Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Fright House is actually two films in one. In the first, titled (what else?) "Fright House," a coven of satanists try to pass off a murder as a suicide. The second, "Abadon," stars Jackie James as a selfish woman who has discovered the horrible secret of eternal youth. While the basic plotlines are nothing new, the filmmakers manage to offer quite a few genuine shocks and jaw-dropping surprises. Longtime horror fans will enjoy the references (both subtle and otherwise) made to earlier films of this genre.

Breaking into a supposedly-abandoned house, several teenagers are adorned with tales of the deadly and supernatural.

The Good Stor(ies): Fright House-Uncovering a gruesome murder, Detective Les Morane, (Paul Borghese) becomes more distraught with his relationship with fiancée Debbie, (Robin Michaels) following the suicide of his brother. Taking up the issue with his teacher Dr. Victoria Sedgewick, (Jennifer Delora) about some insight into the situation, and it leads him into contact with a Satanic cult that lives on the nearby school campus and is preparing for a blood sacrifice that will put them all in danger and forces them to put an end to the shenanigans going on. There's some nice stuff here. The main area does have a pretty nice atmosphere around it, as it does look like a sacrificial altar where this kind of activity would take place, with the white-clothed altar, skulls, candles, cobwebs and pentagrams adorning everything in sight. That it also manages to house the coven of nude women which are pretty much shown through the film through random shots of these women chanting from the very start of the segment, that are plotting to open the Gates of Hell after making some more human sacrifices is perhaps the best thing about it, since it allows for a pretty nice stream of nudity to take place throughout the time. That's pretty much it for it's good parts, though, as there is one fundamental flaw running through it. That has to deal with the really tired and boring plot, where a detective is determined to get to the bottom of a rash case of college student suicides since his kid brother was one of the victims. That means that pretty much most of this story has the detective blubbering about how he should have listened. When he's not doing that, he's following up on leads that will severely test most forms of patience, since it's just nothing that's all too interesting or even logical. One of them is a lame one where he finds out that all the dead students had been seeing the same psychiatrist, a lead which goes no where fast. Then he links the case to an old mansion that no one is involved in until it's accidentally discovered, but it's all pretty much just plain boring to sit through.

The Bad Stor(ies): Abadon-At the Abadon Estate, Madeline Abadon, (Jackie James) finds that it has been turned into an asylum for the emotionally damaged. When she manages to meet up with Helen, (Vicki Richardson) another student at the facility, she manages to hear a strange story about Ms. Registrar, (Candace Hamilton) one of the teachers on campus bearing demonic powers that grant her the ability to retain a youthful appearance despite never aging. When the students at the place start to disappear force the issue and they learn the truth, they enlist Charles Harmon, (Duane Jones) to help them combat the demonic evil on campus. There's only a few good parts here, mainly the nudity and a sequence with stop-motion blobs running around. The fact that the ending does have a really nice atmosphere with a fair amount of action. The best part, though, is the opening's demonic-toilet sequence, where a young student gets nude, putters around the dormitory bathroom, showers and then lotions up on the bed. When the boyfriend walks in and startles her, leading to an off-screen sex-scene, and when awakened by obnoxious sucking sounds, various small stuff, like books and small furniture start flying across the room and into the demonic-toilet. Eventually the sucking grows stronger, the couple are apparently sucked right off their beds and into the demonic-toilet which flushes obscenely at the end of the sequence. It's the best thing about the film as a whole. The rest of the time is spent with just a never-ending stream of boredom and extreme disappointment as there's nothing at all interesting going on. It just waits until the next time something is going on for something good to happen, and the rest is plagued by inactivity, boredom and complete lameness, which is pretty typical of the film as a whole. That wipes away pretty much everything else that happens, since it's so hard to get to the next part when nothing interesting is filling time in between them.

The Final Verdict: Pretty dreadful all around, without much of anything to get it going or even make it feel like it's entertaining causes this one to drop down. Not a whole lot are even going to be entertained by this one, which makes it hard to recommend this to those only who enjoy this kind of film.

Rated R: Nudity, Violence and Graphic Language

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