Delusion (1981) User Reviews

not bad for one of Cotten's last roles; reasonably interesting

[FieCrier · 5/10 · 2 May 2006]

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.

For a slasher film, it's got a bit more to it.

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 24 March 2017]

"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.

Obscure but entertaining.

[insomniac_rod · 5/10 · 4 February 2007]

I'm glad some local and old video stores still own VHS titles such as "Delusion". I remember watching it on a cheap video store located on a horrible social security living area. That was in the early 90's. Now, years later, to my surprise, I found the VHS of this tape.

I regret I didn't watch it before. This is the typical slasher flick with the "whodunit?" premise. The plot is very simple and easy to follow. A young cute nurse arrives to a creepy mansion to take care of an invalid and creepy old man. But it's the family of the old man who gives really the creeps to our heroine; including the mysterious butler. Why? Because each of them has weird activities and personalities. Then, "strange" killings start to happen and it's only Meredith who can discover who is behind them.

Well this is a standard slasher with a few decent death scenes and some bizarre sequences including nightmares and suspense.

Watch it only if you are hungry of slasher flicks. I could've enjoyed it more back when the slasher craziness was at it's peek. To these days, it looks dated and cheap. Oh and the VHS copy I found was horrible in all the sense of the word.

Don't be disillusioned!

[RareSlashersReviewed · 12 March 2002]

A young nurse named Meredith accepts a job looking after an ageing millionaire in his secluded country home. Almost as soon as she arrives strange events begin occuring. It then becomes apparent that someone is murdering all the occupants of the house and making their deaths look like bizarre accidents. It's left up to Meredith to try and reveal the killer's identity before she ends up next on his list.

Firstly don't be disillusioned by the back of the video blurb that would lead you to believe that DELUSION is 'a chiller in the mould of THE OMEN or REPULSION.' This is pure whodunit? owing more of a knowing nod towards Christie than Carpenter. Although saying that, slasher fans will find the odd thrill here, including one or two decent edge of your seat jolts and a couple of brutal slayings. It looks pretty well budgeted, cleverly shot and the cast do their jobs efficiently. The flicks main problem lies in the fact that it seems to drag far too much in between murders and it began to get a little too tedious towards the end. It's nicely directed and genuinely well acted but lacks the cheese that made most of it's hack and slash counterparts from that era so loveable.

Smart in places, but hardly memorable enough to ever be watched more than once. HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW is a much better effort, rent that instead.

Err ... Death Doesn't Live Here Anymore

[Coventry · 3/10 · 4 July 2009]

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.

An exercise in tedium and deadly dull pacing - not for the faint of heart!

[lemon_magic · 2/10 · 27 August 2005]

To be fair, I have to admit to something up front: just before e I saw "Delusion/The House Where Death Lives", I happened to see the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" for the first time at a midnight movie showing. TCM knocked my socks off, and I was hungry for more rousing, scary movies that I had never heard of. In my naiveté, I assumed that "TCM" was only the tip of the iceberg, and that there many more, dozens more, as good or better, if only I were able to track them down.

So when a friend and I saw this was playing at a local movie house (since gone under), we decided to take a chance, even though we'd heard nothing about it and had no idea where it came from. My reasoning was: I'd never heard of "Chainsaw" before I saw it, and it was great. I'd never heard a single thing about "Delusion" either. Therefore, it might be great, or at least interesting. The fact that absolutely no one else bought tickets for our showing should have clued us that there might be a problem, but alas, it did not.

40 minutes into the movie, both of us were sitting slumped in our seats, unable to move, brought almost to the edge of death by the boredom and sluggish pacing and dead-weight performances of this movie. I am not kidding. We both later agreed that the sensation was not unlike being drained of blood while floating in a quagmire of cooked farina. While the movie was playing, no hope or joy or animation was possible. summoning the energy to talk back to the screen or hoot in derision or make wisecracks was inconceivable.

The movie went on and on and on, and nothing happened, and nothing happened, and then there was a moment where a guy was stuck in a storeroom and was scared and yelling and it was almost exciting, but then he got killed and the movie went back to being an exercise in excruciating boredom.

Because we were young and vital (20-year-olds), we managed to hang on until the credits rolled. And once the movie stopped sitting on our heads and trying to kill us, we were able to summon enough energy to leave the theater and, eventually, to get on with our lives.

I know I am not being fair to this movie. I went in hoping for the visceral thrills of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and got something entirely different, and HWDL suffered greatly in comparison to my 20 year old tastes. (Perhaps if it had appeared as "Delusion" instead of the alternate title, my expectations might have been different.) And I certainly wasn't used to dubbed movies or moody Gothic pieces.

So if I were to watch it again (say, catching it on cable), I might have far more tolerance for the movie than I did in 1980. But I will always remember the way "The House Where Death Lives" seemed to suck the life right out of my body.

