phobia of leaving her New York townhouse is temporarily overcome when she moves to a spooky remote Victorian mansion.

Coming under the spell of ghosts inhabiting the mansion, a former brothel, Cochran's fears return. She becomes a gog in the ghosts' revenge upon their murderers, with the original massacre related in a slow motion "ballet of death" flashback executed in the style of Sam Peckinpah. By pic's end both the ghosts' vendetta and heroine's fears are exorcised.

Pic almost falls apart midway when Weston focuses on one of the murderers who maniacally goes after Cochran in an all too mundane "mad killer" fashion. He allows David Tabor as the psycho to mug outrageously in an embarrassing Rod Steiger imitation, and the film has a hard time recovering its credibility.

Aside from this lapse, pic is carried by the intense performance of Groves, who somewhat resembles the late British actress Rachel Roberts. Supporting cast, apart from Tabor, is okay, with John Carradine providing black humor and exposition, while Gloria Grahame unfortunately is waste in a bit as the brothel madam and lead ghost.

With this pic, helmer Weston makes the jump from hardcore porn to mainstream production, demonstrating a strong visual sense and narrative skill. Atmospheric film boasts excellent special effects, but the musical score is trite library music.

My review was written in April 1981 after a Times Square screening.

The Nesting is an open-ended supernatural thriller featuring a convincingly neurotic writer with a bad case of agoraphobia (among other things) who decides to rent a house she finds out in the country that looks suspiciously like the one featured on one of her book covers. At times the film is a reasonably intelligent thriller but it has a tendency to err on the side of goofiness. Many of the characters, despite being likable, are incredibly over the top (the Colonel, handyman Frank, etc) and quite often characters are brought into a scene solely to die because there aren't enough victims on-hand.

The film's ambiguity is largely owed to the fact that the ghost scenes only seem tooccur when the writer is nearby and the others seem to die right after the encounter. That and a later reference would almost suggest that the thing could have been in her head although the attacks look like they're being carried out by an invisible, supernatural assailant.

The writer's character is relatively dull, as are her two apparent romantic interests. Other characters are humorously colorful and bring a lot more to the production but the protagonist really seems to exist to do little other than unconvincingly act scared by various phenomena (oddly not done as well as the agoraphobia, but clever camera-work helped with that) and to unravel a mystery that never quite gets compelling.

The Nesting (1981)

** (out of 4)

Writer Laura Cochran (Robin Groves) rents an old mansion from Colonel LeBrun (John Carradine) and soon realizes that there are some strange things going on inside it. It turns out that the mansion was used in WWII for prostitution and that many of them were brutally murdered and now their vengeful spirits are there. The 80s will always be remembered by horror fans for the countless slashers but if you look back at the early part of the decade you'll notice countless haunted house movies. This one here certainly isn't in the same league as THE SHINING or THE CHANGELING but for the first minutes it's actually pretty good but sadly it all falls apart. The first portion of the film actually managed to bring up a nice atmosphere, which led to a few creepy moments but these scenes quickly went out the window as the film started to movie into the second half. This is where the film really went off the tracks because they take everything from the house to the outside and we got some pretty stupid scenes and not any good ones. There are two weirdos on the outside bothering the writer and we get separate attack scenes and neither of them are very effective. I'm going to avoid spoiling anything but the second attack gets dragged out to a pretty long sequence, which just ends is a very silly fashion. Another problem with the film is that it runs way too long and simply doesn't have a strong enough of a story to keep the viewer interesting in what's going on. Groves offers up a good performance as the writer who is slowly losing her mind as does Michael David Lally and Christopher Loomis in his small role. Vet Carradine is always fun to watch but it looks like by 1981 people would know better than to rent a house from him. Oscar winner Gloria Grahame (THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL) makes a small appearance here in her final film. Another thing that kept bothering me throughout this film is wondering why the writer simply didn't leave the house. I mean, after countless deaths, attacks on your life and strange happenings, there really wasn't a reason for her to stay yet she just put up with all of this as if it was just a typical day. THE NESTING isn't a bad movie but at the same time it certainly needed a lot of work to be made better.