The Halfway House

So many horror films these days are such a disappointment, but man was I surprised by this little low budget gem! It had me in tears, I was laughing so hard. It had it all... lots of nudity (I do mean lots!), some incredibly funny lines, and some great kills!

It was directed by Kenneth J. Hall, who wrote "Puppet Master", a Full Moon film that was actually quite good. They should have had Hall write more of their films.

Anyway, I managed to catch a screening of "The Halfway House" at the North Hollywood Film Fest. The rest of the audience loved it as much as I did. It seems like a tribute to all the fun exploitation horror movies I loved in my youth, filled with sexy juvenile delinquents (played by much older girls), weird characters, and a Lovecraftian monster. Hall isn't satisfied with spoofing one genre. He takes on a whole bunch of them… and succeeds! The production looks good and the cast, led by veteran actress Mary Woronov, is first-rate. Anyone who is a fan of old-school drive-in horror movies from the 60s and 70s is bound to like this movie. I can't wait to see what this guy does next.

**SPOILERS** Ridicules as well as insulting soft-core porno horror movie that has Catholic Nun Sister Cecelia ,Mary Moronov, who became secretly involved in the Black Arts through the Satanic book of the dead Necronomicon. Sister Cecelia ends up conjuring up this creature from another dimension who looks like the rubber octopus in "Bride of the Monster" with a ferocious set of teeth.

Working behind the back of Father Fogerty (Joseph Tatnen), who runs the halfway house for runaway girls where she's assigned to, Sister Cecelia together with the halfway house's creepy handy-man Lutkus, Cleve Hall, secretly have the girls fed to this creature. This is done in order to nourish it and eventually have Sister Cecelia become it's bride! So that the blessed couple would produce a race of half-human half-octopus-like off-springs to take over and rule the world.

Father Fogerty himself is anything but innocent in the movie having a faddish of not only reading and looking at the photos of girly magazines where young, and well endowed, women get spanked. That's were Father Fogerty gets the idea of disciplining the girls at his halfway house by spanking them silly in the privacy of his office for any infraction that they commit.

After jogger Annie Morgan, Ashley Rgea, is reported missing by her older sister Larissa, Janet Tracy Keijser, she with the help of police Sgt. Dick Sheen, Shawn Savage,goes undercover at the halfway house where Annie was last seen jogging. It's also suspected that a number of other girls reported missing over the last few months also disappeared there.

Getting to know what's really happening at the halfway house by getting very friendly with one of the runaway girls Cherry Pie, Stephanie Leighs, Larissa plans to get the goods on both Sister Cecelia and her accomplice in crime Lutku.Larissa ends up getting caught by the Satanic trio when Cherry Pie was too slow to inform her that Sister Cecelia was coming as the two were about to escape from the place.

Sgt. Sheen coming to the rescue is caught by surprise by Latkus who shoves a blade right through him. Down in the basement of the halfway house Sister Cecelia, in a witch-like outfit, is about to bring out of the dungeon the one-eyed octopus-like creature to devour Cherry Pie for lunch only to have Father Fogerty pop up. shocked at what he sees, Sister Cecelia out of uniform, Fogerty tries to get the creature to desist, from eating Cherrie pie. Fogerty does this by reciting passage's from the bible only to have his hand, holding a crucifix, cut off with a pair of shears by Lutkus

Coming back from the dead Sgt. Sheen, with a two foot long knife protruding from his chest, takes out Lutkus where the creature for some strange reason attacks Sister Cecelia now dressed up like some kind of Demonic Wizard. The creature ends up swallowing her down whole like actor Robert Shaw was in the movie "Jaws" with Larissa, also like in the movie "Jaws", throwing a plastic container of gasoline into it's mouth and blowing the creature to kingdom come.

The movie "The Halfway House" is not only dopey with bad acting and a lot of it's story not making any sense at all it's not even intentionally or unintentionally funny. Its just plain bad and insulting to everyone, of any religious or non-religious persuasion, watching it.

No pun intended - this knows what it is. I would argue the badness (what else could I call it?) is intended - don't give me that look! Maybe I am wrong, but it is better to imagine they did all this on purpose! Like the bad people in this - they service and they sacrifice for the evil.

There is a lot of nudity, there is a monster (hand made too at times) ... and it gets its tentacles everywhere. Makes kind of sense - well not the movie, that does not make much sense, but hey ... this is here to entertain the lowest of expectations! There is nothing wrong with liking this or being entertained by it - this is not Citizen Kane, this is not a classic ... this is not even halfway there ... even if I always go the full distance (when it comes to puns)!

totally wrong on every level but captivating all the same. so inexcusably pathetic but also so addictive to watch just to see if the acting picked up further into it. a good Sunday movie if you are hungover from the night before, great for zombie-ing out to on an overcast afternoon.

i found myself wondering if these actors have made it in Hollywood, or whether they still are waitressing. not quite even a soft porn movie even if there are plenty of breasts on show.

please ensure you have downed a bottle of vodka or two in the hour before commencing.

When I sat down in 2022 to watch the 2004 horror comedy "The Halfway House" for the first time, I have to admit that I had never even heard about this movie from writer and director Kenneth J. Hall.

Now, the movie's cover does have that low budget feel to it, but still, the synopsis actually sounded interesting enough. And with "The Halfway House" being a horror comedy that I hadn't already seen, of course I found the time to watch it.

Well, "The Halfway House" is a very, very mixed bag of nuts. The movie was all over the place, and I wouldn't exactly label it as being comedy, because there were no laughs here.

The storyline combines elements from all over the place, and it feels like it was a script and storyline that was written by and for late teenagers. Why? Well, there was an absurd amount of unnecessary nudity in the movie, for starters. Then there were the more than lewd and pseudo-explicit sex scenes, which just fully and wholeheartedly sleazed down the movie to a low level. And of course, it was girl on girl action, what else would it be from a late teenager? And then out of nowhere you have a creature that looked like a death tyrant from the Dungeons & Dragons game. But as it that wasn't enough, then writer and director Kenneth J. Hall stirs in references to Arkham, Massachusetts, the Necronomicon, Charles Dexter and the Miskatonic University.

"The Halfway House" is a cheesy and campy movie. Was it worth the watch? No, not really. Well, it would have been, had writer and director Kenneth J. Hall opted to not include the pointless nudity and the lewd sex scenes. Without that, then "The Halfway House" would have been a much more enjoyable and respectable movie.

Of all the actors and actresses that were playing a part in "The Halfway House", I was only familiar with Mary Woronov (playing Sister Cecilia).

I will say, though, that the special effects in the movie and the creature design were actually rather good, surprisingly enough, taking into consideration the premise of the movie.

Sure, if you are a late teenager and if you are into role-playing games and the Lovecraft Mythos, then you might find something enjoyable here. But if you are a part of a more mature audience that wants to watch a properly entertaining and wholesome movie, then "The Halfway House" is not the best of choices.

My rating of "The Halfway House" lands on a very generous three out of ten stars.