The Dead Come Home

Bob Griffith (AKA Scott Rhodes) here. Glad to see that many of you have found this film and enjoy it. This was the first feature film that I stunt coordinated almost 20 years ago!!!!!!!!!!! I had a great experience shooting this film. A fun time up in Cherry Valley NY at a great location shooting a low budget horror flick. It was a very tight cast and crew. I remember doing some horseback riding and going to the Baseball Hall Of Fame with some of the cast and crew...And we had a gourmet cook who did all of the cooking and deserts(Some of the best food I have had on ANY set since...OK'Buffy The Vampire Slayer" was close behind!

During my sophomore year of college, my roommate and I rented just about every video from the shlock-horror section of Oasis Video in Salt Lake City. (I hope Oasis is still there). Run back to back with movies like Reanimator, Basket Case, The Evil Dead trilogy and Dead Alive, (plus ALL the Troma we could eat) I thought Dead Dudes was remarkably good. Low budget, funny, kinda creepy, and the best kind of ending:unhappy! I recommend viewing this with a 976-EVIL for maximum horror movie pleasure.

While released by gross out distributor Troma, The House on Tombstone Hill (or Dead Dudes in the House in some circles) is pretty different from most of their regular output. It's still low budget and there's a nice helping of gore, but it's a bit more mature and ambitious than expected.

There's a bit more emphasis on creepy atmosphere and mood than on slashing or gore effects. When the gore does show up, it packs a punch, but it's refreshing to see a Troma film that embraces more than just blood, boobs, and silly gross out humor to tell a story.

Speaking of the story, it's your usual "people want to fix up a haunted house and creepy things happen" saga, but these ghosts seem like they might still be alive, including one creepy homicidal granny.

The effects work are better than usual and some moments reminded me a bit of Sam Rami's Evil Dead films. It's definitely a movie worth checking out.

Way back when Troma would release anything (okay...they've ALWAYS released anything), this film came out of their vault o'horror with an interesting premise: dudes renovate haunted house, some get possessed by evil spirits, end up trying to kill each other. ...as if you couldn't guess the plot from the title.

Yep, "Dead Dudes in the House" is about as low budget as possible and makes no apologies for what it is. In fact, it revels in its origins and goes for the shock, gross-out and gore from frame one to frame last. Gotta appreciate that; not all movies have that kind of conviction.

But in the end, it all is just kind of left there on the screen. Having seen multitudes of similar films in my day, I hadn't seen anything here that I hadn't before. What I did appreciate, however, was the fact that a bunch of guys with cameras, little money and an idea got something filmed, produce and distributed.

Bless 'em. And bless Troma, too.

Six stars for the "Dudes", plus a star extra for making it this far. Way to go, blood!

Like one of the others who commented, I saw this movie years ago on Cinemax (I believe it played back to back with Meet the Applegates)... For the longest time, I have been trying to figure out what it was, because I could not remember the name, only pieces of the plot. Strangely enough, I am not a horror fan, but I just *had* to know what movie this was. And through searching here, I finally found it. Also being titled "The House on Tombstone Hill" really threw me... I could have found it years ago if I knew they were one in the same. And now that it is coming to video to own, I just have to pick up a copy. I just remember that this movie was such a cheesy riot (but I honestly can't recall whether it was purposely bad or not). I can't wait to see it again, a lot of questions will be answered.