Good Intentions Alone Are Not Enough

[natashabowiepinky · 3/10 · 25 April 2013]

You know, despite my general low ratings of them, there's something strangely addictive about early 80's slasher flicks. You know... people potter around aimlessly for ages, before the soundtrack stops and you just KNOW they're about to be incapacitated with a knife/hook/chair leg (Delete where applicable). Even here, where it seems to take FOREVER till the first death (And that's a dog), most of the victims are taken care of by a simple WHACK to the temple (Not very scary, that) and there's an implausible TWIST at the end (Which gets more stupid the more you think about it) it's all rather endearing.

It was made with love and affection, by a director who shoots far too many scenes in the dark and doesn't have a clue about building suspense, and a writer who, apart from the pretty leading lady, writes dull characters and sets out the most boring set-pieces for murder imaginable, before that incomprehensible conclusion. If this movie was a child, I would give him a pat on the back for effort, then stick a D cap on his head before sending him to the back of the class. AND make him stay for extra homework... 3/10

The house of psychotic killer.

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 6/10 · 9 July 2010]

An attractive nurse named Meredith moves to the Langrock estate to take care of her patient:a crippled old man.She falls in love with sixteen year old grandson of Langrock named Gabriel,who returned from some kind of desert commune.A series of brutal murders in the gloom of the night is set in motion...Slow-moving but well-made and competent psycho slasher that often drags.The death scenes mostly involve head bashings and are pretty bloodless.I liked the main performance of Patricia Pearcy as I remembered her from Jeff Lieberman's "Squirm"."Delusion" is worth checking out for completists of 80's US independent horror.6 out of 10.

Talk about a house of pain!

[GOWBTW · 9/10 · 29 June 2020]

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

Middling pseudo-psychological slasher

[drownsoda90 · 6/10 · 23 April 2017]

"Delusion" (also released as "The House Where Death Lives") follows a young nurse who goes to work at the Langrock estate to care for a dying millionaire. After the arrival of the elderly man's troubled nephew, anyone connected to the home begins to die at the hands of an unseen killer.

This pseudo-psychological slasher film has mostly been forgotten, and registers as one of the more obscure of its peers, though not entirely for good reason. It's not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but it is reasonably well-shot and captures a claustrophobic, isolated atmosphere. The film falls in familiar trappings and does little to distinguish itself, but it does drum up a bit of intrigue with a couple of its murder scenes (each of which are clobbering administered by a loose table leg, oddly enough) which are well-executed.

The acting is a mix of poor to decent, with Joseph Cotten playing the ailing patriarch, and Patricia Pearcy (of 1976's "Squirm"), who here seems to be overplaying catatonia a bit much, though she does a generally serviceable job. I actually found the letter voice-over narration an interesting way to frame the film, and certainly not one used often, especially in slasher films. The finale comes together a bit quickly and feels slapdash in nature, though it's mildly satisfying.

Overall, "Delusion" is a middling slasher film, part psychological thriller and part murder mystery. It's certainly not original, but it is relatively well-shot and has a few moments scattered throughout that drum up a bit of suspense. Its limited locations exhibit what I presume was a low budget, but there is a hazy air about the film that leaves it feeling a bit like a fever dream. Not great, not terrible—certainly unremarkable, but worth a watch from slasher completists. 6/10.

Painful

[Dave_Lawrence · 10 May 2003]

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)

Dull, old-fashioned gothic horror

[lor_ · 6 February 2023]

My review was written in February 1984 after a screening at 42nd St. Times Square theater.

"The House Where Death Lives" is a painfully slow-paced and old-fashioned gothic horror film, made in 1980 and originally titled "Delusion". Once-planned for release by the since-defunct The International Picture Show Co., picture has had territorial release over the past two years via Gotham-based New American Films as well as pay-tv exposure, ahead of its current Manhattan debut.

Trite tale unfolds in flashback (bookended by the heroine writing this story to her dad), concerning a young man, introverted nurse Meredith (Patricia Pearcy) arriving at a mansion to take care of crippled Ivar Langrock (Joseph Cotten). Another newcomer to the Fairlawn estate is Gabriel (John Dukakis), Langrock's suspicious-looking 16-year-old grandson who has been living in a commune.

Overly expository opening reels introduce (with a straight face) many cliches of the gothic format: a face seen at an upstairs window of a room that is always kept locked, a heroine prone to wandering inquisitively about the house and grounds, etc. One b one, cast members are dispatched by a sudden bonk on the head from a blunt instrument (it turns out to be a leg from a table) until the final reel reveals who the crazy is. Wedged into the package for the umpteenth time is a case of incest as a long-ago incident and plot motivator.

Director Alan Beattie fails to generate suspense or atmosphere in a picture that remains low-key even during violent scenes. Acting is more than competent, with red-headed, fair-complexioned Patricia Pearcy making a distinctive impression in the rather limited central role and Cotten (in his most recent screen appearance) thoroughly professional in support. Despite its release title linking the film with the overworked "blame it on the house" horror genre, pic's locale is neutrally plain and there are no supernatural overtones.