House of the Damned

All these one star reviews and claims of one of the worst movies ever are not accurate. You can go to the horror category at Netflix and Amazon Prime and 99% of those movies are far worse than this. I am not sure what people were expecting. It does borrow a little from poltergeist but so what? Movies borrow from each other all the time. Put Vincent Price with this same script and that alone would raise it two stars. That is how important acting is with low budget movies like Corman's. 4 to 5 stars is about right for this.

Given that Roger Corman attached his name to this production, I had high hopes for this film. Corman directed many memorable low budget horror flicks in the 1960's. I particularly enjoyed his adaptations of Poe's stories such as `The House Of Usher,' and `The Pit And Pendulum' and `The Raven' which starred the late great Vincent Price. These films had solid acting, atmosphere, suspense, strong characterization, intriguing plot development and delivered some chilling moments. Sadly, `House Of The Damned,' for the most part, sacrifices these qualities in lieu of cheesy low budget special effects, gratuitous nudity and mindless gore topped with cliche fast edits and camera angles.

`House Of The Damned' starts off interestingly with some beautiful location shots in Ireland, but it's straight downhill from here. Unfortunately, instead of spending some time building atmosphere, creating characters we might care about, or building suspense - the director opts to begin running up the body count. After a brief introduction to the lead characters, a young couple and their daughter, the audience spends the balance of the film being bounced from one `spooky' event to another which, in this film, substitutes for coherent plot development. The lead characters are so ill conceived and are so badly acted - the audience doesn't care what happens to them. To make matters worse, the `spooky' events are either utterly cliché or unconvincing due to low tech - low budget special effects. The soundtrack has been lifted from `The Omen.' The plot, what little there is, borrows heavily from `Poltergeist' and `The Legend Of Hell House,' but lacks any of the qualities which made these films convincing.

If you interested in seeing well done haunted house flicks, I recommend you check out classics like `The Haunting (1963),' `The Innocents (1961) or look into Corman's early American International films and pass on `House Of The Damned' unless you're masochistic or mindless.

3 ½ out of 10.

Rob Rheubottom

Wpg, MB. Canada

Strange things happen to Americans Will (Greg Evigan), Maura (Alexandra Paul) and their young daughter Aubrey (Briana Evigan, Greg's real life daughter) when they move into a large, newly inherited house in Ireland. Crusty corpses are found in the cellar, a turkey squirts blood, furniture moves and the ghosts of a dead child and a cackling old lady show up to scare the little girl. Paranormal investigators are eventually called in to banish the evil spirits, but Maura becomes possessed anyway and chases everyone around with a meat cleaver.

This film is full of cliches, but there's a standout performance from Alexandra Paul... too bad it doesn't belong in this movie (nor any other I can think of off hand)! She can barely keep a straight face and her over-emoting and hysterical screaming tantrums are a joy to behold. In any case, she's a lot more interesting to watch than anything else in this movie.

Score: 3 out of 10

I saw this Film one midnight and I can say that it worse than other horror film about a Haunted House.Alexandra Paul is not one of the best actress but she can do the role better,The little girl get worse this is a example about a Bad actress,she has not got future in the great world of films. SENTENCE FOR HOUSE OF THE DAMNED:BAD

"House of the Damned" (also known as "Spectre") is one of your low budget haunted house horror flicks, filled with mediocre performances and cheap effects. It is about a family that inherits an old Irish mansion, and after moving in begin to experience strange phenomenon and ghostly apparitions, including the ghost of a young girl who was murdered and buried within a wall in the mansion's basement. The couple's young daughter is then whisked away into some other dimension and they seek help from a group of paranormal investigators for help.

The ideas this film borrowed from the 1982 haunted house film "Poltergeist" are obvious. I will say that this movie does have some slightly creepy sequences, but it is sometimes very, very boring. The acting here is nothing special, the mood is alright, the score (which was mostly this dramatic Irish opera music) was somewhat annoying, and the CGI special effects are really horrible. I mean, it was 1996, you would think they could have done a little better than they did. The ending where the house was on fire was the poorest special effect I've seen, very very cheap. But hey, this was a cheap movie.

Also, the translucent monster wolf thing that their daughter sees looks horribly fake. And what was it's significance in the film anyway? What the heck does a wolf-monster have to do with a haunted house? The special effects in here are what really ruined this movie. The acting was pretty bad too. I usually enjoy many low budget horror films, but not this one. "House of the Damned" is nothing special at all, only consider watching it if you have nothing better to do. But you'll probably want to pass on it. 4/10.