House on Tombstone Hill, The (1989)

... aka: Dead Come Home, The

... aka: Dead Dudes in the House

... aka: Hexenhaus - Blut für die Zombies (Witch House: Blood for the Zombie)

... aka: Road, The

Directed by:

J. (James) Riffel

Shot on 16mm in upstate New York in 1988 under the title The Dead Come Home (it may have also used that same title during a brief theatrical run in 1989), I originally saw this as The House on Tombstone Hill, which was the properly-packaged A.I.P. Home Video release from 1992. However, the film's reputation would be tarnished somewhat over the years whenever Troma became the primary distributor. They put it out in a goofy looking video box, wrote a ridiculously misleading blurb on the back (referring to the pretty standard college kid characters as "Hip-Hop yups" [?]) and then gave it an even goofier title (Dead Dudes in the House) to falsely make it look like some kind of frat house comedy or horror spoof. However, what worked for barely-salvageable junk like A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (formerly titled The Dark Fortress) and FERTILIZE THE BLASPHEMING BOMBSHELL (formerly titled Mark of the Beast) was just sorely inappropriate for this more serious-minded effort. 

While there's a little bit of black comedy here, and the unavoidably campy conceit of it featuring a sprightly undead elderly lady as a killer, this is not a horror-comedy. It actually has much more in common with the very first Evil Dead, which also has some humor but is mostly concerned with creating a gritty atmosphere and providing gory shocks. I'm only pointing out the bad marketing because I've noticed many viewers getting bunched panty syndrome that the film isn't what they're expecting. They then infest movie sites to take it out on the filmmakers when it isn't their fault.

Mark (Douglas F. Gibson) purchases a large, old, run down country home dirt cheap and invites along some of his friends to help him renovate it. Accompanying him are his snobby girlfriend Jamie (Sarah Newhouse), all-around nice guy Ron (Mark Zobian), preppy couple Steve (John Dayton Cerna) and Linda (Naomi Kooker) and a pair of carpenters; obnoxious wanna-be macho man Bob (Victor Verhaeghe) and his redneck buddy Joey (Eugene Sautner). As for warning signs prior to the proverbial shit hitting the fan, this has a few. For starters, there's a noose hanging from a tree outside. And then there's an old tombstone for one Abigail Leatherbee placed right in the front yard. Being the respectful kinda guy he is, Bob promptly takes his sledgehammer to the tombstone and cracks it in two, which unleashes an evil force inside the home.

Seeing how the banter / bickering between the main characters is unpleasant, poorly-written, awkwardly-delivered and not the least bit interesting, the filmmakers have the common sense to not make us wait very long at all (roughly 20 minutes) before the killing commences. As for the reasoning behind the whole haunting, we do get a little bit of a backstory. The elderly Abigail was attacked in her own home by an intruder and stabbed over 50 times. While she survived the attack and eventually was able to return home, she went crazy, murdered her neighbor and then died of a heart attack just a few days later. Abigail's equally unhinged daughter, Ann (Leighann Belair), then dug up her grave, brought her corpse home, buried it in the yard and then hung herself from a tree.

Everyone becomes trapped in the home when the doors lock shut and the windows prove to be unbreakable, and those who are killed return for a second round as possessed zombie-like fiends (who, unfortunately, still talk) to help kill off the others. Ed French and Bruce Spaulding Fuller provide a wide range of mostly-good gore effects to the works. One guy trying to climb in through a third story window has both of hands chopped off with a machete, falls to the ground and then gets impaled with a steel pole heaved at him from above. Scissors and saw blades are plunged into backs, a screwdriver is stuck through a head, someone gets pinned to the floor by knives stuck through their hands and ankles and there's death (or re-death) by saw, knife, hatchet and a jagged window pane (which bisects a body), plus limbs hacked off, guts ripped out and a pretty good decapitation.

There are a few other non-splattery aspects that work really well, too, starting with the ambiance. The grainy film stock mixed with the dim lighting and setting (they've found a really good abandoned home to shoot at) give this the perfect look and feel for this kind of thing. There's also something genuinely creepy about the presentation of the killer grandmother. Could be her latex mask, or the fact she's played by a man but voiced by a woman, or the fact she's so casual in how she dishes out threats and slowly lurches around with her cane as if she's in no big hurry to kill everyone. It was also a smart idea not to overexpose this character by making her the only killer. She only pops in here and there and ends up being kind of like the final boss of the film.

But are these pluses enough to overcome the debits? Somewhat, though not entirely. The characters (aside from the granny) are neither likable nor interesting, the acting is mostly terrible, the direction and editing are sometimes clunky and the pacing is really off, especially in the second half. Since they start killing off the small cast right away, they run out of people by the hour mark, so a couple of boring teen boys (Rob Moretti and James Griffith) are synthetically grafted on to provide additional fodder toward the end. The film would have run smoother had they simply added a few more people to the initial renovation group. The second half also becomes too repetitive and consists mainly of one-on-one encounters with possessed people in scenes that seem needlessly stretched out.

