American Horror House

Well, with a title called American Horror Movie (playing obviously off of American Horror Story), and a tag line "Kappa Kappa Die" (I know of an earlier movie called Delta Delta Die!, so that isn't original either), I knew going in what to expect. I have no interest in movies about girls getting into sororities or guys going through shit to get into fraternities, but I needed the first time viewing for the October Horror Challenge, and I did think Alessandra Torresani was a hot enough lead to wade through this sludge.

Bitches who don't step up get beat down.

Oh, good grief.

I noticed there's a scene right out of The Grudge or Ju-on where discolored arms practically give an artist a hug. There was another scene where violen strings wrap around a violinist before her music trainer causes the girl to fall into pieces. So you have this house, harbouring dangerous ghosts, used now by the Kappas with a denmother played by Morgan Fairchild whose plastic surgery has practically rendered her face so tight she can barely speak. Fairchild acts suspiciously as if she's up to no good.  You have a Halloween party, rambunctious and party-hearty, a detective searching for a missing student (the violin strings victim), and Alessandra Torresani falling for a frat doofus. Ghosts periodically continue to pop up, often representing characters in the film after they die horribly.

Supernatural ultraviolence you'd see on the Syfy Channel show, Haven, is all the rage in this film. A saw blade stabs a face, flies crawl under a dude's skin, a woman is pulled into a tub of blood, a teddy bear goes berserk on a victim stomping her throat, and a man's intestines are pulled out of his mouth by a ghoul's teeth. A girl speaks to our trio of heroes (the three who know that Morgan Fairchild is the Landlord from Hell and are trying to warn the kids at Kappa Hell Night that doom awaits them to no avail) while her right eye is missing with an empty socket as a sight gag (pun intended). Morgan clearly seems born to play the role of Landlord from Hell while Alessandra Torresani seems comfortable sounding off a lot of dialogue in that rapid-fire, tongue-in-cheek tone that contains bits of sarcasm, wise-cracking, and dead seriousness. She knows, as Morgan does, that American Horror House is silly hokum and all the horror in this house plays without a hint of sincerity (when Alessandra Torresani tells the partying kids that they need to leave the Kappa house because of the evil that will threaten to hold their dead souls in the house eternally, the kids cheer!).

Life's a bitch and so are you.

We get exposition on Morgan and her Horror House, in black and white photography, no less. Morgan hangs herself as Itsy Bitsy Spider plays on a record player. Soon a pile-up of bodies, thanks to poisoned punch, turn into a stampeding undead army ordered to go after Alessandra Torresani and her nerdy beau (in martial arts regalia) because they know Morgan's reasons for her killing those that enter her house and keeping them there as her "own personal sorority".

Again, this will go down as a first time viewing for the horror challenge so in that regard American Horror House did me some good. As a quality horror film that correlates with all the others I watched previous to it, this stunk up the joint. It wasn't like I didn't expect it to suck ass, though.