User reviews

Considering it's both a TV movie and a haunted house movie, it has to be said that This House Possessed really is rather good; although only on its own terms. The plot follows the story of a burnt out writer and singer of awful pop songs as he moves into a modern computerised house with his live-in nurse and later girlfriend. It's not long before strange things start happening in the house and the nurse comes to believe she may have some connection with it. One problem this film has is the plotting; the first half of the movie is basically a soap opera and while it's not especially uninteresting; it's not really what I tuned in for and it takes a while for the movie to finally get going. The first half of the film does, however, set the characters up, which benefits the film well later on. Naturally, owing to the fact that this is a TV movie, there's no gore and little violence; but there's a few death scenes and most of them are pretty decent. It all boils down to a twist that is made so obvious that I'm not really sure if it's actually supposed to be a twist at all. The idea of the house taking 'revenge' on it's inhabitants is hardly original and even the computer idea had been done previously in 'Demon Seed', but the film generally plays on it's central ideas well and it is at least an interesting film. The film has apparently become quite rare and I wouldn't say it's worth a lot of trouble to track down but if you can find a copy, it is at least worth a look.

This is a movie that has this very bad rock singer who suffers from headaches. I am guessing the only reason he sells albums is his appearance, but thankfully his singing isn't the focus of the movie. He is at a hospital where he meets this really cute brunette nurse who has very pretty eyes. The rock star takes some time off and hires the nurse to watch out for him. They go driving and they end up in this town they like and he decides that this is where they will stay. They go to the realtors and ask them to show them the most possessed house in the area. Well that didn't happen, but it might as well have. At first when I learned that the house was fully automated, I figured it would be a house goes crazy movie. Then there was the scene with the blood in the shower so it had to be supernatural, hence lies the main problem of the movie. There really isn't a satisfactory explanation as to why the house is possessed. I really felt the ending was a bit abrupt as well. On the plus side I wanted to see a haunted house movie and on that it delivered. There are some death scenes, the closing gate scene being the best, but you could almost predict what was going to happen before it did. The story moves like it is going to some super finish where all is revealed, but like I said nothing is really revealed except for the houses motivation for acting up. You do, however, get to watch a very cute brunette through the whole movie and after the beginning you don't have to put up with any more songs by the awful rock star...well one more, but it really isn't a big deal. Not a great movie, but it has its moments and it was a rather good haunted house movie.

Utterly weird but extremely neat little TV thriller. Once again a perfect example of how they do not make TV movies like they used to. Parker Stevenson is pretty good as a rock singer who is inexplicably drawn to take a vacation and move into a top-notch, amazing home. Suddenly, strange things start occuring to him and his girl Lisa Eilbacher. Though it has a very low-budget look to it, this film is good entertainment and the last time I viewed it was on TBS several years ago. Worth tracking down.

Like a few others, I saw this when I was a kid. Sure, some moments scared me, too - at the time, fresh horror stories like this on TV were rare, except "Salem's Lot." I actually just watched "This House Possessed" again last night (thanks Youtube!!) for kicks.

The director, William Wiard, had a lot of '60s & mostly '70s TV credit, so the filming mostly has a clean, flat '80s TV feel, with nice California photography & the acting is better than expected. Only a few cool & disturbing effects. The house itself is pretty spectacular.

But holy cow is "This House Possessed" mostly a blasé, slow trip. Sure, it has some of the horror moments...but most scares strangely feel more sci-fi than horror.

I'll probably get thumbs down for saying this, but some people who overwhelmingly praise this movie here on IMDb.com user reviews are too nostalgic - hey, I was there too & I liked it at the time, but trying to be realistic here to folks who haven't seen this.

....a scarier choice is 2002's made-for-TV's "A Haunting in Connecticut." Regardless, if you are curious & have time to kill, give "This House Possessed" a shot - it's on Youtube as of this writing ☺

When this film begins, Parker Stevenson (Frank from "The Hardy Boys") is performing some rock-n-roll song, as he's apparently some big music star. However, he soon collapses...a victim of exhaustion from his demanding lifestyle. Soon he awakens in the hospital where he's taken care of by a very pretty nurse (Lisa Eilbacher). When he's able to leave the hospital, he asks this nurse to accompany him as his own private nurse and...well...who knows--she sure doesn't! He then very impulsively buys a smart house--one loaded with cameras and gadgets. But after a while, it becomes apparent that his house has a mind of its own...as if it's possessed. And then...bad things happen!

