44 - The Horror Show

    A notorious serial killer is finally executed, but somehow transfers his existence into some other reality.  He uses this position to attack the cop that finally captured him.
    This movie is interesting for a whole series of reasons.
    1 - This is credited as the third movie in the House movies.
    2 - Officially, the writing credit is split between Alan Smithee and Les Bohem.
        2a - Les Bohem is the bassist and singer for Gleaming Spires.
        2b - Alan Smithee?  Could it be that bad?
    3 - This movie had the unfortunate problem of sharing a plot - or at least closely resembled - another movie, Wes Craven’s Shocker, and they both came out six months apart.

    I’ve been wanting to see this movie for a long time, but it’s one of these things that I had an impossible time tracking down.  Now that I’ve seen it, it’s actually pretty interesting.  It has some weaknesses, but it plays like an extended Nightmare on Elm Street story.  Dream sequences, fantasy bits, all kinds of weirdness.  This is established early on, by nesting two dreams.  This does two things, and the result is mixed.  First, by framing everything as having the potential to be a dream, the audience is more forgiving of strange acting or awkward lines.  Second, it removes a lot of the tension, by making the audience keep second-guessing how real anything is.
    The villain is pretty two-dimensional.  It’s appropriate for this sort of movie.
    There’s a kind of silly undercurrent to the movie, and it’s nice.  It gives a little more charm to the whole thing, and allows me to overlook some of the oddities, like occasionally cheap makeup effects.
    The strangest thing is how the movie ends.  Everything gets wrapped up.  There’s no open door for a sequel.  There’s a pair of jokes.  The family takes a picture, and then a Gleaming Spires song plays over the credits.  The song doesn’t even seem to fit the tone of the movie.  Very strange.