Red-Barracuda I do like anthology films. I mean they aren't usually too great but the important thing is that they are very rarely ever boring. The format ensures that if one story isn't working another one will be coming along soon enough to take us in another direction. Which brings us to The House of the Dead. This low budget portmanteau film displays all the usual pluses and minuses of this sub-genre. Its framing story has a man wind up at a mortician's house in the middle of a stormy night. The embalmer shows him some recently dead bodies left in his care and tells the morbid stories that led them to him.Story 1 – Tells the story of a school teacher who dislikes children. One night she is terrorised by an unseen presence in her house. It turns out to ultimately be a group of children in Halloween masks. Although not ordinary children, these are mini monsters. The finale to this one is pretty good and unexpected. The kids make for quite sinister villains.Story 2 – This one is about a photographer who surreptitiously films young women in his studio who he then kills. This segment is the poorest of the four. Its subject has potential interest but it's just so badly put together with a total lack of suspense and no pay off. You are left wondering why they bothered with this one.Story 3 – This tale has two arrogant criminologists mentally jousting with each other to see who is the greater of the two. This is the strongest episode with two decent performances and a compelling – if predictable – plot line.Story 4 – This story has an unfeeling businessman being trapped in a room in an abandoned building where he is tortured mentally. The idea of this one is interesting but the brief running time effects how much could be done with it. It's quite odd and mysterious though.The framing story is good and bad. The good concerns the mortician and his house of the dead. The bad concerns the adultery angle which is not done with much effort and could have been better thought out to round off the story in a more satisfying way.Overall, this is a film that is a fun little anthology. Oh and the original title Alien Zone is incredibly stupid.

junk-monkey A 1978 portmanteaux 'Horror' film made in Oklahoma. However bad that sounds to you - the reality is worse.This is, apart from anything else, a very dull film. Highlights included the longest (pointless) slow zoom in on a radio sat on a toilet ever committed to film as a bad actress exited frame, got undressed off screen, put on a dressing gown and reappeared. It's pure pointless padding. You could almost hear them discussing this shot in the editing suite:"This is a hell of a long pointless shot, I think we aught to cut away to something and cheat her coming back in." "Are you crazy? That will be over far too fast, leave it as it is. It's filling up 45 seconds of screen time - leave it, we'll get a feature out of this yet..." The dialogue is dreadful: leaden, repetitive, and pointless (what could hear of it - the copy I watched came as part of the 50 DVD box set called Nightmare Worlds and the print - or the transfer - is dreadful. The sound is muffled and for great periods the colour alternates between being totally washed-out, or so incredibly dark you cannot see anything on the screen. This combined with the dodgy sound did not make for easy watching.)The whole movie has the feel of a bunch of student/ amateur shorts nailed together with a framing device to make a feature.Don't bother.

Coventry Whenever the title "House of the Dead" is mentioned nowadays, people – and horror fanatics in particular – automatically link it to that hag Uwe Boll's AWFUL video game horror adaptation about UN-frightening looking CGI zombies on an island. Another movie with the same title existed already since the late 1970's, though it's also known under the completely irrelevant title "Alien Zone", and that one is a lot better! It's a low-budget exploitation attempt to create a horror anthology similar to the contemporary successful British films, like "Tales that Witness Madness" or "Asylum", complete with a detailed wraparound story and a sinister host. Whilst on a business trip in an unknown city, a guy named Talmudge cheats on his wife and gets lost on his way back to the hotel. Since there's a heavy thunderstorm going on, a seemly friendly mortician invites him in and informs him abut the background stories of four "clients" of his. None of these horror mini-tales is groundbreaking or particularly shocking, but they all feature an admirably dark atmosphere and revolve on rather inventive topics. The first story is extremely short and introduces a lonely female schoolteacher with a clear aversion towards children. When she goes home one night, she senses a strange presence in her house and subsequently gets attacked by a large collection of eerily deformed and mask-wearing children. I'm not quite sure what the deeper meaning of this short story was, but those kids sure looked creepy! The second story is – once again – a very short reworking of the classic film "Peeping Tom", with a perverted man inviting girls to his apartment and murdering them for the eye of the camera. The tone of this segment is definitely disturbing, but it has no satisfying ending, since it just cuts back to the mortician who explains the culprit got executed for his crimes. Huh? What's the point? Then comes the third and unquestionably best chapter of "House of the Dead", about an intellectual criminologist competing with his overseas colleague of Scotland Yard for the honor of most deductive police investigator in the world. This segment has an incredibly predictable climax, but it's very enjoyable thanks to the wit dialogs and convincing on screen chemistry between actors Charles Aidman and Bernard Fox. The fourth and final segment hints at some really horrific themes, but unfortunately the elaboration is poor. It's about an egocentric man who gets terrorized by unseen forces and eventually becomes everything he detests himself. Namely a needy and filthy individual who blindly gets passed by on the streets. It's a curious little tale that definitely deserved some more plotting and perhaps a slightly longer playtime. Naturally the film ends with an unmerciful fate for Talmudge (adultery, remember…). The late 70's definitely brought forward better horror films than this, but "House of the Dead" is nonetheless a worthwhile and entertaining little chiller that offers a handful of frights and delightful genre clichés. It's a film for undemanding trash-fans.

BaronBl00d John Ericson ventures out in the rain after having been left off by a cab at the wrong street. Soon he finds refuge in an old building with a friendly mortician that gives him tea and shows him some of his "clients." There are some easy clues early in the wrap-around story for this anthology to tell you where that story is going, especially after having just seen the man prior to getting in the cab have an adulterous pleasure period with someone else's wife. But the frame story is really just a means to allow mortician Ivor Francis to tell his stories about his clients. I always liked Francis for his calm presence and subtle humour, yet here he is given some really bad dialog but does manage to put some life into this otherwise drab little film. The problem with this, also known for some inexplicable reason as Alien Zone(I saw House of the Dead copy), is that the budget here is really minuscule and the stories, what special effects there are, and acting quality are all directly affected. Nothing is shown. I was shocked that we never even got to see the faces of the dead corpses in the coffins - now that is low budget! The first story deals with a teacher who it seems dislikes children - based on one scene of her walking from her car scowling. She then goes home and the supernatural effects of red tinting children wearing masks and wearing what appear as shark teeth begins. Truly terrifying. (Yawn.) The second story has some real bad actor lure women into his apartment so he can film them being killed. It's done in an almost comedic fashion and has virtually no substance at all. Then there is the one story that I did really like and does have a bit of budget and real actors. The third story has Charles Aidman and Bernard Fox as two great detectives out to outwit the other and become the leading criminologist in the world. This episode has some humor and clever dialog and of course both Aidman and especially Fox have acting ability. You get an idea where it is going but should enjoy it nonetheless. It ends way too abruptly though. The last story is pretty decent too as we see a man who seems to be a person that doesn't care about the society around him get locked into an abandoned building and fed on booze until he becomes a boozer like the one he snubbed earlier. Despite its ridiculous story, the effects of despair are not all that bad. Then of course there is the obvious conclusion to the frame story. This movie was cheaply made and has that real cheap feel to it, but it isn't that bad and a couple of the stories are relatively interesting and none so bad as they are not watchable.