Horror writer Roger Cobb (William Katt) is having a hard time. His new book about his experiences in Vietnam doesn’t come together however hard he stares at an empty page. This is a particular problem since his publisher really wasn’t happy with him leaving the horror bestseller field in the first place. But then, Roger has reasons to be blocked: some time ago, his little son disappeared without a trace from the house where Roger was raised by his aunt, which in turn has led to the end of his marriage to soap opera actress Sandy Sinclair (Kay Lenz).
When news arrive about his aunt having committed suicide in the old house, Roger at first only goes there to take care of its sale. Some curious experiences convince him to change his mind right quick, though, and he moves in, at least subconsciously hoping to find out what really happened to his son. What follows is an intimate exploration of grief through his supernatural experiences in the house. No, wait, this is a mid-80s horror movie, so there’s none of this thoughtful stuff. Instead, the house harbours some kind of dimensional breach, through which monsters slip and attack Roger, and generally fuck with him.
Coming at Steve Miner’s House from today’s perspective, when even the dumber end of the horror spectrum is all about metaphor, trauma and particularly exploring grief, can be a somewhat dislocating experience. Like the titular house, the past this was made in is another country, where horror didn’t have to prove quite so hard it was about serious grown-up business. It’s a particularly curious effect because the film features all the elements you’d need for a contemporary grief horror movie: Roger’s multiple traumata, the grief about the loss of his child, the broken marriage are all prime material for psychological depth, but House goes out of its way to not treat any of this seriously or with any emotional weight.
So Vietnam only becomes an occasion for some pretty terrible studio-bound war flashbacks that’ll set up one gag of the film’s climax; Roger’s grief is only there to give him a reason to stay in the house and fight monsters and weird hallucinations instead of running away screaming like a sensible chap, and Sandy is only another convenient narrative contrivance. It’s a very different approach to this sort of material than you’d see today, enough so that I honestly felt somewhat discombobulated by it.
And, once I got used to the way things were done in The Past, actually pretty amused and well entertained, as well. The creatures – designed by James Cummins and executed by a team of seventeen people, apparently – are the stars here, created through lovely grotesque craftsmanship. The creatures are just funny enough to be horrible, which fits the generally zany style of humour the film prefers.
In tone, that humour feels like a kind of dry run for what Sam Raimi would do a couple of years later in Evil Dead 2, just with a less well-developed comical timing – Miner is no Raimi, and Katt most certainly no Bruce Campbell not just because of his deplorable lack of chin – and much less blood. In fact, I wouldn’t blame anyone watching this thinking the film at hand to be tonally inspired by Raimi when going in blind. Clearly, it’s just a case of directors having comparable ideas of what’s funny, though.
As a horror comedy, House is simply a fine time. It never overstays its welcome or rides one joke for too long, and while it is neither subtle nor deep, it makes up for that by its energy and commitment to dumb fun.
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