The House of the Dead (1978 film)

Did You Know?

• The film was shot with the help of non-unionized broadcasting students from Oklahoma State University.
• It was financed by businessmen Leroy and Marvin Boehs.
• The special effects were handled by Harry Woolman.

Plot

An adulterous man named Talmudge becomes lost in a rainstorm on his way back to his hotel. A mortician invites him indoors and explains that he acquires and embalms the bodies of people who died in interesting and unique ways. The mortician shows Talmudge several caskets and describes the fate of each occupant. The first casket holds Miss Sibiler, a school teacher who despised children.

At home, she hears a mysterious noise, finds her radio turned off, and later sees a silhouette through her shower curtain. She locks herself in, but masked children enter, remove their masks to reveal sharp teeth, and maul her to death. The second coffin contains Growski, a man obsessed with cameras and photography. He films himself as he invites a woman named Julie for dinner, then chokes her with her own stockings.

He later strangles a woman named Carol with a cable and stabs Mrs. Lumquist when she tries to call a taxi. The mortician notes that Growski was executed a year later, and the state did not allow photographs at his execution.

Critical reception

The film has received mixed reviews. David Parkinson of the Radio Times wrote that director Sharron Miller, working on a shoestring budget, generates few scares with this portmanteau horror. Jim Hemphill of Filmmaker called the film obscure but quite interesting, praising Miller's direction of actors and her manipulation of the audience through sophisticated blocking and camera movement, and recommended it as a Halloween title off the established path. Brian Orndorf of Blu-ray.com described it as a strange assortment of half-realized chapters that does not value character detail, though he noted it is not a total loss for cult movie fans who tolerate leaps in logic.