The House of the Dead (1978)

Fresh and Exciting

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

An adulterous businessman gets lost in the rain and a mortician gives him shelter in his funeral parlour, who shows the man some of the corpses being embalmed on the premises. Each one has a tale about how they met their untimely demises: a school teacher who hates children is frightened to death; a predatory photographer who kills his unwitting subjects on-camera is eventually caught and executed; a self-inflated criminologist meets his British rival and in trying to out-do each other, discovers his nemesis is prepared to kill to be the best; and finally a selfish office worker is lured and held captive by an unseen assailant for an extremely long time but soon dies after he is inexplicably suddenly released. The man is told they all were victims of their own errant ways. When he asks about a final empty coffin, the mortician replies it is for him!The individual stories and the main framing story are written in a very comic-book or pulp-novel way. The second one about the photographer is probably the worst one but is fortunately brief enough not to be a problem. Despite some really awful music, ropey acting, and what appears to be lighting supervised by a blind man, this collection of shorts is fairly well directed enough to be entertaining. I am confused with the movie's original title of 'Alien Zone' - there are no aliens at all in it! Clearly they were actually going for something like 'The Twilight Zone' and were meaning 'Alien' in a more literal sense, as in "unknown" rather than "being from outer-space"! Even still, it's not such a great title; 'House Of The Dead' makes more sense.

Whenever the title "House of the Dead" is mentioned nowadays, people – and horror fanatics in particular – automatically link it to that hag Uwe Boll's AWFUL video game horror adaptation about UN-frightening looking CGI zombies on an island. Another movie with the same title existed already since the late 1970's, though it's also known under the completely irrelevant title "Alien Zone", and that one is a lot better! It's a low-budget exploitation attempt to create a horror anthology similar to the contemporary successful British films, like "Tales that Witness Madness" or "Asylum", complete with a detailed wraparound story and a sinister host. Whilst on a business trip in an unknown city, a guy named Talmudge cheats on his wife and gets lost on his way back to the hotel. Since there's a heavy thunderstorm going on, a seemly friendly mortician invites him in and informs him abut the background stories of four "clients" of his. None of these horror mini-tales is groundbreaking or particularly shocking, but they all feature an admirably dark atmosphere and revolve on rather inventive topics. The first story is extremely short and introduces a lonely female schoolteacher with a clear aversion towards children. When she goes home one night, she senses a strange presence in her house and subsequently gets attacked by a large collection of eerily deformed and mask-wearing children. I'm not quite sure what the deeper meaning of this short story was, but those kids sure looked creepy! The second story is – once again – a very short reworking of the classic film "Peeping Tom", with a perverted man inviting girls to his apartment and murdering them for the eye of the camera. The tone of this segment is definitely disturbing, but it has no satisfying ending, since it just cuts back to the mortician who explains the culprit got executed for his crimes. Huh? What's the point? Then comes the third and unquestionably best chapter of "House of the Dead", about an intellectual criminologist competing with his overseas colleague of Scotland Yard for the honor of most deductive police investigator in the world. This segment has an incredibly predictable climax, but it's very enjoyable thanks to the wit dialogs and convincing on screen chemistry between actors Charles Aidman and Bernard Fox. The fourth and final segment hints at some really horrific themes, but unfortunately the elaboration is poor. It's about an egocentric man who gets terrorized by unseen forces and eventually becomes everything he detests himself. Namely a needy and filthy individual who blindly gets passed by on the streets. It's a curious little tale that definitely deserved some more plotting and perhaps a slightly longer playtime. Naturally the film ends with an unmerciful fate for Talmudge (adultery, remember…). The late 70's definitely brought forward better horror films than this, but "House of the Dead" is nonetheless a worthwhile and entertaining little chiller that offers a handful of frights and delightful genre clichés. It's a film for undemanding trash-fans.

What an unfortunately titled film. If it goes by House of the Dead, it inescapably gets mistaken for Uwe Boll's quote-unquote "masterpiece", and if it goes by Alien Zone it's doomed to deceive audiences into disappointment. Looking past the title however, this isn't a bad film. Though as far as I'm concerned Creepshow is and always will be the be-all-and-end-all horror anthologies, this is still a nice effort. The wrap-around story is pretty weak, though the way the stories are presented is pretty cool. Ivor Francis plays a rather creepy mortician telling the macabre stories of his "aquisitions" to a man who just had a bit of extra-marital fun.The first story is pretty weak, about a mean spirited teacher who gets whats coming to her. The main actress is awful, the attempt at special effects is just as bad, and the story isn't all that strong to begin with.It picks up some with the second story, which concerns a man who lures women to his apartment and films himself killing them. The main actor is pretty over-the-top, but he makes for a pretty good lunatic. Unfortunately his victims leave a lot to be desired. The story isn't very original, but it was still interesting.Story #3 is easily the best of the lot. It's about the world's two greatest detectives teaming up on a case...or are they? The acting in this one is surprisingly good, the American detective reminded me of a cross between Al Pacino and a teacher at my school. The story was great, the ending, though obvious, was fitting....overall this was a great story.The fourth and final story was pretty good too, though not as good as it's predecessor. It revolves around a miserable man who gets himself trapped in a building and tormented endlessly by an unseen force. The actor was decent, the plot was good and it ended well.The closing of the wrap-around story wasn't very good...very predictable and a huge letdown after seeing two pretty good stories.Overall, this anthology is definitely worth watching. The low budget shows, but it's entertaining and has at least a couple really good stories. It does have it's flaws though, such as terrible acting and a very weak first story, so I cant rate it too high. I recommend seeing it for yourself.6/10

