La casa delle anime erranti

It's the old dark house plot again with added gore. Foolish young people take shelter in in old house or in this case, hotel and all hell then breaks loose. Not one of the most original stories in the field of horror films and sadly there is nothing really new in this made for TV movie. Other than the only known case of death by washing machine that is!

Made in 1989 but looks even more dated than that, the jocks and bimbos in the American splatter films were pretty air-headed but they were always far worse and incredibly stupid in the European ones. Anyone with an ounce of sense would see what a 'con-damned' building this house was and run for the hills. These just wait around aimlessly to be picked off by the forces of evil.

The sound dubbing isn't very good either and somewhat annoying as none of the voices seem to be in tune with the actors. And the small child while I guess, is supposed to be cute is just a major pain in the backside. But then again, none of the cast are sympathetic and you don't really care what happens to them.

Thus it rattles onto a dull finale and disappointment. Like a lot of Spanish and Italian films in this genre, the horror effects happen for no rhyme or reason, just to try to elicit a scare. There has to be some bounds of credibility and logic in even the most dopey plots.

Only for really die hard fans of the director.

Basically, you can judge your prospective enjoyment of this film by how you receive this line: "It's okay, the Doctors gave you a rational explanation. You've got psychic powers".

Although this is part of the House of Doom series, this film would be better off being called Ghosthouse 2: Ghosthotel, because both films have a lot in common. We start off with a group of geologists getting stuck trying to get to a certain destination, including Carla, who has visions, her boyfriend Kevin (Joseph Johnson, somehow ending up here via Slumber Party Massacre and Bezerker), Massimo (no doubt a tribute to Massimo Vanni), two other folks, and atypical annoying kid Gianluca. These folk, as you would imagine, end up stuck at some haunted hotel where the manager went insane and killed all the guests.

Carla's first to start seeing things, what with the television in the basement broadcast murders from twenty years ago, and Gianluca's seeing blood dripping from the ceiling and fake spiders everywhere. Travelling companion Mary gets pushed into a freezer by the maggoty hand from Ghosthouse and ends up sharing that space with two hanged corpses. By the end of all this our victims realise that things are a bit wrong at this particular hotel.

At this point things get even more Ghosthouse, when two of our characters head out into the world to investigate what the problem is while the rest of our characters stay behind to be murdered by the vengeful ghosts that reside in the hotel, so expect decapitation by washing machine (extra point for that), decapitation by knife, and decapitation by some other blade.

Meanwhile, Joe Johnson and the guy who's dubbed by the guy who appears in more Italian films that anyone else that exists run around town, graveyard etc trying to find out what's going on. Before you know it, they're back at the hotel with the only survivor, the ghosts have somehow used concrete to wall everyone in, and Joe Johnson's using a metal detector to find some severed heads!

If you are the most rational person in the world, I wouldn't be seeking this one out. However, if you like Umberto Lenzi films then this one is a fairly safe bet. There ain't much in the way of gore but if you like Ghosthouse then this is more of the same - haunted house stuff, people freaking out and getting killed, and a better soundtrack than normal. I've watched this one about five times and never get sick of it. It's the best of the House of Doom films for me and further proof that Lenzi is a fine director who managed to sully his name directing crappy cannibal films.

Do you have any nostalgia for those 80s horror movies that make no sense whatsoever? Then you will enjoy this movie.

The plot devices they use keep people in the thick of it are stretched beyond all imagining, but where would the movie go if all the characters just left? So we can at least be amused by this. Three people experience nightmarish visions? I know, let's investigate further! (lol) Then there is the hard driving amped up pop soundtrack, so different from the somber mood of the 70s horror.

I will not give away any of the plot devices, but late in the movie, something supernatural happens at the hotel to keep the people from leaving. When you see it you will think "if something can do that, why didn't they just drop a piano on them the moment they walked in the door? xD

I came upon this one by pure accident and wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. Like the other films in the Ghosthouse universe, the plot isn't the best and the characters are crudely drawn at best, but the horror set pieces are memorable enough to keep one's interest throughout and it doesn't even crack the 90 minute runtime mark, so it's not a big commitment. People walking around with minimal horror makeup shouldn't be as creepy as they are in this movie. A lot of the horror scenes are made creepier by how unremarkable and mundane they are and then the film hits you with something insane like someone being decapitated by a washing machine.

Blood gushes from a statuette as a Tibetan monk hacks at it with a hatchet; a skeleton rolls along in a wheelchair; tarantulas crawl over dead bodies; a small child has blood on his hands: these nightmarish visions are a regular occurrence for poor geology student Carla (Stefania Orsola Garello). Her boyfriend Kevin tries to put her mind at rest: "The doctors gave you a reasonable explanation", he reminds her, "They said that you have psychic powers. You're a medium."

It's craptastic dialogue like this, along with inept gore, that will make The House of Lost Souls a painful watch or a bearable one, depending on your particular proclivities. Personally speaking, the dreadful writing and bad special effects make this a reasonably enjoyable time waster -- not a classic by any stretch of the imagination, but bonkers enough to entertain for the duration.

Directed by Umberto Lenzi, The House of Lost Souls was the fourth and last film in The Houses of Doom collection of made-for-TV movies, (the others being The House of Clocks and The Sweet House of Horror, both directed by Lucio Fulci, and The House of Witchcraft, also by Lenzi). It sees a group of young people taking refuge at an old motel where they encounter the malevolent spirits of several murder victims that seek revenge on the living.

What follows is a random series of supernatural events, fairly typical of the Ghosthouse series (this film is also known as Ghosthouse 3), in which the living are tormented by the dead, before they are decapitated one by one. It's all extremely silly stuff, with the craziest death being that of the youngest of the group, Gianluca (Costantino Meloni), who loses his head to a vicious washing machine. Other victims are separated from their noggins by chainsaw, axe and a dumb waiter! The House of The Lost Souls also features one of my favourite lines of dialogue in Italian horror: on learning that the doors and windows of the motel have been sealed shut, one of the characters exclaims, "Reinforced concrete! Must be 27 metres thick!". How does he know?

In the film's suitably daft finale, Kevin uses a metal detector to locate the heads of the murder victims so that he can lay their spirits to rest. I didn't know metal detectors had a 'severed head' setting.

5/10. It's garbage, but entertainingly so.