Having seen House of Death once before, it was with much hesitation that I dislodged the tape from the rental case, hesitantly pushed it in the VCR, and pressed play -- and then quickly jumped out of the way in case my VCR remembered it, too, and spat it back out. Then, as the machine wheezed to life and fought like hell to bring the old tape into a tracking groove, the production company told me it was proud to present House of the Dead and I began to scribble down my first notes...

Now, if you listen close: you can hear more profanities as I clump up the stairs, and then follow the footsteps into the bedroom. The bed creaks while I put my shoes on. More footfalls. The side door slamming. Then a car starts and a 94 Olds backs out of a driveway. Then an eerie silence comes over the House of Me. Ten minutes later, the Olds pulls back into the driveway. The door opens again, followed by more profanities pertaining to the ancestry of the clerk at the video store. Twelve thumps down the steps. A slight crack as the rental case is popped open. A mechanical whir as the VCR takes the tape and a fidgety tap as a finger fumbles and finds the play button.

...On a late summer evening, an ominous full moon shines upon the railroad tracks somewhere in North Carolina. We pan over a railroad bridge, and then drop below to find Ted and Angie (Larry Sprinkle and Penny Miller) making out on a motorcycle. Although the position they’re trying wouldn’t work in the back of a Chevy, they seem bound and determined to try while balancing on the handlebars. This amorous mood is abruptly broken, however, when Ted gets his manhood stuck in his zipper, bringing the festivities to a screeching halt (Ouch!). While he recovers, Angie laments her disappointment that Ted refuses to use the "L" word. To make up for this, he says the Midnight Special is almost due, and if they time it out right, promises her a night she’ll never forget.

The next morning, Sheriff Avery (William T. Hicks) goes to the local grocery store to talk with the owner -- and due to the Sheriff’s 300lbs. frame and wheezy delivery, he will be referred to as Sheriff Doughboy. Doughboy asks if he’s seen Ted, an employee of the store. Ted's folks are worried because he and Angie didn’t come home last night. He hasn't seen them, either, but tells Doughy to tell Ted "he’s fired" as soon as he's found. But when Lily (Susan Kiger), another employee, drops a case of RC Cola on the floor, after chastising her inherent clumsiness, the owner tells Doughy to forget about firing Ted and beg him to get to work as soon as possible. On the way out, Doughboy rousts a youngster who was trying to steal some porn from the magazine rack. (Man, that Doughboy is one bad mother-humper.)

Switching to the local baseball diamond, as the last game of the summer season comes to an end, we spot someone lurking in the trees. After everyone else clears out, Coach Neal Marshall (Martin Tucker) and his two assistants, Bob and Kathy (Kurt Restor and Andria Savio), take inventory of the equipment. When several items turn up missing, they have a good idea of who’s behind it -- Crazy Casey. On cue, Casey (Hans Manship), the local simpleton/village idiot, comes out of the trees. They spot him, but he realizes this and runs off. You get the sense that Casey is relatively harmless, but we’re still going to call him Suspect #1. 

They let him go, and Neal offers to buy Bob and Kathy a beer to celebrate the end of the season. At the diner, over a pitcher of beer, we find out that Bob and Kathy are seniors (making them minors?), and both are having reservations about leaving their small town for college. Neal tries to encourage them, saying all will be fine. Bringing them another pitcher of beer, Ramona (Jennifer Chase) gives Neal the ogle-eye -- and yes, we realize that this is the town slut. From the kitchen, Jackson (Darin Lenthall), yells at his flirtatious employee to get back work. Already upset with his waitress over her refusal to work the next day when the big carnival opens up, Jackson gets so mad he calls Ramona several naughty names. I'm sensing some bad history here, and when you couple that with his general bad attitude and access to all those sharp instruments in the kitchen makes Jackson Suspect #2.

Meanwhile, the bodies of Ted and Angie continue to wash down stream. Amazingly, they haven’t separated at all -- and I point out that they were not tied together anymore when the killer dumped the bodies.

