Kill House

Be afraid. Be very afraid, if you are even thinking about picking up this rather lame title. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about this film. The only way that Kill House has any chance of giving you nightmares is by putting you to sleep. If only I had been so lucky. Beth Dewey was the “mastermind” behind the whole thing. She wrote, directed, and acted as the killer in this piece of crap. Dewey ought to be arrested for grand larceny if even one person paid any real money for this picture. I would tell you som…thing about the plot, but there isn’t one. If anyone can tell me what in the heck this film was about, please let me know. Near as I can figure Sunny (Dewey) is some sociopath realtor. There is no rythme or reason for anything that happens anywhere in the film. It almost looks like they were pretty much making it up as they went along. I give Dewey an F as a director, an F as a writer, and an F- as an actress. At least Dewey appears to understand the low budget concept of: if you have nothing of value to say with your film, show lots of boobs and someone will watch it.

Video

Kill House is presented in an amateurish 1.77:1 aspect ratio. This is strictly non anamorphic and appears as a window box with most players. My up convert machine automatically zoomed the picture to fill my screen. Everything here is strictly camcorder quality. Colors run, and lighting is almost never correct. The picture is either too bright or too dark to ever get any decent detail. There are moments where the framing is worse than your Aunt Tillie’s vacation slides. “Why doesn’t Uncle Frank ever have a head, Aunt Tillie?” Black levels are simply horrible. I suspect the camera guy needed to get some extra time off from his day job at Quickie-Mart to do the film. I suspect he made more at the QM.

Audio

This Dolby Digital 2.0 track has no better signs of professionalism than any other aspect of the film. Wind shear and traffic noise often interfere with the inane dialogue. The music consists of some of the lamest songs I’ve ever heard. Again, this is nothing more than sub par camcorder stuff here. Did they use the camera’s condenser mic?

Special Features

Sadly there are a couple of features here. First up is a collection of deleted scenes with the same nonsense found in the feature. Finally there is a “Making of Kill House” 20 minute feature. At first I thought the ditzy Sunny character was just some bad acting by Beth Dewey. After seeing her direct in this feature I realized that, no, that’s Beth Dewey to the core.

Final Thoughts

I am actually quite the connoisseur of schlock horror films. I love those no budget films. The problem is that it is getting too easy to get a film made and distributed any more. You have three kinds of schlock. 1. They know they’re bad so they just have a blast. 2. There is at least enough of something (acting, story, cinematography) to be worth a look even if you end up laughing most of the time. Finally there’s number 3, which is where Kill House falls. This is the kind of schlock where everybody takes themselves too seriously and no one has a clue what they’re doing. I get this image that Dewey thinks she’s making The Lord Of The Rings here. Trust me. Don’t even rent this film, or you’re doomed to find yourself asking the same question I did over and over again: “What was that all about?”

Special Features List

• Making Of Kill House
• Deleted Scenes