Fuga do Inferno

I watched this thing of a movie last night (18 Dec '02) while flicking through the channels I got to channel "5" and the opening titles had just begun with the nice landscapes but shoddy pan shots. But as there was nothing else on I decided to give it ago.

For some reason as the movie got increasingly flawed and to be quite honest annoying. I still watched the whole damn thing!

I guess it had it's moments for like an F-Movie! But I like realism in film and this was just not realistic even for a supernatural film. You don't need a huge budget to make truely eerie movies...SO NO EXCUSES! Sometimes I wonder what the actors...Or there agents were thinking!

Surely the weirdest thing to be based in Ireland!!! It's the sort of film when you expect Warwick Davis to turn up chanting "I'm the Leprechaun!" Oh c'mon! What was that invisible cat thingy for!

anyway....NOT MY THING

1.5/10

Strange things happen to Americans Will (Greg Evigan), Maura (Alexandra Paul) and their young daughter Aubrey (Briana Evigan, Greg's real life daughter) when they move into a large, newly inherited house in Ireland. Crusty corpses are found in the cellar, a turkey squirts blood, furniture moves and the ghosts of a dead child and a cackling old lady show up to scare the little girl. Paranormal investigators are eventually called in to banish the evil spirits, but Maura becomes possessed anyway and chases everyone around with a meat cleaver.

This film is full of cliches, but there's a standout performance from Alexandra Paul... too bad it doesn't belong in this movie (nor any other I can think of off hand)! She can barely keep a straight face and her over-emoting and hysterical screaming tantrums are a joy to behold. In any case, she's a lot more interesting to watch than anything else in this movie.

Score: 3 out of 10

This has got to be the worst movie I have ever seen. The part where they loose there daughter? with the poltergeist overtone rip off? just pushes it over the edge with stupidity. I watched it on showtime so it still had the cheese soft-core porn scenes in it. I have to say it made me laugh my ass off. The 80's 3d effects were very out of place. Included an invisible cat and a spinning vortex. Wow I wonder if the people who made this actually feel accomplished in life. The actress who plays the wife looks familiar but sucks anyhow. Her screaming could be used as a torture device in hell for more than retired Nazis. Anyways thank you showtime for the super crappy horror movie. I will always enjoy the time I watched the biggest waist of time and money I have ever seen.

Given that Roger Corman attached his name to this production, I had high hopes for this film. Corman directed many memorable low budget horror flicks in the 1960's. I particularly enjoyed his adaptations of Poe's stories such as `The House Of Usher,' and `The Pit And Pendulum' and `The Raven' which starred the late great Vincent Price. These films had solid acting, atmosphere, suspense, strong characterization, intriguing plot development and delivered some chilling moments. Sadly, `House Of The Damned,' for the most part, sacrifices these qualities in lieu of cheesy low budget special effects, gratuitous nudity and mindless gore topped with cliche fast edits and camera angles.

`House Of The Damned' starts off interestingly with some beautiful location shots in Ireland, but it's straight downhill from here. Unfortunately, instead of spending some time building atmosphere, creating characters we might care about, or building suspense - the director opts to begin running up the body count. After a brief introduction to the lead characters, a young couple and their daughter, the audience spends the balance of the film being bounced from one `spooky' event to another which, in this film, substitutes for coherent plot development. The lead characters are so ill conceived and are so badly acted - the audience doesn't care what happens to them. To make matters worse, the `spooky' events are either utterly cliché or unconvincing due to low tech - low budget special effects. The soundtrack has been lifted from `The Omen.' The plot, what little there is, borrows heavily from `Poltergeist' and `The Legend Of Hell House,' but lacks any of the qualities which made these films convincing.

If you interested in seeing well done haunted house flicks, I recommend you check out classics like `The Haunting (1963),' `The Innocents (1961) or look into Corman's early American International films and pass on `House Of The Damned' unless you're masochistic or mindless.

3 ½ out of 10.

Rob Rheubottom

Wpg, MB. Canada

This was a letdown in many ways. The location filming in Ireland, though quite beautiful at times, cannot save this uninspired flick. Greg Evigan and Alexandra Paul, as the married couple trying to get their marriage back on track and who inherit a haunted mansion, just aren't interesting characters. Paul, towards the end of the film, becomes incredibly annoying and one wishes she would just close her mouth and shut up, as it seems she is screaming as if it has just become an Olympic event! Other problems with this film are odd segments that have nothing to do with the core of the film, such as the opening sequence with two cleaning women and the woman in a bed with a severed hand climbing over her writhing, naked body. Although the woman is quite adequate doing this it does nothing storywise. One is left thinking the production team needed to pad out a short running time and just tossed in some padding and a bit of T and A. The CGI effects are cartoonish as well and the fiery finale rivals co-executive producer Roger Corman's much earlier and far superior film The Fall Of The House Of Usher in all its ineffective cheapness. Any attempt at true tension and suspense, and as a result chills, are thrown out the window in this low budget bust. If you like images of Ireland you might find something here but you would do better renting or buying a travelogue. Skip this unless you are undiscriminating and think plot is secondary. Rent another low budget ghost story(if you can find it) titled The Woman In Black and see how good and scary a movie can be. This was a wasted opportunity.