A radio recording prompts a couple to investigate an old house, they join up with a group of teens and make the silly decision to explore the house where the spirit of a little girl reside.
Directed by Umberto Lenzi under the pseudonym of Humphry Hubert and released as La casa 3 (to cash in on The Evil Dead) it's arguably one of Lenzi's most conventional films. Unfortunately it's hampered by a clunky script, some disjointed scenes and gobbledygook elements synonymous with Italian horror exploitation films.
In the golden age of practical effects Lenzi offers a stabbing with shears, a little hammer carnage and a character being cut in half. As the group are killed off one by one there's also maggot infested knife wielding (a pre Wes Craven Scream-like cloaked) skeleton, taps spurting blood, severed heads, exploding light bulbs and jars, a Clown Doll (reminiscent of the one in Poltergeist) and also an obligatory 80s shock ending. With a possessed camper van there's all the ingredients you'd expect as the mystery unfolds and they track down the origin of the evil.
Plodding pacing aside there's some good nostalgia value in Ghost House right down to the CB radios. The house and its location are creepy (it also appears in Lucio Fulci's The House by the Cemetery) and the ghost of the girl gives a few chills.
While it's no comparable Fulci cult classic, Lenzi offers some gory kills but what will stay under your skin long after the credits is the genuinely disturbing, eerie, repetitive verse.
