Ghosthouse 3 - Haus der verlorenen Seelen

Do you have any nostalgia for those 80s horror movies that make no sense whatsoever? Then you will enjoy this movie.

The plot devices they use keep people in the thick of it are stretched beyond all imagining, but where would the movie go if all the characters just left? So we can at least be amused by this. Three people experience nightmarish visions? I know, let's investigate further! (lol) Then there is the hard driving amped up pop soundtrack, so different from the somber mood of the 70s horror.

I will not give away any of the plot devices, but late in the movie, something supernatural happens at the hotel to keep the people from leaving. When you see it you will think "if something can do that, why didn't they just drop a piano on them the moment they walked in the door? xD

This made for cable horror film tells the story of a handful of young geologists, who are unlucky enough to be forced to stay at a hotel in the middle of nowhere. What they don't know is that the hotel has been abandoned for twenty years, because the owner of the hotel had killed his family and all the guests two decades ago. Strange things begin to happen, and suddenly murders are committed...

Umberto Lenzi has done a decent film here, although his other made for cable feature that year, "La Casa dei Sortilegi", is superior (both films were made for a four-part-TV-series called Houses of Doom. The other two were Lucio Fulci's "La Casa nel Tempo" and "La Dolce Casa degli Orrori" - all films were made in 1989 by the way). There is one bizarre murder scene where a kid gets decapitated by a washing machine (sic!). All in all standard fare, but quite entertaining stuff.

Blood gushes from a statuette as a Tibetan monk hacks at it with a hatchet; a skeleton rolls along in a wheelchair; tarantulas crawl over dead bodies; a small child has blood on his hands: these nightmarish visions are a regular occurrence for poor geology student Carla (Stefania Orsola Garello). Her boyfriend Kevin tries to put her mind at rest: "The doctors gave you a reasonable explanation", he reminds her, "They said that you have psychic powers. You're a medium."

It's craptastic dialogue like this, along with inept gore, that will make The House of Lost Souls a painful watch or a bearable one, depending on your particular proclivities. Personally speaking, the dreadful writing and bad special effects make this a reasonably enjoyable time waster -- not a classic by any stretch of the imagination, but bonkers enough to entertain for the duration.

Directed by Umberto Lenzi, The House of Lost Souls was the fourth and last film in The Houses of Doom collection of made-for-TV movies, (the others being The House of Clocks and The Sweet House of Horror, both directed by Lucio Fulci, and The House of Witchcraft, also by Lenzi). It sees a group of young people taking refuge at an old motel where they encounter the malevolent spirits of several murder victims that seek revenge on the living.

What follows is a random series of supernatural events, fairly typical of the Ghosthouse series (this film is also known as Ghosthouse 3), in which the living are tormented by the dead, before they are decapitated one by one. It's all extremely silly stuff, with the craziest death being that of the youngest of the group, Gianluca (Costantino Meloni), who loses his head to a vicious washing machine. Other victims are separated from their noggins by chainsaw, axe and a dumb waiter! The House of The Lost Souls also features one of my favourite lines of dialogue in Italian horror: on learning that the doors and windows of the motel have been sealed shut, one of the characters exclaims, "Reinforced concrete! Must be 27 metres thick!". How does he know?

In the film's suitably daft finale, Kevin uses a metal detector to locate the heads of the murder victims so that he can lay their spirits to rest. I didn't know metal detectors had a 'severed head' setting.

5/10. It's garbage, but entertainingly so.

Can it get any worser to understand it all? i mean, just look at the release of Ghosthouse (1988). It had an good script but was also called La Casa 3 clocking in on Evil Dead's success. Then came Ghosthouse 2 but that's a title used for a few different flicks and wasn't directed by Lenzi and had nothing to do with the original one. Here I just watched what they call in Germany Ghosthouse 3. But it has again nothing to do with Ghosthouse, in fact it should be called La Casa 5 but it doesn't. It's just one of the fourth part of the series "Le case maledette" (Doomed Houses) also including La dolce casa degli orrori, La casa nel tempo and La casa del sortilegio.

Again, as so many Italian flicks this is pure trash and just look at how it was made, it looked much older, it even looks as a seventies release. The effects were again dull and laughable. But this time a few killings did happen all as decapitations. The most notorious one the one with the laundry machine. Nevertheless it's again low on every part. It's so strange that a man like Lenzi could make such supernatural trash. The ghosts are just real people that are standing there with wooden performances and thats' what most of the acting is. Some did make it into the Italian scene.

Okay, it was a television release but still from someone who made Cannibal Ferox this is trash.

Gore 1/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 1/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

A young group of geologists can't get out of a village due to a landslide and seek accommodations at a creepy, isolated hotel. Of course it is haunted and soon the ghosts of the killer owners and their victims (including a random Buddhist monk) start picking them off. It is going to be a sad day when I run out of '80s Italian horrors to watch. This has all the elements I love (atmospheric main location, gruesome killings, funny dialogue). In fact, one of the opening lines let me know I was in for a treat right away. After waking from a nightmare, Carla tells her boyfriend and he replies, "The doctors had a perfectly reasonable explanation. They said you had psychic ability." Another great exchange:

"Mary's disappeared!"

"Disappeared?"

"Yeah, and we could start looking for her if you didn't ask so many questions."