Later, after closing up the grocery store, Lily cuts through the several back lots and heads toward the railroad tracks and home. Somewhere, an owl hoots, a dog barks in the distance, and Lily gets a bad case of the jitters. She makes it to the rail yard, convinced that someone is following her. There is; it’s Casey, and he watches as a 50-car freight train, somehow, manages to sneak up on Lily and blow by her a few scant feet away. (Uh-huh.) When she screams in surprise, Casey is so amused by the whole scene he claps vigorously. Lily presses on -- and are you sure this is a short-cut? -- and makes it the rest of the way home without incident. She finds Grandma Edna (Helene Tryon) in the kitchen peeling apples. They share the news of the day, with Tom and Angie’s disappearance the hot-topic of discussion. With Lily convinced they’re just off making whoopee somewhere, Edna is disgusted because people didn’t do that kind of thing when she was a kid. But when Lily says that’s a load of bull, Edna doesn't argue. Next, we get a little back-story: Seems Lily isn’t real happy with her life. Most of her friends are long gone, while she stayed behind in the little town. She used to date Matt, who’s now off at medical school, but Edna wasn’t too fond of him and thinks her granddaughter can do better -- and being a veteran of these genre films, we will tag this minor, and as of yet unseen, character of Matt as Suspect #3.

At the diner, Ramona answers the phone. It's for Jackson, but he's disappeared. She checks out back and accidentally lets the cat out. (I assume the cat is at the diner to catch mice in the kitchen? That’s comforting. Huh, and I thought the little black pellets were seasoning...) Gathering up the cat, Ramona shuts the door -- just as the killer takes a swipe at her with a machete. But he only manages to hit the screen door. Unaware of how close she just came to dying, Ramona tells the caller Jackson is gone.

The next day, the carnival is in full swing and we catch up with all our characters: Casey is having trouble getting on a moving carousel, and when Neal tries to help him, Casey gets scared and runs off again, while Lily and Edna find Bob and Kathy, making out at their booth. We then round out the cannon fodder -- sorry, the rest of the cast with some real winners: Ramona has got her hooks in Tom (Josh Gamble), and they walk the Midway with Walker and Sheila (Mike Brown and Monica Boston), Sandy (Jody Kay), and Diddle (John Kohler -- our malignant comedy relief for the rest of the film.) Sneaking behind a tent, they all share a stick of marihuana. Sheriff Doughboy smells the smoke, but they spot him in time for Walker to eat the reefer, destroying the evidence. Rousting them anyway, we find out that there’s some nasty history between Ramona and Doughboy, as well, as he warns them all to behave or else. Okay, grumpy Sheriff who hates loose women? That'd be Suspect #4.

We then take a few moments to go back to the river to spy the bodies merrily floating along, segueing us over to Lily and Edna who join Agnes (Mary Fran Lyman) at the quilting booth. Agnes is Casey’s mom, and more of the plot is spilled-out when she reveals Neal is Casey’s hero and her son idolizes him. Meanwhile, Neal gets some free brownies from Sara (Sharon Alley). Ignoring her affectionate advances, he moves on down to the quilting booth and starts talking to Lily. They hit it off.

When the larger group of potheads meet up with Bob and Kathy at the food court, Sheila invites them to one last party, down by the river, before they all split up this fall -- they also plan to head into the cemetery and tell ghost stories or something...sorry, I wasn’t paying that close of attention; I was too busy watching Sandy perform fellatio on her banana. The little scene stealer.

Later, when Bob and Kathy invite Neal to the party, he in turn asks Lily to come, too. She declines, but agrees to go to the movies with him some time. A couple of booths down, the scorned Sara watches all this with disgust. She doesn’t take Neal's rejection very well and storms off, and after securing a can of whipped cream, trashes Neal’s car. Casey spies her doing this and goes into some kind of fit -- and I point out that Casey had earlier come out of the Chamber of Horrors with a nasty facial twitch. Sara retreats further into the parking lot -- just as Neal finds his car. She sneaks away, across an open field, and stops at the water fountain for a quick drink. Home free, she strikes a sexy pose on some rocks and relaxes -- until the air is cut with a loud thwack! Sara jumps up with a start, an arrow stuck in the middle of her back. Does she scream for help? No. Does she head for the crowd for help? Nope. Does she not make a sound and retreat to the old carousel in the park, climb on a horse, and whimper? Yep. *sigh* As the carousel starts moving, the killer sneaks up behind his victim, sticks a plastic bag over her head until she suffocates -- and that mercifully brings this embarrassing little interlude to an end. Again, I have to point out that this happened during the light of day, in an open field, with a ton of people around!!!!

