Leofwine_draca Yet another in the long line of "teenagers get killed in a deserted house" type films, this low budget entry benefits from having some nasty gore scenes which help to stop it from becoming totally worthless. The film begins in the past, with a man getting his heart ripped out by the demon that his daughter has become. A load of people dressed in old-fashioned clothes proceed to bury him. At this point I was actually happy when the film jumps to the present, as the low budget nature of the production just isn't enough to bring a historical scene like that to life...in fact, it just looked silly. By now we see that a tree has grown from the tomb (nice touch) and that the house is STILL abandoned. Pretty soon the usual group of sex-mad teenagers invade the place one night and proceed to get picked off one by one.Fans of H.P. Lovecraft will no doubt be disappointed by yet another relatively lacklustre adaptation of one of his shorts, as aside from a few character and place names, the film totally fails in dredging up the kind of oppressive atmosphere that his stories so brilliantly conveyed. With the film's title and all, you might expect the monster in this film to be some hideously frightening monstrosity, but instead it turns out to be a woman in a rubber demon suit, which is another disappointment and far from the spirit of Lovecraft's work.The film's two central characters are an odd and strangely likable pairing. One is Randolph Carter (played by Mark Kinsey Stephenson who reprised the role in the sequel), a quirky and sometimes irritating bookworm who eventually manages to dispel the evil. The other is Howard Damon, played by Charles King, who brings a touch of warmth and laughter to the role of the nervous hero. Sadly a gang of teenagers fill up the bulk of the film and it has to be said that their acting is awfully wooden. A quick browse of the IMDb reveals that three out of four of them have no acting careers and the other is a stuntwoman, whose lack of inhibition was probably the sole reason she got the acting job as it was.The impressive gore effects (for a low budget, anyway) are probably the best reasons to watch this film, and things do get very bloody. One jock has his neck torn open (the puddling blood from the wound is worthy of Fulci), another unfortunate victim has her neck snapped, a man's face is torn off along with his head and a final victim loses his brain all over the floor. Effective, yes, at being downright disgusting! Anyhow, the film has quite a fast pace and, although predictable, it kept me watching throughout. I would even go so far as to say that it is fairly enjoyable on a basic level, although not particularly frightening or atmospheric. A sequel followed five years later employing the skills of genre stalwarts David Warner and John Rhys-Davies, which for that fact alone I will be watching.

preppy-3 PLOT SPOILERS!!! Another lousy movie "based on" an H.P. Lovecraft story. In the 1800s a woman gives birth to a monster baby. She dies in childbirth and the father abandons the house but casts a spell keeping the baby a captive within its walls. Cut to the 1950s. The house is abandoned and a bunch of idiots go in there for no good reason. Naturally the monster is around and they start getting killed. It's a good thing Randolph Carter (Mark Kinsey Stephenson) is around to figure out how to kill it. END Spoilers!Just horrible movie. It's very cheaply made and the "haunted" house looks like it was made out of paper mache--note how the walls shake when anyone bangs on a door! The script is stupid and boring and the acting is just dreadful. Only Mark Parra as Joel shows any acting ability. The rest of the the cast is beyond dreadful--especially Stephenson and Laura Albert. There's also a pointless sex scene to give us the obligatory female nudity. Even the gore is boring!Cheap, badly made, terribly acted. Avoid.

skallisjr Howard Philipps Lovecraft was a remarkable author, and it's often an acquired taste to enjoy many of his stories. It's my opinion that the duller the original Lovecraft story, the more entertaining the film, and vice versa.This story is middle-of-the-road, and so is the film. It bears all the hallmarks of a standard 1980s horror film, but it has little allusions and touches that those who read Lovecraft would be familiar with would be entertained by. In-jokes, if you will.The original story was relatively short, and expanding it to feature length probably required the mortising in of the standard horror elements found in 1980s type films. There have been some pretty good films that use these elements -- Pumpkinhead springs to mind -- that even if this film uses those elements, that shouldn't detract from the overall story.

dementia13 H.P. Lovecraft's stories as a rule don't film well, and this is no exception. Considering that the original was really more of a short little episode than a story, that shouldn't be a surprise. It winds up being a pretty standard/mediocre monster story. It's a lot like "In the Woods", in that it looks like it's made by first-time filmmakers who don't know what they're doing, but unlike that abortion, this one actually has some things going for it. It's fairly gory, so if that's your thing, you won't be disappointed. The filmmakers wisely keep the monster off-camera for most of the film, and then when they finally reveal it, it's actually not bad. There's not a ton of suspense, though: it's the kind of movie where you know exactly who's going to die and who isn't, and all the characters are so hateful that you'd like to see all of them killed slowly. The dialog is insipid, even by horror standards, and seems to have been written by a confused person with lots of issues. Given how bad the script is, it might not be fair to point out the lousy acting. If you can get past the embarrassing script, it's got some entertaining qualities, but it's best recommended for teenagers.