The Nesting

Book novelist finds herself strangely attracted to an eerie, run down house in the middle of nowhere. Against her better judgement, she rents the house to work on her newest book and to get some peace and quiet, however she is unaware that the house used to be a bordello where a series of murders took place years earlier. To make matters worse, the ghosts of the victims seem to be haunting the place.

Scary horror film with some rather original moments and some surprising death scenes, runs out of steam in the second half and drags onto a rather unsatisfying conclusion. The cast is better then usual however.

Rated R; Strong Violence, Nudity, Sexual Situations.

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.

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 (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.

Well i've seen this movie a couple times and I have a copy of it on DVD that I transfered from VHS last time I rented it. This is one of those classic horror movies from back in the day when horror movies actually did make you jump, and they made sense! LOL The plot took me for a spin and it was a little confusing at times, but i've figured it out after the second time seeing it.

I with they made movies like this still that had odd story lines to make you think, and that didn't always rely on today's technology to make it all about the special fx.

This movie was cool though, definitely worth the watch!