Meanwhile, over at his house, as Neal finishes up his shower, through the distorted glass we spy someone entering the bathroom. The silent intruder then throws the door open, giving Neal quite a fright, but it's only Ramona. Her hot-wires crossed, Ramona thinks Neal wants to sleep with her. He answers by sticking her in the shower and turning on the cold water to cool her off. Storming out of the house, the soggy Ramona runs right into Sheriff Doughy. Laughing at her wetness, he can’t believe that she’s having this much trouble getting laid. As their conversation gets even nastier, we get some more back-story about a car wreck involving Casey and Ramona. And Casey might be Doughboy’s son, and his brain damage might have happened in the car wreck, but again, the movie is not very clear on these points. A little later, Doughboy gets a frantic call from Agnes, saying that Casey has disappeared.

At the river party, as a bonfire burns brightly, Tom can’t quite figure out why Ramona is in such a bad mood; Walker and Sheila make out; and poor Sandy isn’t very happy because the only available guy left is Diddle, who’s drunk and doing bad impersonations. She asks the sot to go swimming but he’s too drunk. When no one else will go with her, she declares the party a bust and stomps off to swim alone -- well, go skinny-dipping to be more precise; thus fulfilling our nudity quotient for the film. After a little splashing around, Sandy floats on her back, letting the current gently sweep her down into the shallows -- where she runs right into the bodies of Ted and Angie! She screams and swims for the nearest bank, but the bloody machete swings into action, cutting her throat, and then another body joins Ted and Angie’s silent journey toward the sea. Back around the bonfire, and out of ear-shot, apparently, the others stop necking long enough to realize that Sandy’s been gone a while and start to look for her. But instead of finding her, they run into Bob, Kathy and Lily. After a little more searching, they figure Sandy just walked home.

Back at the river, everyone has paired up again leaving Lily as the odd girl out. (Diddle has passed out.) Since Neal hasn’t shown up (and odds are he ain’t gonna), she decides to head home. But the others talk her into coming to the cemetery with them. They leave a note, just in case Neal does show, saying where they went, then all pile into Walker’s pick-up truck and head out. Arriving at what appears to be the Edward D. Wood Jr. Memorial Cemetery, the group forms a semi-circle in front of a large tombstone. They all light candles and elect Lily to tell the first ghost story. And while she tells an old urban legend about the psycho-killer who kills the family dog and licks the girl's hand from underneath her bed, someone darts between headstones and trees, slowly making there way toward them. Just as Lily reaches the climax of her tale, a storm breaks out of nowhere and a torrential rain starts to fall. Retreating to the old abandoned Reynolds place -- and please-o-please-o-please let this finally be the House of Death! -- they manage to get a fire going in the fireplace and dry off. Then Diddle announces that he has to make water and fertilizer but the only facilities are an old two-seater outhouse out back. When Diddle leaves to relieve himself -- and please-o-please let this cretin be the next victim! -- Tom hits upon the idea to play a prank on the prankster by scaring him mid-poop.

As Diddle enters the outhouse, rousts out a raccoon, and settles in, in the house, Tom announces that it has stopped raining -- though the Foley man blows his cue and doesn't stop the rain-effect until after Tom makes his announcement -- and herds everyone outside to hassle their friend. As the men line-up the women in front of the outhouse door, turns out the jokes on them when they open the door to find Diddle strung up by the ankles with his throat slashed open. After retreating back to the house, Walker and Sheila run off to get his truck. In his panic, he quickly outdistances the girl by a large margin, and when he jumps into the truck and puts the keys in the ignition, he doesn't realize someone's in the truck with him.

