This House Possessed

When this film begins, Parker Stevenson (Frank from "The Hardy Boys") is performing some rock-n-roll song, as he's apparently some big music star. However, he soon collapses...a victim of exhaustion from his demanding lifestyle. Soon he awakens in the hospital where he's taken care of by a very pretty nurse (Lisa Eilbacher). When he's able to leave the hospital, he asks this nurse to accompany him as his own private nurse and...well...who knows--she sure doesn't! He then very impulsively buys a smart house--one loaded with cameras and gadgets. But after a while, it becomes apparent that his house has a mind of its own...as if it's possessed. And then...bad things happen!

If this sounds familiar, much of the film is like the made for Disney Channel movie "Smart House" (1999) but with a more malevolent house and an emphasis on spookiness as well as the relationship between the two leads. "Smart House" was fun and for the kids..."This House Possessed" is certainly more adult and not exactly fun. Plus, the nurse has a bizarre back story that comes out late in the film that left me feeling a bit annoyed as it sounded very contrived. So, apart from this and Stevenson's singing, did I like the film? Well, I didn't hate it...but that's probably it. It's gotten 'time-passer' written all over it with nothing all that interesting about it other than seeing Joan Bennett in a small role.

I haven't seen "This House Possessed" in almost twenty years, but it definitely made an impact on me. Along with the movie "The Entity", the imagery from this film made its way into my subconscious pre-teen mind and lingered in my nightmares for quite some time as one of the truly scariest films I'd ever seen. If horror means "gore" to you, then you probably won't care for this film. But if horror means "capturing the imagination in truly frightening ways" to you, then (as with me) this is your kind of film. Like I said before, it has been a while since I saw it, so I don't remember many of the details clearly, but I will never forget the shower scene. The whole movie made me look at my house in frightening new ways, and it made me glad that we were the house's first occupants. Then I saw "Poltergeist" and everything changed. ;)

A haunted house where the haunting manifests most of the time through the computer that controls nearly every part of the house... fascinating. Yet the haunting is so powerful it can kill/watch/manipulate people miles away, and it seems the force inside the house has feelings, since it's main aim is to bring the person it loves into it's power. The script of this movie is highly original and most of the scenes are really great - the "bloody shower" scene or the very atmospheric scenes at the beginning, when the house watches the people through some monitors at night...just sitting there and waiting... - this movie really gets in your mind and stays there. Throw in a very good performance by the female leads and a convincing performance by the male lead, a really great score that helps much to enhance the thick atmosphere created by the extremely good directing, editing and photography, and here you have it: a really outstanding haunted house movie! One reviewer here criticized the use of "suddenly opening doors" in this movie: Well, yes, at one point a door opens itself, but since the house is alive a lot of stuff moves itself here, so you can't criticize that, unless you want to criticize that the movie doesn't need a lot of blood and gore to create tension... Yes, the fire at the end looks not so good at the indoor shots, but, since most of this seems to be shot outside a studio in a real (great-looking) house, I guess they just couldn't burn this great house down! But just look at that cool "breathing-wall" shot! And maybe they were low on budget, too, and if this is true, then it makes the movie even more greater, since to create such a great movie with a low budget is really a masterpiece!

A nice 1981 b-horror movie starring the late Joan Bennett and Slim Pickens about a burnt-out pop singer moving with a nurse to a high-tech-house to find out that his new building has an evil intelligence and no regrets to kill its habitants.

This TV production is a b-movie flick with a good horror atmosphere, similar to the late Hammer Horror TV shows and several Twilight Zone episodes, and an eerie Theremin-like mystery sound track. Unfortunately the film lacks of good actors, thrills and good special effects.

In fact, this movie was just made twelve years before "Jurassic Park" but shows primitive special effects like suddenly opening doors or some flame overdubs to suggest a heavy fire that were even better produced in the 1933 version of "King Kong".

"This House Possessed" is not good enough to become a horror classic and also not weird enough to become a classic entry in Michael Weldon's "Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film". At least it's thrilling and great fun to watch after midnight with a bag of crisps and a can of lager beer.

Utterly weird but extremely neat little TV thriller. Once again a perfect example of how they do not make TV movies like they used to. Parker Stevenson is pretty good as a rock singer who is inexplicably drawn to take a vacation and move into a top-notch, amazing home. Suddenly, strange things start occuring to him and his girl Lisa Eilbacher. Though it has a very low-budget look to it, this film is good entertainment and the last time I viewed it was on TBS several years ago. Worth tracking down.