We love horror movie franchises, they save you from watching the same film over and over again. OK, they actually MAKE you watch the same film over and over again (usually) but nominally, you seem to be getting something new. Whatever the case you can stay in your viewing rut without all the guilt!
We won't cop to being House junkies - saw the first one decades ago and never looked that way again, but for reasons soon to be revealed we recently took a stab at House IV.
Though released in 1992, House IV exhibits all the traits of horror sequel mania from the '80s. Foremost of these traits is the rehashed plot; someone moves into the titular edifice and starts seeing weird things. Is this person crazy? Who cares? Just show us some good weird things! Trait two most often is a failure to deliver. House IV shows us one really weird thing, but it ain't something we want to see (or hear). It's Mr. Pizza Man, and we'll never forget him, no matter how hard we try.
Trait three is not knowing if you're a horror movie or a family picture, and we think all of the House movies have suffered this lack of identity. Herein we find William Katt from the first movie, and his wife (back from the dead, apparently) and his daughter (he had a son in the first movie but who's keeping track?) Katt marks a hasty retreat from the film, (can't imagine why - his 'mail-money' from The Greatest American Hero must have run out long ago) so the mother-daughter team are left to save the House from Katt's shyster brother-in-law even while the House tries to drive them crazy.
You got it; it's built on an Indian Burial Ground or something. But the Indians wanted it that way, see? I guess some screenwriters were doing too much coke to glance at their word processors or something.
So, the mother-daughter duo bond it up and share some yuks over daughter Laurel's newfound paraplegia, and about once every 15 minutes one of them starts up on a low-rent hallucination that kind-of bypasses any notion of horror, terror or comprehensibility.
Most notable is Mr. Pizza Man, a singing pizza delivery guy who TURNS INTO THE PIZZA before getting stabbed repeatedly. What is it with '80s movies and pizza? Anyway, it's one of the best sequences in the film, and that ain't sayin' much!
Sophomoric, gross-out humor and some disturbing scenes with a charred corpse round out the affair, which is saved only by the performances of hot momma Kelly, (Terri Treas) who puts up with the weirdness while making us believe, and Laurel (Melissa Clayton) who brings the soul to a confused mess that likely would have worked much better as a made for TV movie, if they hadn't put that one gratuitous shower scene in there.
You can't please all the people all the time, but if you try, you'll probably just piss everyone off.
(However, you should petition New Line Cinema to release the out-of-print House IV on DVD and then go out and buy it, because our wife is friends with Clayton, [there, we said it] and maybe she'd get a little 'mail-money' for her trouble.)
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