Okay. Time. The. [Expletive deleted]. Out: How could he not see him?!?

Back at the house, Tom is growing impatient. Telling Bob to stay with the women, he’ll go and see what’s holding Walker and Sheila up. He makes it to the truck but spots the decapitated heads lying by the door. While retreating back thru the cemetery, he accidentally falls into an open grave, and when he reaches to pull himself up and out, the killer's machete comes down and lops both of his hands off. (Man that thing must be sharp.) Tom falls back into the grave -- while his hands still twitch above!

The hell? So was the body Doughboy found Casey? Or Jackson? Or Jimmy Hoffa? Or maybe the Frito Bandito?

Yes, Neal -- who has gone completely cuckoo for Co-Co Puffs. Calling Lily a whore, just like his mother, we get one last quick flashback to Neal watching his mom doll up for one of her johns. And somehow, this turned him into a homicidal maniac. He swipes his machete at Lily, misses, and busts a window. Grabbing a chunk of the broken glass, Lily stabs him in the throat. Outside, Doughboy arrives on the scene. With his pistol drawn, he circles around to the side with the cellar's entrance -- aha! So that’s how the killer got in the basement to chop Ramona in half. Upstairs, Neal takes another lunge at Lily, misses badly and his momentum takes him through the broken window. He plummets to the ground and crashes through the cellar door in front of the Sheriff. Pulling back some loose boards, Doughboy finds Neal still kicking and empties his revolver into the killer’s head -- and it explodes in a sea of tomato paste!!!

Well, I'm gonna assume he shot him and Doughboy’s massive chub rolls absorbed the recoil from his pistol. For heaven’s sake! They couldn’t even afford blanks to shoot the gun off! He just aimed it and PRETENDED to fire -- keeping the gun out of frame!

And the list goes on and on... What I really found to be hilarious is, if you remove the killing spree, what you have left is a really bad hatchet job of A Summer Place -- or some southern-fried gothic potboiler. A lot of time and effort is spent on worthless details in this movie. And all of that can be blamed on a lazy script by Paul Eliot. Coming out in the middle of the slasher boom, Eliot stripped it down to the bare essentials: No motive -- by then the motives were irrelevant or hackneyed at best, about a dozen false scares, a smattering of red herrings, two boob-shots, and at least eight deaths by lethally sharp object.

When I checked the film’s director on the IMDB, I thought they had there wires crossed again. But no; it’s true. House of Death was directed by David Nelson; Ozzie and Harriet’s other son (the other being the late singer Ricky Nelson.) I found collaborating evidence and confirmed it with info from Steven Kramer’s website, who was an assistant editor on the film.

It’s really sad that the script is so bad because the actors, aside from the guy playing Diddle, do an OK job. Most of the time, these things are polluted with actors that simply can’t act, but here, we have an exception. Everyone’s reasonably likeable but the film has nothing for them to do except wait around to be killed -- and the movie makes us wait an awful long time. We do get our cheesecake shots, but the film has lulled us to sleep and I barely noticed that Sandy was skinny-dipping. And that’s just sad.

So the viewer is in a dilemma. We can’t identify with the characters; but we don’t hate them enough to want them to die (except Diddle), and who cares who the killer is and why. The deaths aren’t very creative, loopy, or graphic. The notable exception being the killer’s demise when his very false head explodes under Doughboy’s barrage of bullets. That was friggin' hilarious. Beyond that, the only unintentional humor comes from the cutaways to the bodies merrily floating down the stream. 

In between the killings at the beginning until (I’m assuming) Casey is killed in the garage, almost an hour has elapsed where nothing has happened except empty and worthless back-story. I got the distinct impression that scorned Sara’s killing was shoehorned in (rather clumsily) after the film was done when they realized nothing happens for over and hour and decided to stick in another murder to add some punch. But it didn’t work. And it didn’t fit; the killer’s weapon of choice is a machete, not a bow and arrow. And I still don't even want to contemplate why Sara doesn’t scream and run back into the carnival area for help.