Chain Reaction

A very professional movie from the former "ultra-gore" auteur (Premutos ,The burning moon)Olaf Ittenbach. Chain Reaction (aka House of Blood) is a professional, good looking 35 mm film, with car crashing, great makeup and gore FX but it lacks in entertainment value. I mean, its very boring and confusing. The plot is very hard to follow and the action scenes comes only in bits (when they come are cool with gore and blood, but its a very talkie movie, and the dialogs sucks. Premutos was a great low budget movie. Then Ittembach entered more mainstream. The "fromdusktilldawnesque" Legion of the Dead was pretty cool and entertaining, but stuff like this or Riverplay make me think if i will watch a new Ittembach movie. 4/10 for the good productions values only.

Loads of gore, decent effects and unintentionally funny characters made this film just makes it bearable. I had to watch this in 3 different sittings and maybe that's the best way to see it without becoming tired of the story.

There are events that set off a chain reaction and sets a series of events into motion.

House of Blood (called Chain Reaction on the IMDb) is really a pretty terrible movie in many respects. Christopher Kriesa is not that bad an actor, but the rest of the cast is pretty bad (except for what is basically a cameo from Jurgen Prochnow). I think the movie was shot in Germany. The gore effects are pretty bloody for the most part and some are pretty good.

Others are not, especially the make-up work. We're left in the end with a lot of important unanswered questions. The whole "chain reaction" aspect and other parts of the writing are pretty poor.

House of Blood is pretty poor and I'd only suggest a rental if you want something to make fun of or are that desperate for gore effects (lots of the red stuff flows). Thou renteth at thine own peril!

With his early, (very) low-budget splatter films, Olaf Ittenbach proved that he could make a well constructed horror movie, despite technical limitations and a cast that obviously needed a few more acting lessons. Therefore, since it had a larger budget, I was hoping that Chain Reaction would be a leap forward in terms of overall quality for the German master of gore. But apart from a some flashy CGI credits, a few crashes, and the presence of a 'real' actor (Jurgen Prochnow), not a lot has changed. In fact, to be honest, the acting is actually worse than usual, and the script... well, it maketh me laugh!

A dead crow drops from a tree to the ground and dislodges a rock, which hits a car (belonging to a doctor), that crashes into a bus-load of violent criminals, who escape into the woods (taking the doctor hostage) and eventually wind up in a house occupied by weird religious folk (who speaketh in ye olde dialect), who then transform into flesh-eating demons. Phew!

To be fair, I like the initial premise—that something as insignificant as a dead bird falling from a tree can set off a series of dreadful events—but unfortunately, so does Ittenbach. A lot. So much so, that he uses the idea three times within his film! After his captors are all killed, the good doctor escapes, only to run into the arms of the law, who suspect him of foul play and decide to keep him under lock and key whilst they investigate.

The doctor is put on a DOC bus to be transferred to jail, and, guess what happens..... that's right—a dead crow drops from a tree to the ground and dislodges a rock, which hits a car, that crashes into the bus-load of violent criminals... and so on.

And when a third dead crow causes even more trouble later on, one wonders whether it might be wise just to cut down all of the trees along this stretch of road, to bring down the accident rate.

As always with an Ittenbach film, there is plenty of gruesome gore on display (with some very nasty crushed heads being the most sickening of these), but with quite a long running time, there are also periods in which the film is just too 'dry'. Some of these moments offer some (presumably) unintentional laughs (the aforementioned olde English spoken by the demon people is hilarious), but other parts are just plain dull. Jurgen Prochnow is given nothing much to do, there is lots of mundane chit-chat, and the whole 'deja-vu' angle quickly starts to irritate.

Ittenbach is a director who has shown a lot of promise in the past; he certainly knows how to put together a decent gore scene. Perhaps, in future, if he gets a reasonable amount of dosh to spend, he should invest in a decent scriptwriter and get a better cast. I'm sure he has a horror 'classic' somewhere up his sleeve, however, on the strength of this effort, it's hard to believe.

Dr.Douglas Madsen is on his way back home from work one day when his car collides with a prison bus,setting off a horrific chain of events.The four surviving prisoners,one of whom is severely injured,take the doctor hostage and flee into Canada.The group of intruders finds refuge in a mysterious,isolated house inhabited by a very strange family of bloodthirsty cannibal demons..."House of Blood" is a mediocre horror film.The acting is horrible,the dialogue is ridiculous and there is no suspense.Many people compared this film to Uwe Boll's cinematic atrocities like "House of the Dead" or "Alone in the Dark",but I wouldn't go so far to call it worse than them.At least "House of Blood" contains plenty of grue including head explosions,decapitations and chainsaw dismemberment.Still this one is only for die-hard horror fans.5 out of 10 and that's being generous.

While driving on a lonely road a bus with dangerous inmates from Seattle, the driver crashes on a car driven by Dr. Douglas Madsen (Christopher Kriesa) and the three prisoners leaded by Arthur Palmer (Simon Newby) escape and execute the security guards. However, Arthur's brother Spence (Luca Maric) is shot, and the criminals decide to abduct Dr. Douglas to take care of Spence and walk to North in the direction of the Canadian border. They find an old cabin in the middle of the woods inhabited by a weird family that speaks ancient English and advises the group to leave the place while they can. The strangers transform in flesh-eater monsters and kill the criminals, but the local Alice (Martina Ittenbach) spares Dr. Douglas and saves his life. He is found by the police and he is interrogated by a police officer (Jürgen Prochnow) that does not believe on his words and he is sent to the prison in Seattle. While in a bus with dangerous inmates, the bus crashes on a car and the story repeats like in a déjà vu for Dr. Douglas and the criminals.

"House of Blood" is an extremely violent and gore, with scary and gruesome special effects. Unfortunately the acting is uneven, with good but also awful performances. The screenplay and the story are flawed, since what could be the possibility of another identical accident in the same lonely road in the same circumstances? But there are good points in the story and with improvements and better actors, this movie would have a great potential. I can not say that I hated or that this movie is totally bad, but the story indeed deserved improvements. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Casa de Sangue" ("House of Blood")