Death House

After mob boss Vic Moretti (late great Anthony Franciosa) kills his lady whom has been cheating on him with Derek, their new chauffeur/ Vietnam vet, and blames it on the poor guy, Derek finds himself in jail where he has to contend with a corrupt warden, Vic's prisoner brother who runs the jail, and, oh yeah illegal experiments conducted by a shady CIA agent (great genre-mainstay and first time director John Saxon) to turn various prisoners into super-human invincible zombies. Of course things get out of hand and it's up to Derek, and the rest of the unchanged prisoners, to save the day after the infected ones take the jail over.

John Saxon is a great talented actor & as a director Saxon is a... great talented actor. To say this movie (John's sole directorial outing to date) lacks a certain visual flair would be a bit of an understatement. However, the film isn't totally without merit. The dialog, while idiotic, is just bad enough to be humorous sometimes. Sadly, this isn't really enough for the movie to coast by on that alone and it takes forever for the film to even start coming into it's own (which is fairly late in the movie). As such, the most I can recommend this film is to say that if you're a fan of Saxon (which I indeed am), it's worth one watch, just go in with low expectations and you should be fine.

Eye Candy: Dana Lis Mason and Tane McClure get topless

My Grade: D+

Directed by John Saxon "Zombie Death House", with zombie shoddily superimposed to make this 1980's cliché filled flick appear more like "Return of the Living Dead" rather than a episode of "Hunter", focuses too much on exposition of the characters than on what this film was meant to be. A zombie infestation set inside a corrupt prison has all the elements to be a cult classic but this movie takes far too much time establishing the plot and offers little in violent mayhem.

Former Vietnam vet Derek Keillor (the late Dennis Cole) takes a job as a driver for local mob gangster Vic Moretti (the late Anthony Franciosa - did anyone survive this?) and promptly begins driving Moretti's girlfriend Genelle with his penis. When the affair is discovered Moretti kills Genelle and frames Derek for her murder. He's convicted of the crime (must of had a bad lawyer) and sentenced to death at a prison that conducts medical experiments on the prisoners through a covert government operation led by Col. Gordon Burgess (Saxon). This takes up the first 20 minutes of the movie which is way too long of a setup to introduce the "innocent hero" in a prison setting. The prison that I speak of has a corrupt head guard, Raker, that works for Moretti and answers to Moretti's homosexual inmate brother Franco and his boytoy Sean whom Raker gets "intimate" with during the film. Anyway, a new serum that's supposed to give ordinary men super strength is injected into one of the inmates about to be executed (does anybody think that super strong convicts might cause a problem?) when he turns into a zombie-like monster a begins killing his captors. Turns out that this infliction acts as a virus and the first signs of infection are persistent nosebleeds before succumbing to it. Derek manages to escape his cell during the attack which he then frees the other prisoners, who are more than cooperative for death-row inmates mind you, and organizes a hostage exchange with Col. Burgess who is watching the whole mess unfold just outside the prison. With the prison quarantined along with a few new guests, a former co-worker of Burgess turned newswoman Tanya Karrington (Tane! McClure) her cameraman and Vic Moretti himself looking to free his brother Franco minus his boyfriend. Will anyone survive? How will they get out? Will Tane! McClure show off her wonderful breasts? Does she ever fail to?

I don't know where to categorize this one. Clearly this was meant to be more of an action film under the original title of "Death House" rather than horror. When the zombies finally figure into the story it's only sparingly with too much emphasis on Derek's vendetta against Moretti. The gore is okay, not anything special and downright silly in one scene when someone loses an arm, and there are a couple of topless scenes including the absurd daydream that Derek has of Tanya. Speaking of the lovely Tane! this movie supposedly introduces us to Ms. McClure meaning that this was her first film. Not true! While "Death House" came out in 1987 McClure starred in the 1986 Klaus Kinski slasher "Crawlspace" in 1986 billed only as Tane!. You can find this in the bargain bin DVD section for about $1 which is all I would pay to see this nothing more. Disappointing.

John Saxon was a wonderful actor: he brought style and class to numerous cult classics, working for such film-makers as Mario Bava, Wes Craven, Dario Argento, Sergio Martino, Robert Rodriguez, John Sturges, and Robert Clouse. However, I think it's fair to say that, judging by Death House, Saxon wasn't that great behind the camera himself: his only gig as director, this film is a forgettable piece of trash that meanders aimlessly for an hour and a half, with pedestrian action, wooden performances, and very little in the way of originality or excitement.

Saxon also stars in the film, playing shady government operative Colonel Gordon Burgess, who uses the inmates at a penitentiary as guinea pigs for an experimental virus that turns people into superhuman zombies. Vietnam vet Derek Keillor (Dennis Cole), on death row after being framed for murder by mafia boss Moretti (Anthony Franciosa), attempts to lead the uninfected out of the prison, but finds that Burgess has placed the establishment in quarantine.

With a plot that goes nowhere for much of the time, Death House is an extremely tedious zombie film. The only times that the film displays any life is when Saxon sees fit to throw in some gratuitous nudity or gore. Sadly, there just isn't enough of either to compensate for the lack of genuine suspense or decent action. Cole is passable in the hero role, and Saxon and Franciosa (co-stars in Argento's Tenebre) are as solid as ever as the villains, but what this film sorely needed was much more splatter and T&A, because nothing succeeds like excess.

I really wanted to like this movie. It has a nice prison setting, conspiracy theories, bloodthirsty zombies, a perfectly hideous 80s-touch and it is a directorial effort by actor John Saxon, who also plays a bad (you guessed it) a bad guy. It reminds me of some (beloved) Italian horror flicks. But the direction is very wooden and there is no nightmarish/frightening moment in there. It just goes on and on and on, and then it (logically) has to end. More suspense and more daring visuals and its destiny as a cult classic would have been sealed.

This film essentially begins with a Vietnam veteran named "Derek Keillor" (Dennis Cole) having been discharged from the Army and accepting a job working as a chauffeur to a mob boss by the name of "Vic Moretti" (Anthony Franciosa). Trouble begins, however, when Vic discovers that his mistress "Genelle Davis" (Dana Lis Mason) is having an affair with Derek. To remedy the situation, Vic kills Genelle and then frames Derek for the murder. To make matters even worse, it just so happens that Vic's brother "Franco Moretti" (Michael Pataki) is also a prisoner in the same facility and pretty much controls everything and everybody inside--and he is quite anxious to get his hands on Derek. But what he doesn't count on is the fact that a federal agent named "Colonel Gordon Burgess" (John Saxon) has decided to use some of the prisoners in that same facility as guinea pigs for a dangerous new drug which results in a contagious disease that begins to turn almost everyone inside the prison into raging zombies. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that the film started out well enough but then low-budget aspects soon became much too apparent, and things went downhill from there. Admittedly, having two attractive actresses like Dana Lis Mason and Tane McClure (as "Tanya Kerrington") certainly didn't hurt matters. Even so, it just wasn't enough for me to rate this film any higher than I have. Slightly below average.