Death House (1987)

A week ago there was a post in the forums asking if anyone had ever watched Zombie Death House. At the time, I had not watched it yet. I had never even heard of it in fact. I offered to do a write up for the film, but never heard back from the person. Looking for any excuse to watch a horror film, I decided I would watch it anyway. To my surprise, it is being streamed on Netflix’s instant watch. I was in a movie watching mood last night, so I decided it was time to watch Death House (the actual title for the film). Death House’s claim to fame is that it was directed by John Saxon. This was the first and only time that Saxon steped in behind the camera.

The start of Death House is a bit of a mess. To make it easier, we meet Derek Keillor (Dennis Cole). Derek meets up with an old buddy, who served with him in Vietnam. Derek is in town because he now has a new job driving around the local mob boss. When Vic Moretti (Anthony Franciosa) finds out that Derek is sleeping with his woman (Dana Lis Mason), he kills her and pins the murder on Derek. The judge sends Derek to death row at some prison, which the inmates call the death house. A drug is being tested on those on death row that is supposed to make them less violent. Outside the prison, Colonel Gordon Burgess (John Saxon) wants a new drug to be tested. The doctor on the inside wants nothing to do with this new drug though, so Gordon gets one of the guards to pick someone to test it on. The guard does just that, and before you know it, the guy is able to throw guards around like they are nothing. This is what Gordon wanted to hear, since he wants an army of such people. What he doesn’t expect is that the drug, which is actually a virus, is highly contagious and turns people into zombie like things that end up munching on people. The inmates use this as a reason to riot, and gain control of the prison.

The start of the film shows us Derek driving around in a nice car. Then it shows him arriving into town in a different car. It took a few minutes before I realized these two people were one in the same. So it goes back and forth, Derek driving around Genelle (the mob boss’s girl) and Derek arriving in town meeting up with his buddy. Then we get a flashback within a flashback, as they show us Derek in Vietnam. The pictures they are looking at wasn’t enough to prove Derek was in Vietnam I guess. Then we get a jewelry deal gone bad (Jewelry? Seriously?), which Derek rushes in to save the day. This somehow leads Vic to finding out that Derek is sleeping around with Genelle. Once in prison, the story smooths out, and doesn’t feel like it is jumping around all over the place. Being set is a prison does lead to some interesting situations, it didn’t surprise me that the inmates revolted once they started getting sick, but it also leads to way too many characters. It gets rather hard trying to figure out who everyone is, and which side they are on. To make matters worse, the writers throw in more people midway through the movie.

On the plus side of things, Death House ends up being a pretty gory film. On the down side of that, the effects are actually pretty poor. The super humans can do a lot of damage to us normal humans, but the effects are just not there. An arm gets pulled off and thrown to the side, but when it lands all it is a hand in an empty sleeve. I can’t call these people zombies, since as far as I could tell they never died and came back to life. Then again, they do begin to eat other people, so maybe they do eventually become a true zombie. One thing that was easy to notice is that the “zombies” makeup wasn’t complete. Their face and hands were done up, but if their sleeves should pull back for any reason, you could see the makeup ended at the wrist.

Despite the mess of a script, I was surprised that the acting wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It wasn’t great acting by any means, but better than I thought it would be considering how the film ended up. Dennis Cole was just okay in the lead role. I liked Anthony Franciosa as the mob boss. He had some pretty funny lines at times, but I don’t think they were really supposed to be funny. Like after watching an inmate kill another one, and being told it was that inmates friend, “Yeah, that happens sometimes.” Just the way he says it, in a whatever kind of way, made it funny to me. Even though I never heard of her, Tane McClure gets talked about a lot in most other reviews, that happen to be done by guys. She has been in a lot of films, so I guess they just are not the type of film I like to watch. Tane and Dana bare it all, so there is some nudity to be found. John Saxon was the best actor in the bunch. Somehow that doesn’t surprise me either. It was nice to see him play a bad guy.

I guess I can’t really blame the bad script on John Saxon. Even though the plot got better once Derek is in prison, it still felt like it was advancing the story to quickly. That is the main problem with Death House, too much going on all at once. Even though the effects were bad, I could have over looked them easier if the story wasn’t also bad. I was surprised at how bad the action sequences ended up being. I know that John Saxon has a black belt in karate, so I was expecting more. Each punch sounds the same, as well as each gun. I’m sure some people will hate that we rarely see a gun reloaded. Of course it could have been done off screen. Hopefully, Saxon decides to try his hand at directing again. I wouldn’t want this film to be known as the only one I tried to direct. If you get really bored, you might give this one a watch. If for no other reason than to make fun of it.

2 out of 5 Wondering how I kept track of all the flashbacks