The House Where Evil Dwells

1982
R
1 h 28 min

AVALIAÇÃO DA IMDb

4,5/10

1,4 mil

SUA AVALIAÇÃO

A young American family moves to a House in Kyoto, Japan. It turns out to be haunted by the ghosts of a woman and her lover, who were killed by the woman's husband, as well as the ghost of the husband, who killed himself afterward.

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Horror

Adicionar um enredo no seu idiomaA young American family moves to a House in Kyoto, Japan. It turns out to be haunted by the ghosts of a woman and her lover, who were killed by the woman's husband, as well as the ghost of t... Ler tudoA young American family moves to a House in Kyoto, Japan. It turns out to be haunted by the ghosts of a woman and her lover, who were killed by the woman's husband, as well as the ghost of the husband, who killed himself afterward.A young American family moves to a House in Kyoto, Japan. It turns out to be haunted by the ghosts of a woman and her lover, who were killed by the woman's husband, as well as the ghost of the husband, who killed himself afterward.

Direção
- Kevin Connor
Roteiristas
- Robert Suhosky
- James Hardiman
Artistas

Veja as informações de produção no IMDbPro

AVALIAÇÃO DA IMDb

4,5/10

1,4 mil

SUA AVALIAÇÃO

Direção
- Kevin Connor
Roteiristas
- Robert Suhosky
- James Hardiman
Artistas

Veja as informações de produção no IMDbPro

Prêmios
- 4 indicações no total

Curiosidades
The visual effects sequences featuring the Japanese ghosts were filmed utilizing an old German camera technique known as "Shauftausen". In a 2011 interview with John Kenneth Muir, director Kevin Connor said of this: "...basically you shoot the scene with one camera through a right-angled mirror. The ghost actors are on a black velvet background so you can control the density of their image as you shoot, ie you fade them in and fade them out and line them up easily with the 'live' actors. It worked very well, and of course you could see the composite dailies next day. Eventually we got this technique down to a fine art. It was important to show the ghosts in this fashion because basically it was an economical and effective process".

Citações
Amy Fletcher: [as she is watching a blue, ghostly face making faces at her] There's an awful face in my soup!

Versões alternativas
The 1986 UK Warner video version was cut by 34 secs by the BBFC to edit the decapitation scenes and shots of a severed arm.

Conexões
Featured in The Cinema Snob: Visiting Hours (2023)

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Avaliação em destaque

6/10

The Japanityville Horror.

I last saw The House Where Evil Dwells on VHS, unaware that the beginning and the ending had suffered from a total of 34 seconds of cuts, removing the film's bloody decapitations and dismemberment (thanks BBFC!). No wonder I found it so underwhelming. Having just watched the film uncut, I can verify that the gory scenes that bookend the film are easily the highlights, although the sight of Susan George naked and a crab attack are also fairly memorable for different reasons.

The excellent opening scene, set in the middle of the 19th century, sees a samurai returning home to find his wife in the arms of another man. Sword in hand, the wronged warrior bursts into the house and slaughters the lovers, before committing hara-kiri (ritual suicide).

Cut to the present day: American magazine writer Ted Fletcher (Edward Albert), his wife Laura (Susan George, looking as lovely as always) and their daughter Amy (Amy Barrett) arrive in Japan, where friend Alex Curtis (Doug McClure) has arranged a house for them to live in while Ted writes an article. No prizes for guessing that it's the same house where the samurai went kill crazy with his katana, that the ghosts of all three dead people still haunt the building, or that history is about to repeat itself.

With superimposed spooks in bad make-up orchestrating Rentaghost-style supernatural occurrences, much of The House Where Evil Dwells is unmitigated cheeze, moderately entertaining for its sheer silliness. Director Kevin Connor gave us the excellent Amicus anthology From Beyond the Grave (1974) and that classic of the macabre, Motel Hell (1980), but let's not forget that he also gave us those campy craptastic fantasy flicks The Land That Time Forgot , At The Earth's Core, and Warlords of Atlantis (also starring the mighty Doug McClure). The House Where Evil Dwells is more camp than classic.

Household objects move by themselves, the ghosts possess the living to make them behave uncharacteristically, Laura sleeps with Alex (giving George another opportunity to shed her clothes), Amy is attacked by crabs, including two oversized clockwork crustaceans that can climb trees, and Ted witnesses an incident involving a samurai sword that would have had me saying 'Sayonara' and hopping on the next bullet train outta there.

Connor wraps thing up as expected, with Laura telling Ted about her infidelity, which leads to a wonderfully daft finale in which Albert and McClure do bad martial arts, before Ted lops off his old friend's noggin, stabs Laura with his sword, and kills himself.