This is a consistently boring, gonzo-style, shot-on-videotape slasher movie and it is amateur in every way. That is, until the final 10-min, where it becomes decent. However, by that point, you will have surely abandoned all hope. This movie is TERRIBLE, people, and not worth anyone's time. Although fairly heavy on the T&A (the women are mixed), most of the scenes are unacceptably dull and the male lead is incredibly annoying. (Picture a 115-lb David Lee Roth wannabe, who insists on showing off his embarrassingly tiny arms sleeveless for most of the movie. (That is, when he isn't wearing only bikini briefs). I spent an hour debating how much I'd pay to see him get clotheslined). Anyhow, as a slasher movie, "Boardinghouse" is 90% unconvincing, but also thoroughly unfunny. Expect about seven fairly tame murders (e.g. electrocuted in the bathtub, drowned in the pool, stabbed in the dark, etc.), with the majority of the first 90-min spent on filler dialog sequences between the girls and a range of coked-up wimps. In the accompanying interview featurette, the filmmakers claim that the project was originally made as a horror comedy, but the distributor reedited it into a slasher film. Although I don't buy it, this might explain some of the poopiness, but it doesn't explain most of it. Even for gonzo, this one is difficult, and it rubbed us the wrong way. I think the main deal was seeing the cast having so much fun, while we, the frustrated audience, ground our teeth into powder. In a word: excruciating. O.5 star. ---|--- Reviews by Flak Magnet

A voice-over explains the HorrorVision concept, scary scenes being preceded either by some weird video effect blooming around a black glove, or a certain musical cue. I didn't really get it...Some opening exposition appears on a computer screen, but the quality of the video was not very good and I could make very little of it out. At least some of what the computer screen shows is actually depicted, I guess, some Nobel Prize winning scientist falling into his pool and drowning, and a woman bleeding copiously after her hand gets stuck in a below-sink garbage disposal. There's some scene in a hospital of a nurse who was going to recommend against someone being released committing suicide by hanging, and a orderly or doctor who disembowels himself with his hands as someone breathing in through their nose, and out through their mouth "sniff... ha HAAA! sniff... ha HAAA!" apparently forces them to do it.A guy tries to get some hot roommates by advertising the rooms at $100 apiece, which for Los Angeles is quite a deal, I guess, even in 1982. Supposedly the house has ten bedrooms, but it seems like he gets only about five women, and when another arrives all the rooms are taken and she has to get the child's room being used as a storage closet. There's also an Asian woman who appears in some scenes, but not others.The landlord, Jim, has some kind of business deal with a drunk involving computer printouts. He uses the strange breathing technique the killers uses to move things with his mind. One of the women in the house becomes interested in his mind control and pyramid grid and crystals, etc. and checks out Wisdom of the Mystic Masters, two volumes of A Course in Miracles, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, among others.A plan is made to have Victoria's band set up on Friday at the house for a party on Saturday, I think. At some point Jim goes to the beach with Cindy and he's struck over the head, and she starts bleeding and walks into the ocean. When he comes to, he doesn't think to report this.There's at least a few scenes where their continuity is difficult to determine immediately. One involves a guy named Richard hiring a PI to find somebody. Another involves two policemen briefly coming to the house, one dressed in a shiny green suit and vest. Somebody also has a nightmare while they're sleeping in the den while their room is painted.There's a weird gardener who saved Jim's late uncle in Vietnam hobbling about. There's odd poltergeist activity in the bathrooms (one which needs its grout cleaned even before the blood gets on it). A bloody icepick gets buried in the yard by one of the women after it stabs another through the hand, while another woman suspiciously gardens compulsively.What to say about it? It's by no means the worst shot-on-video horror flick - The Last Slumber Party is worse, for one. It's also superior to a lot of more recent shot-on-digital video horror. Johnn Wintergate and Kalassu have been up to more new age stuff since this movie, and if there really will be a DVD with a commentary track by them, I'd definitely check it out.

