"You want something else to play with? How about a nice plastic bag?"

Tonight I chose the movie House solely because I liked the box cover art and some things never change because I did that years ago when my friend and I rented Dead Alive because we liked the box cover art.  Come to find out, the image in the art work was nowhere in the film.  Long story short, this movie is best played during a Halloween party in the background by the drinks because it makes little to no damn sense.  While the credits are playing I got excited to see that Fred Dekker director and writer of The Monster Squad a movie I actually enjoy, came up with the story for this movie.  H must have been drunk or on mushrooms if this is true or more than likely his original story was bastardized to the point that we got what we got. Somehow, this turned into a franchise and it spawned3 sequels.  they followed the  Halloween approach where the third sequel had nothing to do with the story started here.  This is a good time to remind you that  as I had detailed in 2017  here,  Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is a terrible movie despite what some die-hard horror fans say and I will die on that hill.  In any event, let's talk about this movie.

First things first, let's get The Greatest American Hero theme song out of your head, go listen to it because like it or not, seeing William Katt on screen will force it into your head.  He plays an Vietnam vet author called Roget Cobb who's aunt dies in a house where his kid disappeared.  Of course, he moves into that house as one does when  relatives die a mysterious, tragic death.  He gets a ghostly warning from his late aunt to tells him to watch out for the house and then he ignores it.  George Wendt plays his nosy, friendly, useless snitch neighbor who comes in at convenient times.  I must bring up probably the worst character in the film, the  foreign neighbor Tania.  This bitch, not only swims in Roger's pool but goes over and flirts with him in her bikini and says that she knows when a man "wants to play." Either that night or a couple days later she shows up at his doorstep to drop off her trailer-trash mullet wearing kid with him.  Yes, she drops off her Billy Ray Cyrus 5 year old kid with a grown man who lives by himself whom she just met while she goes get intercoursed by someone.  This dirty kid almost get kidnapped by the thing in the picture above but survives partly because Roger catches him in  time and partly because even monsters know dirty low class mullet wearing kids aren't worth it.    They probably went to a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit where these things like to dwell.  Turns out, the  movie's events are linked to Roger's Vietnam experiences which he has to learn to conquer.

Overall, the movie had a couple of good scares but as I keep reading, the director used this to show the powers that be that he could do comedy and drama in order to not be pigenheld into the horror genre.  It seemed to have worked because a year later the director Steve Miner came out with the classic film  Soul Man.  If you are unfamiliar with this gem, it is a hilarious comedy about the exploits of a student that goes to Harvard... all in black face.  I am not sure if while making this film, everyone knew it was going to be as silly as it is in some parts.  Still, some of the creatures in this movie are terrifying, such as the one above and the main character that looks like an uncanny  amalgamation of some of my exes. I also enjoyed the detail in the soldier creature in the end that looks like Eddie The Head from Iron Maiden. Throughout the movie, I kept asking myself what kind of person stays in a house that is constantly trying to kill them and keep going towards the trouble. I don't have to say what kind of person, you know what kind of people stereotypically do that in films. That's right, American heroes, the greatest ones.