Delusion

Meredith moves to the Langrock estate to take care of Langrock himself, an ailing man whose legs no longer work. Langrock has a son who is disturbed in some way, as well as his orphaned teenage grandson Gabriel who returns from a desert commune (or something) to live with the family. Langrock's butler has been working his way through the wine cellar for years, and the cook is proud of her granola...mmm.

Gabriel is a strange young man who likes lurking in shadows, saying or reacting in peculiar ways and generally making people uneasy. Meredith is fascinated by him, but also fears he's behind the brutal death of the guard dog and the other deaths that follow.

A fair amount of the movie also has voice-over by Meredith.

The Embassy Home Entertainment VHS is not the best print; nighttime scenes or those in the cellar are dark and lack definition. The end credits are fairly unreadable.

It's very difficult to put into words just how poor & tedious this film is to watch. It was a chore to sit through such a dire, tiresome and insultingly substandard cinematic effort - I want to claim back the time it took to watch this, and the small amount of cash I bought it for. (Even though I think i picked it up for £1:99)

Trying to find love and comfort isn't always easy. When this nurse goes to a house to take care of a crippled old man, the house of joy turns into a house of pain and death! The old man and his servant hired a nurse to help him out. He's been living in pain. Being paralyzed waist-down, has a son who is psychologically disturbed, has a grandson who lost his parents in a accident. What more can you say? What's worse is when the people living in the house started getting killed all of a sudden. Even the nurse has a tragedy of her own. She writes to her mother about her job and how things are going. However, it turns out that her mother died giving birth to her, and was sexually abused by her father. This movie has a lot of twists and turns. Not boring. It's a cult classic by my book. A must see. 2.5 out of 5 stars

Slow-moving and pseudo-intellectual horror/thriller that never at one point measures up to its glorious title – the alternate VHS box title that is – "The House Where Death Lives". I honestly hesitated to stop watching the film several times during the first half hour already because it's so boring and absolutely nothing indicates that it might get better anytime soon. The story handles about a young and attractive nurse who moves into the mansion of a wealthy but crippled elderly man (one of the final roles of horror legend Joseph Cotton of "Baron Blood" and "The Abominable Dr. Phibes") to look after him. The man recently lost his son and unwillingly obtained custody over his estranged 16-year-old suspiciously behaving grandson Gabriel. Then there's also three other servants living in the mansion and one mentally unbalanced son that lives locked away in a remote bedroom. One giant big happy family, in other words! The mishmash of personalities soon causes tensions in the house and people start turning up dead. Seriously, the title ought to be changed to "The house where you are bored to death" or something, as this is really one of the most uninteresting and substantially void horror movies I've seen in my entire life. The nurse character is dull and damp (even her sexual hallucinations are tedious) whilst all the other characters are plain and simply irritating. You possibly can't bring yourself to feel sympathy for any of them and you actually just hope they all die quick and gruesomely. There's not a trace of suspense, the supposedly ingenious twist-ending is hugely derivative and the murders are uninspired and bloodless. Bloodless, damned! What's the point of an early 80's horror movie when the set up is dull and the deaths are gore-free? I've seen episodes of my mother's daily soap opera that were more exciting than this turkey. One to avoid at all costs, unless of course you suffers from a bad case of insomnia. Where all medication fails, this movie is guaranteed to put you asleep.

"Delusion" is a slasher film...and I rarely choose this sort of movie to watch. It's not totally mindless, keeps you guessing and isn't altogether awful!

When the film begins, Meredith (Patricia Pearcy) arrives at a mansion to become the new nurse for an elderly invalid (Joseph Cotten). The job seems pretty easy and she fits in well. However, when the old man's weird grandson arrives, things start dying...starting with the family dog but not stopping there! Who's behind all this...and are the confusing plot elements going to make sense by the end of the picture?

The film suffers a bit from Pearcy's zombie-like performance during much of the film. It also occasionally makes little sense...such as why the police aren't more alarmed with all these deaths. But it does offer plenty of false leads, dead ends and twists and so if you like this sort of film, it will fit the bill. I respect what they did with this picture, though I wasn't especially thrilled with seeing it.