Along with the similarly Z-grade 'Black Devil Doll from Hell', Boarding House is one of the earliest and most infamous American horror films to be shot on videotape. Legend has it that it even played in a few US cinemas, so has an odd shot on video but transferred to 35mm film look to it, that was hyped by the producers as 'filmed in horror vision', which probably sounds better on the poster than filmed in washed out home movie vision.Jim (played by "Hawk Adly" a.k.a. director John Wintergate) inherits a house with a sinister past depicted by some pre-credits gore and a computer print out basically telling us everybody who has lived in the house has died about 48 hours after moving in. In spite of this Jim decides to reopen the house and rent out the rooms. Being a bachelor he's only interested in a certain type of tenant though. In reality no one would surely anyone answer an Ad that reads "Girls, if you're between eighteen and twenty five, unattached and beautiful, then I want you to share my ten bedroom house with me". This being film world however, soon the house is full of such female tenants, headed by an actress billed only as "Kalassu", who spend most of the film running around in bikinis, having cat fights and generally providing senseless T&A.There is more to Jim than meets the eye though, he also has psychic powers which he has learnt by many hours of meditating in his underwear and listening to 'teach yourself psychic powers' audio tapes. After Jim amazes Kalassu by making a bar of soap move, she too tries to develop psychic abilities. At first the pair harmlessly show off their powers, cue a psychic custard pie fight, but soon Amityville Horror type accidents start befalling the girls, a levitating knife stabs a girl in the hand, a hairdryer falls in the bath frying another character. As well as someone's more unusual idea of horror movie incidents, like the nightmare scene in which one of the girls imagines her head has turned into that of a pigs'. Is the house to blame ?, or is someone using psychic powers to bump off the girls ? Extremely gory, a character bashes her head on a rock and in the next shot is covered head to toe in blood(!), for all this Boarding House feels less like a horror film and more a duo vanity vehicle for Hawk and Kalassu. Hawk has the look of Malcolm McDowell in a Billy Idol biopic, if you can picture that, and as director gives himself lots of scenes that consist of him walking around in leopard skin Y-fronts, being fawned over by the girls and being admired for his psychic greatness. Kalassu similarly hogs the limelight, however you suspect she fancied herself more as a singer, since her rawk songs ("You say you want a rock romance, you've been begging just to get in my pants") dominate the soundtrack, and she gets to play live in the film's finale. A "whatever happened to?" computer print out at the end of the film informs us that after the incidents in the film Hawk's character went on to work for NASA while Kalassu's character is currently in the middle of a sold out world tour ….as if.There really isn't any middle ground with this one. If you've got a low tolerance for low-fi film-making, run don't walk from this, then double bolt the door, you'll find it unbearable. If you don't, then maybe, just maybe, you'll be one of the select few who can pride themselves on discovering a certain charm and unintentional hilarity to the film where others can only see awfulness, either way like the aforementioned Black Devil Doll from Hell its certainly the sort of bad movie you won't forget in a hurry. Despite the LA setting, I think its the closest we'll ever see to a 'straight' version of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, in the sense of its instantly dated 1980s vibe, the bad special effects and the misguided egotism which is clearly driving the project. The actor who plays the black cop, and who wildly overplays the scene where psychic power forces him to shoot himself, even looks a bit like Dean Lerner/Richard Ayoade.This review was based on a viewing of a ye olde ex-rental tape, such is the film's appeal that the previous owner appears to have attempted to record over the film not once, but three times. Obviously it must have been Hawk's powers that prevented his one and only film from being wiped "focus white light, focus white light" etc, etc.

When people speak about BAD cinema, they forget one very important fact: no-one remembers the very worst film they ever saw. If a film is bad enough, you don't bother watching it. You merely change channels or fall asleep, walk out of the theatre or whatever. Truly bad movies are so mediocre that they don't even register on our consciousness.Seen in this very specific light, Boardinghouse is a pretty good film, really. It's certainly quite memorable and does a pretty good job of grabbing one's attention, which is more than one can say for a good 50% of movies.I find it hard to explain why I actually LIKE "boardinghouse" When I caught it on TV the other night I thought I was watching some South American soapie. The plot is basic slasher stuff (guy peoples boarding house with scantily clad girls while serial killer type lurks in the shadows), the acting is pretty much a non event and the special effects (such as they are) are easily outdone by even the cheapest of modern day digicams. On the positive side, some of the girls aren't bad looking, everyone has these wonderful, late 70s clothes (huge collars, big fluffy hairdos on the men, flares, etc. etc) and the film is fast and gory enough to guarantee that there is never a dull moment. The film was shot straight to video and the very cheapness of the production adds a rough, nasty dimension to the film which would otherwise not be there.Boardinghouse is nowhere NEAR being a fantastic movie, but if you have a sense of humour and are not too pedantic it can be a fun and memorable experience. I would certainly watch it again.