Boardinghouse, 1982

 

Jim Royce inherits a house off his uncle who has passed away.

Unbeknownst to Jim, the house has a bad history and ten years earlier a Dr. Hoffman and his wife were found dead, and the only survivor was their daughter Debbie, who was later sent to an institution due to a nervous breakdown. Dr. Hoffman and his wife both were experts in the occult and telekinesis and since their deaths anyone who has lived in the house has died, like Jim's uncle.

Jim who also has a interest in the occult and as some telekinesis power, plans to open the house up as a boarding-house. Being young go getter/playboy the rooms are available to young single women, more a plan for Jim to meet more ladies!

He soon fills the rooms up with ladies and then that’s when the fun starts with weird dreams and eventually murders. It is revealed one of the tenants isn't who she says she is and this comes down to a showdown near the end of the film where Jim and one of the other tenants he has bonded with use their power of telekinesis to defeat the evil that lies within the house!

I thought Boardinghouse was good, mean it isn't going to win any awards and think a lot of people may think it is shit! However, I think it is pretty decent for a low budget horror, it may not have the best special effects, but the gore scenes are fairly good enough not to be laughable. The plot maybe a bit all over the place but then most low budget films are and guess the acting isn't all that good to, mean one the actresses uses a really horrible English accent (I did try find where she was born to confirm she wasn't English but not much info on her bar she may have starred in a couple of adult movies).

Boardinghouse is also the first horror movie shot on video, so definitely in some scenes has the feel of an 80's porn flick. I would assume with it being SOV it would have been cheaper to film then have it filmed on proper film tape; however, the film was blown up to 35mm and shown in some cinemas in the states which I don't think is something that is common with a lot of SOV movies. It also has some great early 80's computer graphics (I think!) for the title card!

Would like to say this film has the Dennis Waterman effect of the director writing the film, starring in the film and even doing the music for the film! John Wintergate pretty much did it all in this film and even had his wife as the main female lead!

Both him and his wife were (and still are?) on the band Lightstorm, during the film at the pool party his wife does sing a bit too!

It was recently released on Blu Ray by AFGA and contains three cuts of the film:

Theatrical Cut - 87mins 57s

Original Home Video Cut - 98m 46s

Psycho Killer Cut - 98m 8s

I've read that the original cut of this film was two hours and thirty-eight minutes, though I'm not sure how they could have spread the story out this far. I believe Slasher//Video released this version but have also read that this version was like a fan composite version? Either way this version is not on the recent Blu Ray release.

Boardinghouse, while it may not be great is a worth a watch, I would assume anyone watching would be for their love of horror and won't expect a film of an Oscar nomination standard!

Think this would pair well with another SOV classic, Suffer the Children!