If this sounds familiar, much of the film is like the made for Disney Channel movie "Smart House" (1999) but with a more malevolent house and an emphasis on spookiness as well as the relationship between the two leads. "Smart House" was fun and for the kids..."This House Possessed" is certainly more adult and not exactly fun. Plus, the nurse has a bizarre back story that comes out late in the film that left me feeling a bit annoyed as it sounded very contrived. So, apart from this and Stevenson's singing, did I like the film? Well, I didn't hate it...but that's probably it. It's gotten 'time-passer' written all over it with nothing all that interesting about it other than seeing Joan Bennett in a small role.

A nice 1981 b-horror movie starring the late Joan Bennett and Slim Pickens about a burnt-out pop singer moving with a nurse to a high-tech-house to find out that his new building has an evil intelligence and no regrets to kill its habitants.

This TV production is a b-movie flick with a good horror atmosphere, similar to the late Hammer Horror TV shows and several Twilight Zone episodes, and an eerie Theremin-like mystery sound track. Unfortunately the film lacks of good actors, thrills and good special effects.

In fact, this movie was just made twelve years before "Jurassic Park" but shows primitive special effects like suddenly opening doors or some flame overdubs to suggest a heavy fire that were even better produced in the 1933 version of "King Kong".

"This House Possessed" is not good enough to become a horror classic and also not weird enough to become a classic entry in Michael Weldon's "Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film". At least it's thrilling and great fun to watch after midnight with a bag of crisps and a can of lager beer.

TV-made thriller involves Parker Stevenson as a pop singer who is suddenly and mysteriously struck ill; needing a break from his busy schedule, and picking up a young nurse from his recent hospital stay, he happens upon an empty, isolated palatial estate in rural California, one with a dark past. Crack TV writer David Levinson penned this third-rate haunted house teleplay, and was a little late in getting it made--by 1981, the genre had pretty much played itself out. Lisa Eilbacher is the nurse who is ultimately the key to the strange happenings (after being introduced, top-billed Stevenson hasn't much to do). With her serious elfin face and worried little expressions, Eilbacher's later claim that she's never felt so at home as she does being in the house is rather preposterous (this despite the fact the local librarian was recently killed in the driveway!). The scenario itself seems awfully familiar (as does Billy Goldenberg's spooky music, with its echoes of Bob Cobert's score for 1976's "Burnt Offerings"), although the locations are interesting and the supporting players add some interest (much more so than the sleepy leads). The house, it turns out, is obsessed with Eilbacher (which is a ridiculous angle, but let it pass), even returning her old Raggedy Ann doll from childhood; however, nothing in the final 15 minutes manages to explain the fill-in-the-blanks plot. Is there a ghost in the house or are the bricks and mortar holding it up responsible for the haunting?

Basic haunted house formula: Throw in a couple of love birds, a sprinkling of murder, some CHEAP special FX and voilà! you have a made-for-idiots film.

Pros: 1. Good sound effects saves the film from obscurity. 2. Female lead actress is pretty reminding me of Victoria Principle. 3. The male lead actor has a minor role in the film. 4. There is a creepy looking old woman with a cat. 5. The house is state-of-the-art with spy-cameras and a good sized heated swimming pool to boot.

Cons: 1. Hammy acting. 2. NO steamy naked sex scenes. 3. Plot is BOGUS and looks like its written by a seven year old. 4. This film has songs in it. YES SONGS!!! 5. Not enough gore.

Plot: Years ago a man built a fabulous house for his wife and daughter. The house adored this man's young daughter, Margaret, like it had a feeling. The man found out and tried to send Margaret away to safety.... BUT TOO LATE!!! The house found out and killed the man and his wife but sparing the Margaret. Margaret's nanny witnesses the incident and saves her.

Years have since passed and Margaret who is now called Sheila, has now grown up, and working as a nurse in a hospital. She has forgotten all about her past including the house.

After having a nervous breakdown, a singer has to spend some time in hospital. Sheila is hired, and with her he buys a new house, the same house Sheila's father and mother were murdered.

Sheila, can't remember the first years of her life, but this house seems strangely familiar to her. Also, there is this strange old woman who claims that Sheila's real name is Margaret. People who cause Sheila pain or who try to tell her the real story of what happened in this house, they die in strange ways: Tanya, the girlfriend of the singer, and the Library woman who wants to give her some newspaper articles. Can Sheila find out the truth behind all this and can she escape the house that possessed once and wants to possess once more?

