La Maison hantée

Judging by the quality and content of The House That Screamed, I would have guessed that the film was made by a guy in his early twenties—someone with limited movie-making experience and even more limited resources. Turns out that the directors (yes, it took two people to make this 'masterpiece'), John and Mark Polonia, were 32 when they made this and that they had been involved in the film industry for quite some time. Some people should know when to call it a day.

Shot on video, written on a napkin (probably), and edited on drugs (seemingly), this crappy z-grade home-made horror sees the Polonia brothers undecided as to precisely what approach they want to take: serious art-house horror or exploitative trash. Having failed to come to a decision, they do both, while chucking in any other extraneous ideas that pop into their heads while filming. Thus, we get a film that is part incomprehensible audio-visual experiment and part cheap 'n' cheerful cheese-fest in the vein of Evil Dead II.

Really unconvincing gore, dream sequences shot in negative image (a flick of a switch on the camera and, hey presto, cheap and nasty video effects!); irritating rapid editing of random imagery; awful sound (most notably, an overuse of lightning sound effects even when the weather is fine): in terms of technical proficency, The House That Screamed is a disaster.

Fat ghost girl sex; a deadly plastic doll; the Grim Reaper playing Knock Down Ginger: in terms of actual content, The House That Screamed is pitiful.

Very occasionally, the Polonias manage an effectively creepy shot, such as when writer Marty Beck (Bob Dennis) stands on his porch unaware that a ghostly figure is watching him from the window (reminded me a bit of Insidious here), but any genuine scares or creepy atmosphere seems to be down to luck more than judgement.

This has got to be one of the stupidest movies I've ever seen, right up with Troll 2. Still, it's fun to watch with some friends. Some notable elements of stupidity include:

-utterly pointless nudity (what was the point of the shower scene or the woman in red underwear?)

-the goofy flashbacks Marty has. Notice how his wife burnt down the house (which had no walls inside evidently) with a burnt out cigarette, and that his son died in the fire without any burns or even getting dirty

-the Grim Reaper playing with the doorbell

-the "ghostly circle" not extending to cover a the actor's arm

-drowning the plastic doll to kill the ghost inside

-Marty's "famous" novels: Feeders 1-3. The same guys who did this made Feeders 1&2, and they were really awful.

-the ridiculously low-budget makeup. The blind guy looked like he had fruit roll-ups over his eyes, and the blood hitting the window looked suspiciously like a tomato being thrown too late after the gunshot

I could go on & on on how stupid this movie is. Only see this to make fun of it.

Sweet Jeezus i was hoping this craptastic waste of space wouldn't even be on this site. I saw The House that Screamed when i was in high school, about 5 years ago, with a friend of mine. Little did we know the horror that actually awaited us when we started the blasted movie up. I honestly didn't think people could actually sell movies that badly done, ooooh boy was I wrong. I could see a group of 10 year olds make a better movie without trying. I swore to myself i would forget what i saw when i started watching this movie, if for no other reason than i don't want to have to claw my eyes out, but i cant do that. I would be less than human if i saw this listening and didn't voice how incredible bad this festering pile of dog droppings is. Lets put it this way if there were rating below -10 i'd give that to this movie without a second thought.

This movie was very dumb and cheesy. The music was horrible and the special effects looked retarded. The movie was somewhat a little good at times, but it needs some touching up. This message goes to the director. I defenitely won't buy the sequel to this movie after the experience that I had. I guess this movie is not for true horror fans.

While I was flinching at some of the inept handling of this material, I was nonetheless impressed with some of the very eerie and peculiarly effective bits of spookiness here. It really looks like more than one hand is stirring this pot. There's a lot of what looks like college film class 101 basic mediocrity, but then some very nicely done scary moments, and grisly scenes. For example, a nice scary bit is when the writer answers the knock on the door to find nobody, then an apparition appears to look at him from inside the house while he is on the porch unaware. But then, the fight with the doll is ludicrous. It's like Carnival of Souls without the maturity and professional film production values. It could have been much better, but still nice enough to not be a total waste, and reminiscent of those 70s flicks that were just a weird stream of ideas. Works on the level of a nightmare but then Phantasm did that much better.