House (1986) -- Top 5 Moments and Scenes

House (1986) has always been a summer movie with me. Every since I was a kid in the late 80s, borrowing a VHS recording of it from my uncle off of HBO, House has been that perfect summer excursion. I laughed to myself as it was ending, telling my daughter that there is no telling how many times I’ve watched this. And while this flick has become an annual Saturday summer mainstay as my teenage kids grew to love it when they would start watching it with me, I did ponder how it would also seem perfectly fitting for October. In fact, I envisioned plenty of horror fans sort of brainstorming the just-right October selection list, in the mid-90s sort of retreating to the movie rentals to scan the aisles and shelves, encountering House’s box with the rotted disembodied hand ringing the doorbell. For this month certain horror films I come across I offer a top 5 favorite scenes and moments, and House fits the bill.

[1] Roger has had enough of the house's influence on his fears and psychological Nam trauma, the PTSD of losing his friend, Ben (Moll), and finally says enough. He unpins a grenade, stuffs it in the skeletal brutish form of Ben and leaves with his son as the zombie explodes.

[2] When Roger requests neighbor, Harold (Wendt), help him snag a monster often popping out of a closet, they aren't prepared for how it would snag Roger instead! And Harold's reaction to actually seeing a monster and not being able to keep Roger from being dragged into another realm (to "Nam" where he has to leave Ben behind as the enemy closes in. This inability to save his friend has been a lingering trauma for him.

[3] While the image of a swinging dead aunt who hung herself from a rope because the house was just too much to bear as the grocery delivery boy runs scared, I found her vision appearing to Roger right before hanging herself, warning him about how the house will "get him, too" just creepy as he runs to her, unable to help.

[4] While tool implements levitating and coming after Roger is such an absurd yet entertaining concept for a crazed horror com, the damned swordfish flopping on the wall narrowly upends it on my list. Roger has to fire a shotgun into it. That eye moving is unnerving!

[5] Although later revealed to be a fucking grotesque ugly created by the house, and how Roger eventually chops it up and buries the parts all over the back yard (his work interfered by the hot neighbor just taking a swim in his pool without permission because she's so delish she can) to some peculiar (but simply great) songs that normally wouldn't fit the bizarre content, I think the initial thought that the celebrated horror author had shotgunned his soap opera actress ex-wife and how it is presented, her body laid out on the porch and Harold bringing the police to his house, is potent and shocking enough to grab the last number on the list.

I still have problems with the idea that a mother would leave her son with a neighbor she barely even knows, but the animated hand of the killed monster portraying Lenz momentarily getting flushed down the toilet after Harold's dog unearthed it from a burial plot, later dangling from the kid's back (and not long after nearly taken up a chimney by two creepy monster children) continued to be a running sight gag--rotted and blue-green, the fingers always looking to grab a neck or body--that cracked me up. ***