Well after having watched Poltergeist, Pulse (1988), The Shining, 1408, The House On Haunted Hill, and Rose Red, I have to say this is just passable watching. I wonder why this film has an average rating of 6???

A haunted house where the haunting manifests most of the time through the computer that controls nearly every part of the house... fascinating. Yet the haunting is so powerful it can kill/watch/manipulate people miles away, and it seems the force inside the house has feelings, since it's main aim is to bring the person it loves into it's power. The script of this movie is highly original and most of the scenes are really great - the "bloody shower" scene or the very atmospheric scenes at the beginning, when the house watches the people through some monitors at night...just sitting there and waiting... - this movie really gets in your mind and stays there. Throw in a very good performance by the female leads and a convincing performance by the male lead, a really great score that helps much to enhance the thick atmosphere created by the extremely good directing, editing and photography, and here you have it: a really outstanding haunted house movie! One reviewer here criticized the use of "suddenly opening doors" in this movie: Well, yes, at one point a door opens itself, but since the house is alive a lot of stuff moves itself here, so you can't criticize that, unless you want to criticize that the movie doesn't need a lot of blood and gore to create tension... Yes, the fire at the end looks not so good at the indoor shots, but, since most of this seems to be shot outside a studio in a real (great-looking) house, I guess they just couldn't burn this great house down! But just look at that cool "breathing-wall" shot! And maybe they were low on budget, too, and if this is true, then it makes the movie even more greater, since to create such a great movie with a low budget is really a masterpiece!

Ya know, generally speaking I have quite a lot of time for US made for TV horrors. They may never have gone in for tits, gore or the sort of boggling weirdness that I tend to appreciate most in my horror cinema but they usually made up for it in sincerity and desire to get the job done. This House Possessed just about gets the job done, but its actually kinda weak, despite what other posters here indicate. Part of the problem though by no means the biggest issue is that it doesn't really make sense, or at least doesn't explain itself to an acceptable level. Right from the start we see a melding of technological and supernatural horror, but the two never fuse to any interesting effect, they are simply applied willy nilly whenever one or the other might advance the plot and it leaves the situation rather less than compelling and more obviously contrived. The main problem though is that it simply runs too long. It has enough substance to run perhaps 80 minutes at best but instead is drawn out a tiresome 10 or so beyond that and the characters and situation just don't warrant the extended length. Story wise things are pretty basic, a music star of sorts has a breakdown and decamps along with a personal nurse to an opulent house run by electronics, but there finds that dark forces are afoot. Its a decent set up, but the scares are scant and altogether too much time is spent on the burgeoning romance between the two leads, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I didn't really buy that the (admittedly lovely) Nurse Sheila would fall so easily for her patient, nor did I find much interest in their romance. Parker Stevenson is fairly likable as the ailing star while Lisa Eilbacher is wholly charming as Sheila but their relationship is thinly written and clichéd, making all too much of the film kinda uninteresting. Joan Bennett holds up some measure of suspense as a bag lady who knows what's going on though, and Slim Pickens has a good turn as a manager, both keep things moving. The house itself is a pretty cool place as well, maintaining watch-ability between shocks. The score is quite good as well, theremin and suchlike it gives a reasonable ambiance. All in all this is never completely boring and some of the jolts do work, moreover there's an overall charm to the piece that keeps it going, but its still pretty forgettable. Possibly worth tapping if you really dig made for TV horrors, but otherwise not a film I'd especially recommend, sadly.

This movie stays with you for years. A real creepy tale of a house with a life of it's own. Lots of good scares and weird stuff. Great cast, too. Perfect for a good creepy Haunted House scare. Parker Stevenson plays a rock star and even sings in this movie. It seems the house causes him to get these mysterious headaches and actually manipulates Parker's character into living in it and choosing a nurse to care for him. The house really wants the nurse. It's a really good story.

wow.. well let me start of by saying that it looks like a lot of you are about my age, because I remember seeing this as a child too. I looked on the internet for YEARS and asked everyone about this movie.. I couldn't remember the name. I thought that the name was The House.. anyway.. I searched really hard for this and was SOOO delighted to find it. It was sucha memorable movie for me. I was mesmorized by it even as a 9 year old child. I remember that I loved that house ( with the indoor swimming pool) more than that house loved "sheila"!!! It didn't scare me at all. I just thought that how cool it would be to be Sheila, haha. I am so happy to have found this movie. Now I wonder where I could get a copy to watch with my kids and friends that I have raved about this movie to for years. Every movie about posessed houses or computer run houses reminds me of this movie. This movie must have been the first to explore that plot.

