Family house, pension de famille

Years ago, murders occurred in a boarding house. Psychic playboy Jim Royce (director John Wintergate) moves in, and has hot naked chicks surrounding him. No, this is not a porno. Unsurprisingly, the house isn't too keen on this, and soon, bad special effects and more come to terrorize those in the house.

Shot on Video (the first horror movie to be SOV in fact) and released theatrically (yes, a SOV movie came to theaters) in 1982, "Boardinghouse" defies any real proper description. The acting boarders on Amateur Porn levels, the music is a blatant "Halloween" rip off, the gore is unconvincing, the 80's fashion styles are an offense to the eyes, and the plot (so to speak) is a ramshackle of odd events.

That out of the way, the movie is never boring. Yes, it's bad. Yes, it is deficient of any real technical merit. Yet, you can't stop watching it. It's a level of bad that manages to be somewhat enduring in it's ineptitude. The movie moves along, though it never really goes anywhere. Hot chicks are knocked off randomly, without any reason to care about any of them.

In short, to say it's incoherent would be an understatement. It's a movie that defies any real explanation, and is unlike anything I've ever seen before. Whether or not I want to see something like it again I don't know.

Surprisingly watchable shot-on-video horror flick about mysterious happenings at a boardinghouse where people have been dying in various OMEN-like ways. Enter a psychic dude who takes up residence at the place and all hell breaks loose.

Apparently made by people who usually produced porn but decided to try their hand at horror for a change, and it shows.

Nothing about this movie is anywhere near "good", but the filmmakers show a sort of mischievous enthusiasm for their work, and two or three scenes deliver on an amusingly adolescent level.

Basically, it's a showcase for some second-rate gore effects which are preceded by a William Castle-like gimmick consisting of a flashing neon image and an electronic zinger sound. Yes, it's extremely dumb, but at least it's never boring, and it's far more entertaining than other straight-to-video crap such as BLOOD CULT and THE RIPPER.

A voice-over explains the HorrorVision concept, scary scenes being preceded either by some weird video effect blooming around a black glove, or a certain musical cue. I didn't really get it...

Some opening exposition appears on a computer screen, but the quality of the video was not very good and I could make very little of it out. At least some of what the computer screen shows is actually depicted, I guess, some Nobel Prize winning scientist falling into his pool and drowning, and a woman bleeding copiously after her hand gets stuck in a below-sink garbage disposal. There's some scene in a hospital of a nurse who was going to recommend against someone being released committing suicide by hanging, and a orderly or doctor who disembowels himself with his hands as someone breathing in through their nose, and out through their mouth "sniff... ha HAAA! sniff... ha HAAA!" apparently forces them to do it.

A guy tries to get some hot roommates by advertising the rooms at $100 apiece, which for Los Angeles is quite a deal, I guess, even in 1982. Supposedly the house has ten bedrooms, but it seems like he gets only about five women, and when another arrives all the rooms are taken and she has to get the child's room being used as a storage closet. There's also an Asian woman who appears in some scenes, but not others.

The landlord, Jim, has some kind of business deal with a drunk involving computer printouts. He uses the strange breathing technique the killers uses to move things with his mind. One of the women in the house becomes interested in his mind control and pyramid grid and crystals, etc. and checks out Wisdom of the Mystic Masters, two volumes of A Course in Miracles, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, among others.

A plan is made to have Victoria's band set up on Friday at the house for a party on Saturday, I think. At some point Jim goes to the beach with Cindy and he's struck over the head, and she starts bleeding and walks into the ocean. When he comes to, he doesn't think to report this.

There's at least a few scenes where their continuity is difficult to determine immediately. One involves a guy named Richard hiring a PI to find somebody. Another involves two policemen briefly coming to the house, one dressed in a shiny green suit and vest. Somebody also has a nightmare while they're sleeping in the den while their room is painted.

There's a weird gardener who saved Jim's late uncle in Vietnam hobbling about. There's odd poltergeist activity in the bathrooms (one which needs its grout cleaned even before the blood gets on it). A bloody icepick gets buried in the yard by one of the women after it stabs another through the hand, while another woman suspiciously gardens compulsively.

What to say about it? It's by no means the worst shot-on-video horror flick - The Last Slumber Party is worse, for one. It's also superior to a lot of more recent shot-on-digital video horror. Johnn Wintergate and Kalassu have been up to more new age stuff since this movie, and if there really will be a DVD with a commentary track by them, I'd definitely check it out.

Holy Crapola-fest Batman! Dear God I haven't seen something so utterly bad, so awful, so mindnumbingly ATROCIOUS in all my years! This is pitiful. Just plain pitiful. I've seen dozens and dozens of schlocky, snooze-inducing, inconceivable messes of film but man does BOARDINGHOUSE take the friggin' cake! NEVER have I seen a film where it ACTUALLY hurt me to sit there and watch it! Ok, now that I'm done with my unnecessary banter...let me explain to you the award winning "plot" (LOL!). A man (who is really awkward looking) rents a house for sale and places an ad in the paper for "women 18-25 not attached and beautiful". Naturally, a bunch of fun lovin' 20 somethings show up. Throughout the movie they whine, moan, and complain...occasionally showing up in various states of undress (isn't that a MUST in 80s exploitation??). All fun aside (yeah, right) a poltergeist moves into the house to brutally butcher, chop, mutilate, and murder our adorable girls. These murder sequences are indeed quite gory, but I'll be damned if they were done by anyone who is, at the very least, a competent (and that's saying a lot) fx artist. Take one scene in the beginning of the movie for instance: This poltergeist creature (or whatever you wanna call it) uses some kind of mind control to force a guy to literally disembowel himself. It is night at first, but when the camera goes in for the close-up to show the guy graphically pulling out his intestines it is in broad DAYLIGHT! It's SO noticeable. I won't even mention the fact that the "guts" are simply just sitting at the bottom of his tucked-in shirt for him to grab out...the fx get worse. I can't remember how the movie ends since it's been awhile (or maybe I suffered brain damage), but much of the film we're lead to believe the main protagonist is the one responsible for the ghastly murders. Did I mention how awkward looking he is? Oh yeah, guess I did haha. Up and coming fx artists might want to take notice on how to do really cheap, amateurish make-up and blood. That's the ONLY good I might see coming from this film. Had it not been SOV, the script revised a bit (ok, a lot), cut out the boring/annoying stuff...it would've STILL only been just tolerable! At best!

Oh yeah, I failed to mention this is all filmed in "Horror-Vision". Gory images follow an annoying UFO-like sound, or a poorly done, computer effect full of bright colors with a black-gloved hand on the screen (??) to warn viewers with a weaker stomach. Cool concept...none of which is done right. Don't let gutter trash like this take up 80 some mins. of your life. I regret it.

I worked at a video store where we happened to have a copy of boardinghouse, and after laughing uncontrollably at the cover, I talked some friends into renting it. Since then, for about 4 years straight we would always rent boardinghouse on new years eve and watch it prior to the ball drop, as it became a cult tradition in our area. My favorite line has to be when one of the random men walk in and say "What is this, a harem?" and a random woman replys in a high pitched voice, "no." the mans response is just, "Well, sh*t." who can write dialogue like that? Great scenes include when the refrigerator throws food upon one of the young women, and you can see the arm stretching out of the fridge to throw yogurt at the poor actress. A truly bad movie that is a gas to watch, I would love to get a copy on tape, but 'tis hard to find.