Ghosthouse has nothing to do with House or House 2. Then again, it also has nothing to with Evil Dead or Evil Dead 2, movies that are known as La Casa and La Casa II in Italy. But hey, who is keeping score? As you'll learn before the end of the week, the next two La Casa movies have nothing to do with this one, either!Director Umberto Lenzi (Eaten Alive!, Nightmare City) directed this Joe D'Amoto production, which was filmed in the same house as Fulci's House by the Cemetery!The film starts in the past, right after Henrietta has killed her pet cat. Her father locks her down in the basement, along with her creepy clown doll. He tells his wife that their daughter has to be possessed by the devil, but before they can make a move, she kills dad with an axe to the head and explodes a mirror, sending shards into the eye of her mother, Fulci style. Holy shit, this movie hasn't even started yet and it goes for the jugular!Let's meet our hero. Paul Rodgers is just your typical guy. He does data entry via ham radio, with his call letters proudly on top of his set-up, made with a wooden router, like something your aunt would have in her house that smells like liver. All he wants to do is sit on the bed and eat chili with his girlfriend, Martha, except he keeps hearing cries for help over the radio.Also - I should mention that all of the dialogue in this film sounds like it's being said by complete maniacs, adding to my enjoyment of the film. It also has moments of insane dialogue padding - by that I mean, Paul discussing Simon Le Bon with a female ham operator or asking who is more popular in Denver, Kim Basinger or Kelly LeBrock.They track the signal to the house we saw at the beginning (throughout the film, I kept yelling, "It's Dr. Freudenstein's house! Stay out of his house!" but no one listened) and meet another ham radio operator. Obviously, ham radio was the internet of the 80's. As they walk on the porch, Martha says that the house has an evil aura (her thick accent makes translating her nonsensical dialogue a master's class in Italian exploitation dialogue divination) and refuses to go in. Paul just says, "Yeah,f it. F it." and goes in.They meet the Dalens, Jim, Mark and Tina, along with Susan. These friends have been interested in the house and Jim may have been the ham radio operation that Paul heard scream. Don't get too used to anyone - anyone involved dies horribly, like a flying fan blade to the throat, a hammer to the brain, getting chopped in half, being hung and even the basement floor splitting apart to reveal a milky substance that works like acid. Even a wacky hitchhiker who walks through the house looking for silver to steal gets wacked. Man, even Paul gets killed in the film's shock twist ending as he gets smooshed by a bus.It's all Henrietta's fault. She's the kid we saw kill her parents earlier and she just keeps it up. Why? Well, her father stole a clown doll from another child's coffin and gave it to her. You know how these things happen.There's a completely deranged scene where Martha finds the doll, leading to paper rabbits, feathers and other toys attacking, ending with the doll sneaking up behind Martha and trying to choke her. Becca yelled, "No wonder this girl turned bad. Her toys are shitty!"You even get Donald O'Brien (Dr. Butcher M.D. himself!) as Valkos, a hitchhiker/backwoods weirdo/the old guy that warns kids. Here, he stalks and kills at random, including the aforementioned hammer to the head kill, after which he shuts the coffin lid on a still alive mortician.You like severed heads? You like ghost dogs? You like dialogue about Jack the Ripper and the Salem Witch Trials that makes no sense? You like policemen in over their heads spewing jargon-filled exposition? How do you feel about explosions and maggots? Or synthesized sounds that repeat over and over until they make you feel trapped like the characters in the film? Then guess what? I've got the film for you.

Once again, let me say "Thank God for RiffTrax." They tackled this one and came up with a gem! There are so many laughable moments, and their comments just add to the quirkiness of it all. Now then, those crazy Italian directors are at it again. This time, Umberto Lenzi (under the confusing pseudonym Humphrey Humbert) steals liberally from much better films, like POLTERGEIST, in telling a completely nonsensical story. Many years ago, a creepy little girl and her equally hideous clown doll go on a rampage and kill her parents. 20 or so years later (though it's never made clear because in Italian horror flicks, details are annoying) a ham radio operator named Paul (uh-oh!) and his bland girlfriend Martha sit around eating chili (cuz that's what us Americans do, right?) Then Paul's radio picks up a strange message. So out they go, attempting to find the source of the mysterious signal. Along the way, they pick up an annoying hitchhiker named Pepe. And finally come across the Ghost House. There, they meet up with a group of campers in an RV (cuz that's so American) and together, they decide to investigate the Ghost House. Now, I won't give anything else away, because this film has to be seen to be believed. Just know it's one of those unhinged Italian movies, so there's bound to be weird occurrences and violent deaths. But then again, that's why we love those crazy Italians. So track down RiffTrax's version, or invite your own motley crew of comedians over for a laugh riot!

Ghost House has been a hard movie to track down for some time, but if you do make the effort, be prepared for disappointment - the film itself is a bit of a washout. First of all the house 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 hunting's and more 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 hopeless of all 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 particularly 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 favor, 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 suspense or tension. As I said, it's not worth the effort. But if you really must see it, there's a great Region 2 DVD release - available from Amazon.co.UK. I have this edition, and its a nice looking remastered print (uncut and widescreen, no less), but even so, there are far better euro-horrors around than this.

What's the connection between Sam Raimi's legendary horror classics "The Evil Dead 1 & 2" and this low-keyed Italian haunted house horror movie directed by the notorious Umberto Lenzi ("Cannibal Ferox", "Nightmare City")? Absolutely no connection, you'd think, and yet thanks to promoting the film as a genuine sequel to "The Evil Dead", "Ghosthouse" became a huge commercial success in its home country. Say what you want about those unscrupulous Italian movie producers, but they undeniably have terrific marketing talents. Still, even in spite of the deceptive promotional campaign and the gazillions of negative reviews, I personally think "Ghosthouse" is a hugely entertaining and deliciously cheesy 80's horror movie. The graphic gore and clumsy execution are obviously the main elements to adore here, but still the film also features some ingenious conceptual ideas and even a handful of effectively creepy gimmicks. The opening sequences are downright fantastic and even raise the impression you're about to see a legitimate lost horror classic. The level of quality and intensity severely decreases immediately after the intro scenes, but still "Ghosthouse" remains a fun movie. An amateur broadcaster and his girlfriend head for a secluded and abandoned old mansion after they picked up disturbing radio signals coming from there. They team up with another trio of teenagers and discover the mansion is cursed ever since a macabre entity savagely killed the original owners. The nosy teen-detectives soon begin to spot appearances of a blond girl with an uncanny clown doll, accompanied with the supremely eerie tunes of a lullaby. When bodies start piling up, the police suspect the limb caretaker but obviously the house's past is coming back to haunt the trespassers. Very few story elements in "Ghosthouse" make perfect sense but - let's face it - intelligence and flawless continuity are the last things you expect in a rapidly produced Umberto Lenzi movie. The story behind the girl and her dummy is fairly creative, the filming locations are well chosen and the murders are marvelously engrossing … That's more than satisfying enough for me. There's never a dull moment and the lullaby, albeit terribly over-used, is one of the most horrific sounds I ever heard. The acting performances (or should I say dubbing jobs) are unspeakably atrocious, though. Especially Lara Wendel's lines hurt your ears. Oh and also, there's no nudity. What the hell is that about, Umberto?