i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

A Brilliant Conflict

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

(** out of *****) The titular `house' only appears in the last ten minutes or so of this overly familiar, early-'80s horror flick. That detail aside, this movie isn't the worst of its kind (that would be "Hell High"), but it's also far from the best. If you can make it past the interminably long carnival scene -- with a group of young, vacuous girls and hunky, meat-head guys walking around making jokes and playing games -- you'll get a few so-so chills and thrills (and mostly off-screen machete murders) once the gang winds up in the cemetary to tell ghost stories (the lead heroine tells a lousy version of the classic urban legend about the girl who's home alone and thinks that's her dog under the bed licking her hand.) Other than a decapitated head or two, there's more nudity than gore, including an interesting, role-reversal shower scene in which a man is stalked in his apartment while taking a shower. There's some minor backplot and attempts at character development, but there are also gaping plot holes and a weak attempt to make the killer's identity a mystery (you should have no trouble figuring it out.) The film quality's pretty crummy, and the out-of-place, Sesame Street-sounding soundtrack is one of the worst I've ever heard.HIGHLIGHT: Speaking of the soundtrack, if you do happen to run across this movie at the video store, go ahead and rent it solely for the opening credits sequence -- the music that plays over this sequence is so hysterically over the top that you will not believe it. Listening to this ludicrously epic music play over slow-motion scenes of dead bodies floating underwater was a surreal experience. I had to rewind it and watch it over three or four times. Seriously, some underground techno or indie-rock band needs to find this movie and sample the soundtrack. It blew me away. Of course, drinking helps.

And I LOVED it! The other comments on this movie are ridiculous. Just by looking at the box you can tell what you are getting. A bad 80's horror flick with even worse acting and plot. One of my personal favorite types of film. Former Playboy Playmate Susan Kiger was the star...you can't expect a big budget thrill knowing that :-P I gave it 8 stars for high 80's horror camp at it's best.

When I was very young I always caught this on tv, it showed up on A&E a lot for some reason (I honestly don't know why), but when I saw it for the first few times, it sent chills down my spine. Today, after finally hunting down the long-gone video copy (under its more well-known title, "House of Death") of this eighties slasher thriller, it was fun to look back but this isn't really that great of a movie at all. It's full of lame actors, a bad script, slack pacing, among other things. It's true, the people who created this movie could've made it a whole lot better if they had at least put a little, oh, I don't know, thought, into it. They had potential. First off it had a few good aspects of it that still impress me today, and this includes the way the director captures the eerie atmosphere of a small town with the killer lurking in the shadows. There are effective shots of deep, dark, misty woods and wind-swept cemeteries which create an extremely unique atmosphere, and put together with a very scary, when he is at least hinted at or briefly onscreen, psychopathic killer who prowls around in bloodstained black "psycho gear" complete with his bloody machete at his side. The last half hour or so is alright, with some good aspects, even though the script and acting cannot match the atmosphere created by the director. The plot, as I've mentioned, makes basically no sense and neither does the killer's "motive", which really isn't even explained when he shows his face in the last few minutes. Even so, I still can't get over some of the aspects of this movie which still can send shivers down my spine, like the killer prowling through the cemetery while blonde Playboy Playmate Susan Kiger tells the "drip, drip" story to her wide-eyed friends, or the "double decapitation in the truck" sequence (this does have some pretty graphic deaths) as well as the scene where a girl falls through the stairs and has her belly violently ripped open by the machete-wielding killer who is waiting beneath. It sounds like I love this movie a lot, doesn't it, but actually the finale of the film just holds a special place in my "slasher movie watching" history, it's basically the only good thing to watch in the whole film, which wastes too much time with teenagers at a carnival or at a bonfire. Nothing really starts happening until about an hour into the film, when the always talked about "blonde skinny dipper gets her throat hacked out with a machete" sequence occurs, which is a definite must-see. If you are a hardcore slasher fan and want something really different and have not seen this, have fun hunting it down.

Rating- 3 *** out of 5DEATH SCREAMS or now called as HOUSE OF DEATH is not all that good. Especially it's title released around the same time as FRIDAY THE 13th and THE FUNHOUSE. It has a lot of sex and graphic violence. Susan Kiger has a good performance as the lead role. A nice little but well constructed psycho-knife murder movie.