I still remember seeing this as a teenager on late nite Creature Feature when in an altered frame of mind and being totally freaked out by what now watching as an adult is a pretty interesting 1970's Amercian made "Anthology Horror" bit -- Which I saw in the form known as HOUSE OF THE DEAD. And, amazingly, a budget line DVD company called Treeline Films has a nice little tape sourced $5 DVD release of the film for sale as part of their "Chills Pack" collection. It's worth a look.Made in 1978 by a woman director named Sharon Miller (who had begun her career as an assistant editor on some of Ralph Bakshi's films & would later direct countless episodes of shows like KNOTTS LANDING and BAYWATCH), HOUSE OF THE DEAD has a decidedly "Made for TV" movie feel to it even though I have been assured that it did play theatrically & is endowed with an MPAA rating for some violence. Treeline's DVD appears to feature an edited for TV full frame version which does look edited for content in a couple of spots with violence though it's nudity-free & relatively staid demeanor as a film speaks to me of what might have been a failed TV pilot episode.The film is made up of four stories linked together by a central piece about a philandering husband (John Ericson, who looks familiar) who gets lost on his way back to his hotel from his mistresses' house while in an unfamiliar city for a plumbing convention. Right. Through a series of mishaps too mundane to outline, Ericson finds himself brought in from the rain by a man who turns out to be a mortician, played by ubiquitous 70's & 80's television character actor Ivor Francis, who's sleepy, macabre demeanor is the film's most redeeming quality. I always loved him on BARNEY MILLER, and his presence also underscores the "TV friendly" nature of the production. Francis proceeds to relate four stories about the occupants of four caskets in his parlor, each of which has a "Poetic Justice" twist ending that is very reminiscent of Rod Serling's NIGHT GALLERY series.And like NIGHT GALLERY the stories shown are more sort of macabre fables on human qualities by shorthand sketches of characters who might deserve having something horrible happen to them in a way of having the world pay them back for being such insufferable bastards. The first sketch is probably the most "horrifying" in the traditional sense, with a shrew-like schoolteacher literally haunted in her own home by mutant green lighted children who appear with Halloween masks on their faces in the film's single best image. Watching her scurry around like a frightened rodent with her hair mussed under a cap from an aborted shower is actually quite amusing, though the absence of a proper "splatter" conclusion for the piece is disappointing -- Even though director Miller does go all out for the 70's Psychedelic Effect during certain scenes, and I can easily see how it blew my mind. Like, wow.Part two is also an interesting quasi-horror bit that anticipated HENRY - A PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, Buffalo Bill from THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and every other personable serial killer while ripping off PEEPING TOM in presenting us with the ironically amusing tale of a young schlep who invites young women over to his very neat bachelor pad where he murders them while filming the fun on a camera that he, his victims and the police all address at various times. It is short, funny and to the point, though it really isn't that scary, with the most interesting quality being that it is all shot from the single, unmoving perspective of the murder camera. Part three is the best acted section, telling the tale of two world class criminologists (played by likewise ubiquitous 70s/80s character actors Charles Aidman and Edward Fox) who pit their wits against each other in a deadly game of detective work, that while not that exciting gets the job done in padding out the length of the whole film to feature form & maintaining our interest with a clever little story. I definitely got a bang out of the end.The last section is the one that really freaked me out and why I sought the film out at all: An office worker Ebenezer Scrooge type who thinks everyone else is an annoying time waster gets subjected to a bizarre series of psychological tortures after wandering into a vacant store and falling into a trap -- Just who puts him through his ordeal is never revealed, but at the end he emerges as a disheveled street person. I'm not sure exactly just what lesson was supposed to be learned, but then again I am not sure exactly what the motivation for the entire movie was, and hence the suspicion that it was a TV pilot for a related series (possibly intended to be called ALIEN ZONE) that was aborted, and the whole thing was shoved onto movie screens instead as HOUSE OF THE DEAD in an effort to tap into the LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT infamy, still quite potent in 1978.I am honestly not sure what to make of the film as a single piece and can understand why some of the other commenter's may have objected strongly to the film -- It seems to exist without real purpose, not being frightening enough to really be called "horror" and too bizarre, warped & twisted to be thought of as standard drama. I "like" the movie because of my personal history & how it intersected with me at the right moment, stuck with me for two decades after wards, and now seeing it as an adult find it to be interesting enough to watch again and write about. If that doesn't qualify a film for some sort of cult status I have no idea what would.