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Release Date: February 28th, 1986 (Theatrical)
March 27th, 2017 (Blu-ray)
Region Code: REGION FREE (Blu-ray)
REGION 1 and 2 (DVD)
Run Time: 1h 33m
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (English)
LPCM 2.0 (English
Video: 1080p (1.85:1 Aspect Ratio) (Blu-ray)
480p (1.85:1 Aspect Ratio) (DVD)
Ding Dong, You’re Dead!: The Making of House (1h 6m, HD)
Featuring interviews with almost everyone that worked on the
film except for Richard Moll and a few others, this is a well made and
entertaining making of. We learn that the film was originally supposed to be a
straight horror film, but when Fred Dekker started working on other projects,
the script writing duties were given to Dekker’s friend Ethan Wiley, who would
take the idea for the film and add a lot of comedy to it.
From there Steve Miner and Sean S. Cunningham came aboard
and turned the film into what it is today.
I love making-ofs and this is no exception. Almost every
facet of the film is talked about, from the casting to the effects to the film’s
release and ultimately its success. This is a making of worth watching.
Vintage Making-of (24m 7s, SD, 1.33:1 Aspect Ratio)
This is a making-of that was produced during the filming of
the House. We get a lot of behind
the scenes footage, as well as vintage interviews with the cast and crew. This
is really worth at least one watch just to see what making-ofs used to look
like.
Still Gallery (6m 54s, HD)
Pictures from the film, set, and posters are shown while the
score to the film plays.
Trailers
-Trailer
1 (59s, HD)
-Trailer
2 (1m 28s, HD)
Teaser (1m27s, HD, 1.33:1 Aspect Ratio)
This teaser plays up the fact that Steve Miner and Sean S.
Cunningham made some of the Friday the
13th films. The score from that series is used in this trailer.
TV Spots (1m 31s, HD, 1.33:1 Aspect Ratio)
-TV
Spot 1 (:30s, HD)
-TV
Spot 2 (:30s, HD)
-TV
Spot 3 (:31s, HD)
Audio Commentary
Featuring Director Steve Miner, Producer Sean S. Cunningham,
Star William Katt, and Writer Ethan Wiley, this is a very fun and funny
commentary. Recorded for the Anchor Bay release in 2000, this commentary has a
lot of overlap with the new making-of found on this disc. I didn’t mind that so
much as the stories would be told in a slightly different way than told in the
making-of, which helps keep them fresh. All four guys are recorded together giving
a very talky track that shows that these guys love being around each other. A definite
listen.
THE PACKAGING ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Note: House comes as part of a box set, but
does contain its own case. I will review the whole set when each disc has been
reviewed.
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THE PICTURE ⭐⭐⭐1/2
Arrow has given us transfer prepared by Lakeshore and
supervised by Arrow Films in 2K and in the film’s original aspect ratio of
1.85:1. This is a nice looking picture. There is a nice level of grain and the
structure of said grain is intact. Colors appear as they should and the blacks
are deep. I saw no image manipulation, such as DNR or crushed blacks. As usual,
Arrow has delivered in the picture department.
Now onto what can and has be seen as a problem with the
picture. As with some other Lakeshore properties that Arrow has released over
the past year and a half, the mattes have been opened, giving us more picture
than we have had in the past, but also changing the intended compositions of the
original film. When the film was restored, the entire frame was restored, but
the mattes were put on differently. This resulted in the picture being “moved
to the right”. More picture is seen in the left of the frame than has been seen
before. For huge fans of the film, the film will look different, things will be
off. For viewers like me, who knew nothing about this until it was brought up
in a few forums, as well as places like www.caps-a-holic.com,
I saw nothing different. That is until I popped in my old
Anchor Bay dvd and
saw the following:
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| Anchor Bay DVD Release |
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| Arrow Blu-ray and DVD Release |
The house is appears larger in the Anchor Bay release. We also have more information on the left side of the frame and less of the right side. There is also slightly more information on the top of the frame in the Arrow release than in the Anchor Bay release.
There are also a few shots in the film where we see things
that were not intended to be seen, like the edge of a few sets, the arm of the
boom mic operator, etc. Most of this stuff flies by that you may not even
notice. I did notice the boom operator while watching the film, but noticed
nothing else. When I see the screencaps, I can see what I missed, but to me
there was nothing wrong with the picture as I was watching.
So now that that is out of the way, what do I think of the
picture? I think that it is fine. There are people that are going to find
something to complain about anyways. Like I said before, I found nothing wrong
(except for the boom operator’s arm) while watching the film. I liked what
Arrow had done with the look of the picture and think that the composition
looked fine during my viewing. I will dock the score a little bit because of
the change in composition, but the picture still looks great.
THE SOUND ⭐⭐⭐1/2
The main soundtrack has been given the HD upgrade and it
sounds well enough. The film is not heavy on effects, so the audio is a bit
more low key. When the effects do show up, the track kicks into gear, giving us
a nice emersion effect. Dialogue is also clean and clear and I did not hear any
distortions to the track itself, although there are some anomalies that are
inherent to the film so they would be there no matter what was done to it. All
in all, this is a really nice track.
THE FILM ⭐⭐⭐
One of the first R-rated films that I ever saw was House. My mother and aunt had rented it
from the video store and they were watching it in the living room while I
watched TV in another room. I could hear them laughing, and me being the
curious type, went into the room to see what the fuss was about. On the TV
screen I see two pairs of legs with talking coming out of the speakers. Then
out of trash bag that sits in between the legs, a white (painted not Caucasian)
hand crawls out of the bag.
