Featured Blu-ray Review: House: Two Stories
May 7, 2017
House: Two Stories - Buy from Amazon: Blu-ray
You might be wondering, “Wait a minute. Didn’t this Blu-ray come out nearly a month ago?” Yes. House: Two Stories was released on April 11th and the studio sent a screener to me more than two weeks in advance. Normally, this is plenty of time to get the review done on time. Unfortunately, it got stuck at the border for a month, so the review is late. Was it worth the wait?
The film begins with a grocery delivery man dropping off food for a Mrs. Hooper. The door’s open and as the delivery man goes looking for her, he finds her corpse hanging from a noose. We next meet Roger Cobb, her nephew and a writer. He’s known for horror, but his next book is going to be about his personal experiences in Vietnam, if he can get it started. Not only is it a rough subject to discuss, but he’s also still dealing with a missing son and the loss of his son has caused him and his wife, Sandy Sinclair, to divorce.
Roger’s original plan was to sell the house. It’s where he and his wife where living when their son, Jimmy, went missing, so it has a lot of bad memories. However, he has writer’s block and decides a change of pace is in order. Returning home sends those bad memories flooding back, which we see. When Roger’s son first disappeared, his aunt said the house was to blame. Needless to say, this doesn’t go over well with Sandy. It doesn’t take long for the house to have an effect on Roger, beyond painful memories. He tries to talk to his new neighbor about this, but Harold doesn’t believe him, which makes total sense. Is he losing his mind? Or was his aunt right and there’s something with this house?
House is a horror / comedy with an emphasis on suspense. There are some earlier special effects and monster stuff in the movie, but for the most part, there’s more comedy than real horror elements for the first two thirds of the movie, as we watch Roger try and figure out what’s going on in this house. If you didn’t know the movie was a horror / comedy, you could suspect he’s having a breakdown and there’s nothing supernatural happening. Because of this, the film has a slower build and this means not all fans of the genre will enjoy it. I really like this movie for a number of reasons. Firstly, William Katt is great in the lead and the supporting cast add a lot to the movie, including Richard Moll as his Vietnam War buddy, Big Ben. You quickly get invested in the characters, or at least I did. I also like much of the special effects, especially that skeleton bat thing that shoots Roger’s rope when he’s climbing into the alternate dimension.
On the other hand, the special effects haven’t aged well and the some of the sets look cheep under the light of high definition. This is a problem with a lot of low budget horror films from the era. Stuff designed to look good in dark theaters and / or on VHS don’t look great in 1080p.
Extras on the first disc include an audio commentary track with the director, Steve Miner; Ethan Wiley, the screenwriter; William Katt, lead actor; and Sean S. Cunningham, the producer. Ding Dong, You’re Dead is an hour-long making of featurette. It is really in-depth starting from the initial story idea by Fred Dekker, which was a lot darker than the final movie. Ethan Wiley changed it adding almost the entire supporting cast. There’s is also a 24-minute long archive making of featurette, as well as images, trailers, TV spots, etc.
This movie is a sequel in name only, which used to be incredibly common. In an age where every studio is trying to chase the next multi-franchise shared continuity, it might be hard to imagine a time when studios would make a movie in the same franchise that had little or nothing to do with the original film’s continuity. In direct-to-DVD sequels to horror movies, they usually at least have the same villains, but not here. Because of that, the film starts with introducing us to our new set of characters, starting with...
A married couple is accosted by a shadowy man in their home who demands they return his skull. When they refuse, because they don’t know where it is, he shoots them. Fast forward 25 years and we meet the first of our protagonists, Jesse and his girlfriend, Kate. We quickly learn he is the only son of the couple killed in the prologue and that he’s inherited his family house. That night, his friend, Charlie, and his girlfriend, Lana, show up. They are ostensibly there to give Jesse his birthday gift, but in actuality, they are there because Jana is a singer and Charlie is her manager and they are hoping to be “discovered” by Kate, who works for a record company.
Meanwhile, Jesse has been making some discoveries of his own. He found evidence that his grandfather, who is also called Jesse (He’s called Gramps in the movie, so that’s what we will call him.) found a skull that was rumored to have mystical powers. Gramps and his partner, Slim Reeser found this skull, but had a falling out on who got to keep it. Jesse and Charlie decide to go find it, because even if it doesn’t have mystical powers, it has gems the size of eyeballs, which they figure would be worth millions. They do have one clue. The skull was Aztec and the Aztec buried their with their worldly possessions, including gems, while Jesse knows where his Gramps was buried. So a little grave-robbing later, Jesse and Charlie have dug up Gramp’s coffin. What they find is Gramps, who isn’t exactly alive, but puts up quite a fight, until Jesse tells Gramps he’s his great great grandson.
Gramps informs Jesse that the house is a temple, which exists outside of space and time powered by the skull. The forces of evil are always after the skull, so it will be up to them to stop these evil forces.
The balance between horror / suspense and humor is tilted a lot more towards the humor in House II: The Second Story. It’s slapstick at times and so toned down it got a PG-13 rating, while the first film earned an R rating. For most critics, this was too much to take and the film has zero positive reviews. It is not close to that bad. It’s not a great movie; it certainly isn’t as good as the first film, but it does have its charms. One of these charms is John Ratzenberger, who plays Bill, the electrician / adventurer. It is a fun Cheers-related callback to the first movie, but also part of the reason the film is goofy more than it is scary. Also... caterpuppy.
The commentary track this time features the writer / dirctor Ethan Wiley, as well as the producer Sean S. Cunningham. It’s Getting Weirder! is a nearly hour-long making of featurette that is just as in-depth as with the first film. There are also archival featurettes on the special effects, trailers, TV spots, etc.
The first two House movies are not classics of the genre, but they are underappreciated films that deserve to be seen by more. I would go so far as to say House is a cult classic. Both films have excellent audio commentary tracks and hour-long making of documentaries, so the Two-Disc Blu-ray has a lot more extras than I was expecting. Worth picking up for fans of the genre.
House
The Extras
House II: The Second Story
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, House II: The Second Story, House, Arye Gross, William Katt, Kay Lenz, Steve Miner, Richard Moll, John Ratzenberger, George Wendt, Amy Yasbeck, Jonathan Stark, Sean Cunningham, Ethan Wiley, Fred Dekker, Lar Park Lincoln, Royal Dano