The first-time director, who was attending NYU at the time, also made Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Alien, Flesh Eating, Hellbound, Zombified Living Dead Part 2: In Shocking 2-D (1991), a comic re-dub of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD with added film breaks, interludes and scenes shot around New York City occasionally spliced in.

The 2018 Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray releases comes with a long audio interview with the director and a documentary short titled Three Dead Dudes, which features interviews with stars Zobian, Verhaeghe and Gibson.

★★1/2

Hentai byôtô: SM shinryo-shitsu (1989)

... aka: 変態病棟 ＳＭ診療室

... aka: Pervert Ward: S&M Clinic

Directed by:

Hisayasu Satô

Watching every genre film from a certain time period is occasionally going to take you down some pretty dark alleys, and director Hisayasu Satô's particular alley is darker than most. Meaning, this disturbing, discomforting and psychologically heavy shocker, which is violent, sexually explicit (though not quite pornographic due to Japanese censorship laws) and filled with truly bizarre kinks and fetishes, is unlikely to appeal to many viewers out there.

"Psychological counselor" Dr. Yasukazu Mizumura (Kazuhiro Sano) puts his patients through bizarre "therapy" that involves making them listen to experimental, discordant "alpha wave" music and sounds while staring at their reflections in a mirror and having conversations with themselves. He also secretly records these sessions to both analyze and get off to later. His wife, Ryoko (Kiyomi Itô), is starting to get sick of his demented ways, particular his insistence on her participating in rough, kinky sex ("Isn't that what a wife is for, huh?") He has a particularly strange fetish for fresh fruit, which he likes to chew up and spit in her face before taping an apple core over her mouth (?) while he chains her up and abuses her. Their sex usually involves such erotic acts as slapping, strangulation, snapping rubber bands on her back, eyeball licking (!) and violently jabbing her privates with a sharp instrument (!!) However, Ryoko didn't sign up for any of this when she married covert sadist Yasukazu and was only indulging him for the sake of their marriage. Now fed up, she finally builds up the courage to leave him.

Exactly a week after Ryoko disappears, a woman who looks exactly like her and calling herself Kei Shirakawa (also played by Itô) shows up at the psychiatrist's clinic looking for insight into some strange dreams she's been having. Since Ryoko made mention of having an identical twin sister who'd been adopted out as an infant and is still out there somewhere, Rei may be her or may be a mentally-disturbed / schizophrenic or vengeance-seeking Ryoko back to play some kind of sadistic game. Dr. Mizumura isn't entirely sure himself. Because her handwriting is different, she's a nymphomaniac (propositioning him a mere minute after they first meet) and has a taste for sadomasochism (she stabs her own hand with a pen during their first meeting), he suspects it may be the twin but decides to go along with her either way.

Kei is quickly able to seduce the doctor right on the patient's couch during a sex session that involves snapping bra straps, giving her a wedgie, ass smacking, sodomizing her with her high heel shoe and, apparently doc's favorite activity, jabbing her in the crotch with a pen. Afterward, he's not willing to let the girl go home and instead chloroforms her and makes her his sexual slave. He gives her an injection of some experimental hallucinogenic drug, dresses her in some kinky, spiked leather outfit, ties her to a bed, has her mouth pried open with some kind of contraption, squirts grapefruit juice all over her and then does his patented pen routine again. Later torture involves being threatened with eye gouging and being wrapped in plastic and repeatedly dunked in a bathtub.

Kei reveals that she and her sister were once conjoined twins until they were separated and now she gets turned on any time she's near a scalpel. In fact, before she met this doctor, she regularly used to masturbate with one (!) Her ultimate goal turns out to be having the doctor ejaculate inside of her so she can become pregnant with Siamese twins. This would double the whammy as far as her scalpel fetish is concerned because she'd have to be cut open with one during the C-section and then her offspring would also have to be separated via scalpel. Additional revelations are made about the psychiatrist and a traumatic occurrence from his youth.

So what does it all mean? I'm not entirely sure, but there's a lot of interesting stuff to ponder in this 55-minute film. One thing that automatically leaps out at us is the near-constant use of various reflections; reflections in glass, reflections in mirrors, characters seeing their reflections on screens, watching themselves have sex in mirrors and looking themselves right in the eyes as they unload their secret desires. Sometimes self-reflections are distorted as if seen through a funhouse mirror, there are POV shots from inside mirrors and TV screens and, at one point, the female lead has a mirrored box slipped over her head, forcing her to stare at a fractured version of her own face as she's being tortured.

Childhood trauma suffered by both the doctor and the twin have been the primary driving force in shaping their twisted adult sexual fantasies. The lengthy sex / torture scenes are going to cause more discomfort than arousal for most viewers and the settings are all cold, lonely, orderly and isolating; like everything is taking place in some kind of endless black void. Though this isn't always easy to sit through - I'd even say it's sometimes downright grueling to sit through - it's still pretty fascinating, with convincing performances (particularly from the female lead) and strong, stylish and compelling visuals and direction from Satô on what was obviously a tiny budget.

I was unable to track down any legitimate DVD or VHS release for this title, though at one time it was streamable on the now defunct pinkueiga.com website. That same widescreen copy is also probably the source copy for the DVD-R a few bootleg outlets currently carry.

★★★