Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Could have been a cult classic, 2 Jun 2003
By A Customer
It's been over ten years since I first stumbled across this little gem of a horror movie ( made in 1986 ) and unlike many other films of the genre from that time it has not lost any of its potency. In fact, with the image and sound enhancements of DVD it is perhaps even more potent.
The story is as old as the ghosthouse itself. The acting is so bad as to be laughable and every deathscene in the movie you will probably have seen a dozen times before.
So why do I find it so good ?
Well, top of the list is the music. There is no other horror film I have seen ( and I have seen quite a few in my time ) where the music adds such a creepy sense of dread and foreboding. It sends a shiver up my spine every time I hear it.
Secondly, the film has an evil doll ( in the form of a freaky clown ) that really chilled me to the bone. It puts Chucky to shame even though for the most part it is inannimate and doesnt utter a word.
Thirdly, the thrill and scare elements havent been lost, and those are surely the most important factors within the horror genre. There are no cute hollywood one-liners to give comic relief and destroy the building tension. The death/chill scenes are handeled and directed excellently, with plenty of variety too.
What other film offers you the old mirrors exploding in your face routine, a rather nasty "accident" with an unplugged electric fan, a dangerous guillotine in the attic ( no home should be without one ! ), flying easter bunnies ( yes, I see you tremble in fear )and boiling wax in the basement. Plus the most talentless actors ever to grace the screen, music that sounds like a dwarf on acid and the despicable clown from hell.
Go on - Treat yourself !
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a creepy little masterpiece!, 26 Jan 2007
Ok, so Ghosthouse (or La Casa 3 meaning Evil Dead 3 as it is known in the Italian cult market) is hardley the best movie ever made, but director Umberto Lenzi knows exactly how to shock the audience when it comes to down-right scares and creepy set-visuals. The film starts with a twisted scene involving a double murder in a creepy 19th-century house on the end of a strangely dorment Neighbourhood. After this eye-popping scene, we cut straight to the chase, and the movie introduces us to the cast set for the chopping block- the herotic stud, the stroppy girlfriend, the pretty goth with the moterbike, the geeky boyfriend, and of course the guy who we expect to live but actually dies FIRST. Here is a lame attempt at trying to explain a brief storyline without ruining the whole simple complexity of the movie... A young girl with a creepy clown doll is locked in a cellar for comitting a terrible sin by her father, however she gets the ultimate revenge on her cruel parents by summoning her wicked toy to murder them in the most gruesome way...20 years later, a young radio hammer and his girlfriend pick up creepy signals on the radio evolving around a twisted hymn and cries for help. Following the signal, the couple end up at the house where the grisly murders occured years before. Soon afterwards, the two people meet up with a group of campers who are exploring the local area. Together, the group decides the explore the house, but they end up getting slit up...thats when the fun REALLY begins...lame attempt finished!!!!
Ghosthouse really is a trashy movie- horrible acting, over-the-top gore scenes, charracters waiting to be picked off, less-than-amazing special effects, yet at the same time, it is all these aspects which make it such an important movie. It takes pleasure in ripping off just about every other haunted house flick- Poltergeist, House By The Cemetary, The House on Hauted Hill- they're all here, and mixed with a sense of humour (as you'll see) but the really amazing thing about Ghosthouse is that it supasses most every other horror film of its genere- not to mention being unspeakably scary in places- exploding lightbulbs, creepy chidren, evil clown doll, loose axe-murderer, decapitated head in washing machine, blood spurting taps, sinister easter bunny decorations, ghostly dog apparitions, acidic floorboards, detonating mirrors, cat-in-the clost monsters, eerie televisions, deaths round every corner and of course the horrifying nursery rhyme that accompanies much of the scares- a real chilling addition to the whole bloody movie. I dont know about you, but all the things mentioned above mixed together in one movie, in THIS movie is enough to send chills down the back of the most hardcore horror buff. I have some advice- if you are a harsh horror critic, capable of tearing down the trashy for the outright glam of todays hollywood nonsense being spured out, then dont watch Ghosthouse-you will be dissapointed. If you want pure horror with a mix of crude humour, then Ghosthouse is a must.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not many scares in this house, 12 Nov 2003
Ghost House has been a hard movie to track down for some time, so I was pleased to see Vipco releasing this uncut DVD edition...Its a great looking version, but the film itself is a bit of a washout. First of all the house itself is the same one as used in Fulci's "House by the Cemetery"...if only this movie was as good as that one! The plot sees a bunch of teenagers (two amateur detectives and a band of holidaymakers) investigating an empty house that was once the scene of a gruesome double murder. What follows is a very muddled series of hauntings and murders, seemingly carried out by the ghost of a little girl and her toy clown. The various deaths and ghostly visions are laughable, including dozens of completely unrelated manifestations such as a ghost dog, the head of a corpse in a washing machine (why??) and a vat of something that looks like porridge under the floor. Most laughable are the scenes in which the actors pretend to be attacked by the evil clown doll (an obvious but lame attempt to rip-off "Poltergeist"). The murders are fairly gory, but none are particulary convincing, and the acting is nearly all terrible, not helped by the script which just continues to make up excuses for all the characters to keep going back in house to get picked off. Plus the red-herrings that go nowhere (the hitchhiker and the crazy old caretaker), and explanation for the haunting which is pathetic..it seems as though Lenzi knew he wanted a ghostly little girl and a clown doll, and just wrote a story around it. In its favour, the film is well shot, and a few jolts actually do work (the one when the biker girl is washing her face in the sink was fun), but there is zero supense or tension.
As I said, it's great that Vipco are releasing uncut euro-horrors like this, but I couldn't say this one is a keeper.
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