The man (the hairy legs to the right of screen)
doesn’t want the woman (the non-hairy legs to the left of screen) to see that
there is something alive inside this trash bag. He steps on the hand, slams a
shovel into the hand, whatever he can to make sure that the woman that he
trying to hit does not see what is in the bag (he says it is a sapling after
she asks if that is what it is.)
I found this scene very funny. I was about six or seven at
the time, but the humor was slapstick based. I had no idea what this thing
looked like because I came in after the hero decapitated the thing, but with
the hand looking the way it did (not too pleasant), I knew that it had to be
something disgusting.
How could it not be? My mother asked me if I wanted to
watch the film after her and my aunt were done, and I told her that I did.
After my aunt went home, my mother rewound the tape, and began the film from
the beginning. Since this was a New World Pictures release, there was a preview
for Clive Barker’s directorial debut, Hellraiser,
which I really wanted to see, but my mother told me that I would have to older
for that.
Once the film began, I found that I was watching a different
kind of horror film than what I was seeing advertised at the time. Sure, there
were horrific things that happen in the film, but nothing that I hadn’t seen
before in PG-13, or even some PG rated films. I had seen Conan decapitate a few
people in Conan the Destroyer, so I
figured that I knew these kinds of things.
After the film, my mother asked me what I thought of it. I
told her that I liked the film, but found that funny stuff didn’t meld well
with the horror elements. For a six or seven year old these were big things to
be saying. How would I have known these terms? I don’t know (and still don’t
know to this day how I knew them at such a young age.) No one I knew was
talking about this film. They were all into slasher films, and while I was into
slasher films as much as I could, I really didn’t know too much about them yet.
I just thought that the horror worked and the comedy worked, but not together.
As I watched House
for this review (the first time I have seen the film in at least fifteen
years), I was reminded about what I had said of the film back then.
The film starts out like a comedy. A grocery delivery boy
walks into the house of the person he is delivering groceries too and finds her
hanging from the ceiling. This is after he says one of the funniest lines in
the film: “Mrs. Hooper. It is me, Grocery Boy.” This line made me laugh and it
is one of the only true laughs I found in the film.
The film then cuts to a writer (William Katt) who is at a
signing for a book he wrote. It is kind of weird that he is autographing
paperbacks of his book, but I guess that is how it was in the 80’s.
Anyway, he
is trying to write a book based on his experiences in Vietnam. He finds that he
can’t write in the city, so he moves into the house of his dead aunt to see if
he can get the creative juices flowing.
He meets his neighbor, Harold (George Wendt) and they hit it
off pretty decently. That is until he sees what happens when he opens the
closet in the master bedroom at midnight. Opening said closet at said time
leads to another dimension where monsters seem to live. This is what made his
aunt commit suicide, although Roger (the writer) starts to believe that she
didn’t kill herself, but was convinced and helped in her death.
The house starts to play tricks on Roger. His ex-wife comes
to visit and turns into the monster that was in the garbage bag from the
beginning of the review. His neighbor also brings her son over for Roger to
babysit and, before the night is through, the monsters will try,
unsuccessfully, to kidnap the child.
Like I said before, this is a horror comedy, but I don’t
think that the two work together very well. First off, the film is not that
scary. There are monsters all about, but none of them seem to be all that
scary. They look the part, but don’t act it. They just kind of show up, do
something, and then we never see them again. The make-up used for the monsters
in the film is fantastic, but you need something for these things to do.
So, the horror element is hit or miss, but the comedy fares
a bit better. There are plenty of one-liners
to make any jaded person laugh at
least once. George Wendt, in particular, is very funny here and serves as the
listening block for Roger’s seemingly crazy theories. In fact, Wendt steals
Roger’s address book so that he can call Roger’s ex-wife to let her know that
he doesn’t think that Roger is doing too well, that he might be having ‘Nam
falshbacks. I actually found this a bit refreshing in a horror film that
someone cares about someone else’s well-being.
So if the horror and the comedy don’t mix, is the film any
good? Yes, to a point. While I did find myself enjoying the film, it does run
into points where nothing really happens. The Vietnam sections of the film are
mostly filler, not really adding to the story except to make Roger look crazy.
I wish that they had dropped these scenes completely, but then the villain of
the piece would exist. I just wish that the film focused more on the house and
the monsters. I feel that would have been the way to go, but the film is
saddled with these scenes that go on forever and add very little.
House was a game
changer, though. As the slasher craze was dying, House was there to show
audiences that horror can be fun. Sure, there still is the mayhem and terror
that horror brings, but the lighter tone showed audiences that not all horror
is bad. Not to say that slasher films are bad, quite the contrary. Slasher
films are fun in their own way, but the market was flooded with them and there
needed to be something new brought to the table. House was what was brought to
the table, and even though it has many flaws, it is still a film that can be
enjoyed. Just lower your expectations and you should be fine.
OVERALL ⭐⭐⭐1/2
House is a film
that is loved by many and loathed by others. I am in the middle. I love aspects
of the film, but the tone is all over the place, leaving the film with an
identity crisis. These problems aside, I do like the film, even if only
slightly. No matter how good or bad the film is, Arrow has given us one hell of
a package. The picture is outstanding, even with the framing issues and the
sound is pretty good. The special features are worth the time and the packaging
is very nice. Give House a watch, you might just like it.
 (Part of the House: The Collection box set) Blu-ray Review + Screenshots){kind=link}
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