User Reviews

This 1980s effort has amateurish acting, cheese-ball music and little direction towards suspense, but due to some pretty good gore effects and an effectively scary creature, this sustains itself enough to be a worthy late niter. Sometime in the 1800s, a man keeps a mad, shrieking female monster locked up in a room in a house overlooking a graveyard. After he arbitrarily lets it out, the creature rips his heart out of his chest, and the legend continues to stir up curiosities for two hundred years to come. Its 1988, and college students are now discussing the myth: Anyone who goes into the upstairs vault of the old house will see the she-beast's imprint in the overlooking window, and will consequently be murdered in the worst of ways. Of course, the students decide to hold a little outing in the house overnight, and fall victim to the creature one by one.

This was adapted from a short story by the infamous H.P Lovecraft, who's stylish horror masterpieces contain violently bizarre themes and darkly curious characters such as the lead hero, Randolf Carter. The atmosphere of this is pretty disturbing, especially the blood-curdling shriek of the monster, and producer/director Jean-Paul Ouellette's intentions on not showing the creature until the latter half of the film. The violence includes, gratuitous neck ripping and head bashing as the group of sorry students search for a way out of the dark hallways of the house, meanwhile being stalked by the lurking beast. The rest is pretty routine, as the smart and logical Carter discovers a way to diffuse the situation, and somehow the Necronomicon (Book of the Dead) plays a part in this weirdness. Its a fun little monster movie if you can suspend disbelief. (followed by a sequel of course), and this is unrated, so avoid any possible R-rated cut versions.

Yet another in the long line of "teenagers get killed in a deserted house" type films, this low budget entry benefits from having some nasty gore scenes which help to stop it from becoming totally worthless. The film begins in the past, with a man getting his heart ripped out by the demon that his daughter has become. A load of people dressed in old-fashioned clothes proceed to bury him. At this point I was actually happy when the film jumps to the present, as the low budget nature of the production just isn't enough to bring a historical scene like that to life...in fact, it just looked silly. By now we see that a tree has grown from the tomb (nice touch) and that the house is STILL abandoned. Pretty soon the usual group of sex-mad teenagers invade the place one night and proceed to get picked off one by one.

Fans of H.P. Lovecraft will no doubt be disappointed by yet another relatively lacklustre adaptation of one of his shorts, as aside from a few character and place names, the film totally fails in dredging up the kind of oppressive atmosphere that his stories so brilliantly conveyed. With the film's title and all, you might expect the monster in this film to be some hideously frightening monstrosity, but instead it turns out to be a woman in a rubber demon suit, which is another disappointment and far from the spirit of Lovecraft's work.

The film's two central characters are an odd and strangely likable pairing. One is Randolph Carter (played by Mark Kinsey Stephenson who reprised the role in the sequel), a quirky and sometimes irritating bookworm who eventually manages to dispel the evil. The other is Howard Damon, played by Charles King, who brings a touch of warmth and laughter to the role of the nervous hero. Sadly a gang of teenagers fill up the bulk of the film and it has to be said that their acting is awfully wooden. A quick browse of the IMDb reveals that three out of four of them have no acting careers and the other is a stuntwoman, whose lack of inhibition was probably the sole reason she got the acting job as it was.

The impressive gore effects (for a low budget, anyway) are probably the best reasons to watch this film, and things do get very bloody. One jock has his neck torn open (the puddling blood from the wound is worthy of Fulci), another unfortunate victim has her neck snapped, a man's face is torn off along with his head and a final victim loses his brain all over the floor. Effective, yes, at being downright disgusting! Anyhow, the film has quite a fast pace and, although predictable, it kept me watching throughout. I would even go so far as to say that it is fairly enjoyable on a basic level, although not particularly frightening or atmospheric. A sequel followed five years later employing the skills of genre stalwarts David Warner and John Rhys-Davies, which for that fact alone I will be watching.

PLOT SPOILERS!!! Another lousy movie "based on" an H.P. Lovecraft story. In the 1800s a woman gives birth to a monster baby. She dies in childbirth and the father abandons the house but casts a spell keeping the baby a captive within its walls. Cut to the 1950s. The house is abandoned and a bunch of idiots go in there for no good reason. Naturally the monster is around and they start getting killed. It's a good thing Randolph Carter (Mark Kinsey Stephenson) is around to figure out how to kill it. END Spoilers!

Just horrible movie. It's very cheaply made and the "haunted" house looks like it was made out of paper mache--note how the walls shake when anyone bangs on a door! The script is stupid and boring and the acting is just dreadful. Only Mark Parra as Joel shows any acting ability. The rest of the the cast is beyond dreadful--especially Stephenson and Laura Albert. There's also a pointless sex scene to give us the obligatory female nudity. Even the gore is boring!

Cheap, badly made, terribly acted. Avoid.