House of Bad (DVD)
Starring Heather L. Tyler, Sadie Katz, Cheryl Bonty
Directed by Jim Towns
House of Bad is the worst movie I have ever seen. I wanted to make some kind of joke like, “House of Bad certainly lives up to its name,” but the movie doesn’t warrant the effort it took to come up with that joke, which came so easily it didn’t even register as a thought in my brain.
This is not a bad movie that you can enjoy. This is not Troll 2 or B-movie schlock level enjoyably bad. This is a bad movie made badly. To quote a famous doctor, “Your movie is bad, and you should feel bad.”
The plot is bad. Three sisters, Blossom, Bubbles, and Sluttercup, all decide that the best way to get out of their shitty lives is to steal a bunch of heroin and hide out in a house they lived in as kids. They assume that the drug dealer won’t find them there since of course the last place that anyone would look for them is in a house tying everyone together. The house is kind of haunted or something, things happen, and most of them die.
The narrative is bad. There is a history of violence in the family, but since the writer is a hack, he can’t figure out how three estranged sisters would possibly talk about it. So he makes the youngest sister part of the father’s “other” family. This way, the sister who grew up in a different household can ask questions about the mysterious terrible tragedy that happened. This writer seriously can’t figure out how to write scenes where three sisters sit around and talk about their father without one of them being introduced to the concept of her dad. If you couldn’t figure out that the big reveal is a murder/suicide and that the ghosts are the dead parents, then you fell asleep looking at the box art.
The characterization is bad. The brunette is a tough girl who hates men for treating her like she’s weak. The blonde is a prostitute who hates men for using her poor life choices to their advantage. She also serves as their in to the heroin trade, as she is sleeping with the guy they steal from. The reddish haired girl is the sweet and innocent heroin addict who just trusts too much for her own good and therefore gets into bad relationships. On face value, this sounds like the setup to a girl power movie, but the costumes are so provocative and nudity so profuse that this could easily be set in a women’s prison in the 80’s. You can either be a bad sexploitation film or a bad feminism flick. Please pick one.
The plot twists and turns are bad. The story is supposedly about the deterioration of trust between the main characters, opening them up to possession and an eventual murder party, but none of their actions make sense. At one point the blonde calls her drug dealer boyfriend to tell him they are okay and to say goodbye, not realizing that he’s probably more concerned about his suitcase full of heroin than his prostitute girlfriend. Oh no, who would have guessed the drug dealer was a bad guy? He traces the phone to their house and tries to kill them, only to be girl powered to death. They drag his body to the woods and just… leave him there. They don’t push him into the nearby river. They don’t chop him up into little bits and feed him to animals. They don’t even dig a hole. They just put his body on the ground a bit away from their house and call it a job well done. It doesn’t come up again until he is tripped over in the final chase scene, which is probably the first time a character has ever been reintroduced into a narrative as a surrogate log.
My favorite part of the movie has to be where they leave the heroin addict alone in a room full of heroin and expect her to just be cool. Seemingly the production couldn’t afford a believable way to fake a heroin injection so the actress just ends up going all cookie monster on the shit. The sisters walk in on her having scarfed down a comical amount of heroin, and she’s got heroin all over her face and clothes like a toddler with spaghetti. They act all surprised, and I don’t exactly blame them since this is the stupidest thing I certainly have ever seen.
The inevitable ghostings are bad. Instead of having them do creepy things like slamming doors or shattering pictures to make statements, the ghosts just stand there. No one can see them until the plot says so, but it’s fine since they are only 5% of the movie. They pop up at the beginning to look like someone accidentally double-exposed the film and come back later while the ladies are vulnerable to prey on their fears.
SPOILER ALERT
The daddy ghost possesses the strong sister who hates men because of daddy issues, and the mom ghost possesses the heroin addict because this movie is bad. The blonde goes to dump the heroin because of morals and plot, and then tough girl kills heroin girl and blonde girl kills tough girl. The end.
END SPOILER
I do not see how anyone could enjoy this movie. It is badly acted, badly written, badly costumed, badly toned with bad scares and bad plot points. I am used to watching bad movies. There’s kind of a running joke between me and my boss that I will take just about anything and give it a shot so I’m no stranger to one-star movies. I have watched made-for-Telemundo teenage horror flicks, Syfy throwaways, and independent films so cheap that I have to watch them on a private Vimeo because they couldn’t even afford to print screeners. I have watched Strawberry Estates. There’s a guy at the bar I frequent who loves shitty movies, and he is always excited to hear what new levels of shit I have to recommend him. This is a man that genuinely enjoyed 8213: Gacy House and The St. Francisville Experiment. Even he could not enjoy this film ironically.
This movie is not a House of Bad, it’s a Hotel on Boardwalk of Bad.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
