4th of July 2025 Marathoning

House (1986) has been an annual summer movie for me and the kids the last few years, but we missed out on it this year for whatever reason. But after I watched The Monster Squad (1987), I wanted something I also used to watch as a kid during the 80s/early 90s and House popped up on the mind. I was in the right spirits for it, too. Well, the kids continued to go in and out of the living room (mainly my daughter; my son always seems to show up right at the end of these movies…) as House was on, often as autistic kids do they hit me with a barrage of questions about what would happen next, with me following up by just telling them to wait and see. Of course, they have already watched this movie before a few times but just the same this is their typical behavior. So it was a viewing experience with plenty of distraction, noise, and interruption, but it is a means for them to see what their father used to watch, perhaps even falling in love with these films like House as well. I couldn’t honestly tell you how many times I’ve seen House so distractions keeping me from fully enjoying it weren’t as big a deal. I know it pretty much by heart. I did tell my daughter that the soundtrack was especially a pleasure to me, particularly when Roger is dealing with the damned monster he’d have to chop into pieces and bury them in his back yard. Furthermore, I think the lasting appeal of this movie for me—besides the influx of monsters—is Roger and neighbor Harold’s interactions, sometimes bewildering, at times friendly, and even tense. The film is indeed up and down in tone; that a critique I can’t dispel. It fluctuates in its approach in talking about the horrors of Vietnam, the loss of a child, and the supernatural antics of a house that preys on fear and one’s belief in its power. But it gave me really ugly monsters and this house that yields plenty of surprises so it was hard for me to not fall for it. And Zombie Ben…how could I not enjoy the rotted corpse of Richard Moll. The Vietnam sequences, though, are always a rather cringe-worthy addition to the film that fail to generate the desired effect because they look so inauthentic.But a hot neighbor just dropping off her son at the house of a single man in his 30s and leaving for a date feels quite unbelievable today.