Kill House (DVD)
APPROX. 95 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 2006 - MPA RATING: R
" Kill House starts out poorly and only gets worse.
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It takes a very special, often top-notch director to pull off a good horror film. A glance though the horror section of any video shop will confirm the point. Likewise, it takes an equally talented director to pull off a good horror comedy. In fact, it could even be more difficult to do a horror comedy because not only does the director have to frighten an audience but make them laugh at the same time. Therefore, it might seem almost unfair to judge a relatively inexperienced director with a total production budget of maybe $12.32 against other, more-veteran filmmakers with considerably more money at their disposal.
But life is unfair.
"Kill House" is a 2006 direct-to-video product released by Trinity Home Entertainment. Written and directed by Beth Dewey, who also co-stars, "Kill House" fairly defines the term "low-budget film." Dewey, whose only previous directorial effort was a movie called "Tweeked" (2001), does her best to make this tongue-in-cheek slasher flick work, but with an incomprehensible, unfunny script, amateurish acting, awkward music, and herky-jerky pacing, she succeeds only in creating what one might kindly describe as camp. And not a movie destined to become a camp classic, either. I seriously doubt that you'll even be seeing this one on late-night cable, because I can't imagine a cable company paying good money for it. So, if you want to see it, you'll probably have to find it on your own.
Ms. Dewey's plot, as it were, is really an excuse to include as many lame ironies and graphic profanities as possible, together with as much gratuitous nudity and gore as an R rating will allow. I can't say there are any real jokes or gags in this horror comedy because there aren't any. There are only a few sardonic, deadpan situations that the filmmaker intends to be amusing by their exaggeration. I found it rather senseless stuff.
The idea is that the world of real estate can be murder. Literally. Realtors are falling right and left, victims of a demented killer whose weapon of choice is an axe. Or a knife. Or a fountain pen, as the case may be. Heck, in one shot the murderer even uses a garbage disposal to dispatch a small dog. Whether the dog deserved it is beside the point.
The movie opens with a nude scene, followed by a writing instrument to the eyeball, and some serious nipple-ring ripping. So you know the filmmaker isn't fooling around. She wants you to see what this thing is all about right from the start. Unfortunately, the scene is neither scary, shocking, nor funny but flat and numbing; and all it presages is more of the same.
Most of the characters are either real-estate agents, people selling their homes, or police officers, with one handyman thrown in for good measure. The first problem with the film: No central character. Ms. Dewey introduces us to a man and his wife going on vacation, putting up their house for sale while they're away, and leaving the place in the charge of their two knuckleheaded teenage kids. The joke about the mother is that she has just had a bad butt implant. Uh-huh. There are, however, unintentional laughs in any low-budget film. The house this couple put up for sale appears from the outside to be a fairly average place on a hillside in a fairly average residential neighborhood. But in back, it's got a barn, a stable, riding grounds, and a pasture. Kinda cute, actually.
The couple's two teens, a boy, Kyle (Paul Mocey-Hanton) and girl, Lucy (Toni Breen), don't want to move, so they'll do anything to scare away potential buyers. This isn't hard for them to do because the boy spends most of his time smoking joints and the girl is forever swimming in the nude; they just use their natural proclivities to terrorize anybody coming around to look at the house. Needless to say, Ms. Dewey includes the girl's unadorned swimming inclinations in part as a spoof of more-serious slasher-movie clichés and in part as a salacious gesture of her own to titillate the audience.
Next, we have three cops investigating, one way or another, the case of the ever-decreasing Realtor population. They are Rolands (Felicity Smith), a horny lesbian detective; her partner, Kirk (Drew Droege), an effeminate family man; and Lettie (Kamesha Gibson), a tough parole officer.