I remember I saw this movie when I was a child. The directing is very good, as is the photography, the editing and the music. The music is fabulous. The strange synthesizer effects, the usage of a special musical theme for some of the main characters. Even the opening theme from the first minutes of the movie is great!! The story is also very good. This movie is really a must-see if you like haunted-house movies.

I liked this movie a lot! Like all the best horror movies, it does not show much blood and gore, but works at a psychological, more intelligent level. It does not give away too much too early - the horror comes creeping up on you. There are several mysteries in one, that turn out to be interconnected at the end.

The actors are all good in their roles. It is very easy to feel for the young nurse, who does not feel at home anywhere else but in the hospital where she is working. As it is for many people with traumatized child-hoods.

The solution to the mysteries is very original, without being a disappointment (which is often the case with "original" endings). The only thing I miss, is maybe a solution "behind" the solution. We got to know how but not really why.

I haven't seen "This House Possessed" in almost twenty years, but it definitely made an impact on me. Along with the movie "The Entity", the imagery from this film made its way into my subconscious pre-teen mind and lingered in my nightmares for quite some time as one of the truly scariest films I'd ever seen. If horror means "gore" to you, then you probably won't care for this film. But if horror means "capturing the imagination in truly frightening ways" to you, then (as with me) this is your kind of film. Like I said before, it has been a while since I saw it, so I don't remember many of the details clearly, but I will never forget the shower scene. The whole movie made me look at my house in frightening new ways, and it made me glad that we were the house's first occupants. Then I saw "Poltergeist" and everything changed. ;)

This movie set me up to be terrified by becoming too set on computers to live on. It's a nice little movie, but is it supposed to be possessed by the computer running the estate, a ghost or by both. It's never really becomes clear. The house's closed-circuit cameras somehow predict that Parker Stevenson's rock star persona will be coming to the house on a sabbatical and will be bringing a nurse with him. The nurse is played by his "Hardy Boys" co-star Lisa Eilbacher apparently to cash in on their chemistry and looks. The house then goes on to kill in some very innovative ways anyone that it deems a threat. It even kills Slim Pickens, Parker's manager, over long distance ! The rest of the story runs smoothly revealing secrets in the forgotten history of Lisa's character and showcases Joan Bennett of "Dark Shadows" fame as the bag lady with all the secrets. This a top notch thriller and mystery for true horror fans who don't want a lot of needless gore.

Wow! This is not just another silly TV horror movie, this is a classic! The original story, the great directing, photography and the superb score make this a must-see is you are into haunted house movies. Highly atmospheric! When will this movie get it's proper DVD release, I wonder? Ok, the fire effect is a little bit cheap, but on the other hand, who knows what a tight budget they had for this movie? And to come up with a great movie like this on tight budget makes it even more worth honoring. I wonder where the house is that they used for filming?

Lisa Eilbacher is great in this movie! She holds it all together with her terrific performance! I could sit and watch this over and over! I hope it comes out on video soon! My copy I taped off of TV is just about shot!

I have watched this movie long time ago, and I think I have watched it twice, I really enjoy this movie and been searching to see if they ever show again on TV, but I guess I have no luck to see this movie or maybe I have miss it when it replay it on television. I watch this movie as when I was young and not so quite remember all the detail of this movie but I think Parker Stevenson did a great job in This House Possessed. I would like to get a hold of this movie, so anyone know where I can get this movie please let me know and very appreciate your help. I think someone out there has a copy of this movie oh VHS. Please email me and let me know at lamk69@yahoo.com

I first saw this when I was eight years old, and it was pretty damn scary at the time.

Lisa Eilbacher has the sexiest voice and is a total fox. Parker Stevenson was pretty cool as well.

The death scenes in this movie were pretty graphic for TV, especially the underwater shot of the "rag lady" belly-flopping into the pool.

The house looked like it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. My only complaint about this movie was that you never got a feel of the floor plan. With a house this fantastic, I would like to have known how the rooms and hallways tied together. But none of it was filmed in a way to show spacial relations.

This movie even had some pleasant humorous moments. A very ambitious T.V. movie indeed.