THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW (1982)

 

(a.k.a. HOUSE OF EVIL, UK title; director/screenwriter: Mark Rosman, with additional dialogue by Bobby Fine)

 

Review

June 19, 1961. A woman (Dorothy Slater), giving birth on a stormy night, is told she lost her baby. Her screams echo on the screen as HOUSE cuts to twenty years later, on a sunlit college campus where seven pretty Phi Theta sorority sisters get ready to throw a graduation party despite the certainty that their shrill, “weird” house mother (Slater) will veto it. After the mentally unstable Slater (she hasn’t been the same since her miscarriage) catches one of her sorority charges (Vicki) having sex with her boyfriend, Slater becomes violent, inciting the young woman to pull a nasty prank on Slater—retaliation that goes horribly awry, setting into motion a series of murders. Do the stabbings have anything to do with the mysterious figure hiding in the attic, watching the collegiate sisters romp through their mostly carefree days?

HOUSE’s cast, many making their feature debuts, is solid. Standout players include Christopher Lawrence as Dr. Nelson Beck, Slater’s longtime physician, who’s certain she’s headed for a “psychotic break”; Lois Kelso Hunt is believably intense as Dorothy Slater, the disturbed house mother; Kate McNeil (MONKEY SHINES, 1988) is great as a sorority sister with a conscience; Eileen Davidson, who played the cruel, vengeful Vicki, also convinces; Harley Jane Kozak, billed as Harley Kozak (I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE: VENGEANCE IS MINE, 2015) played Diane, one of the sorority sisters; Jodi Draigie (FREAK, 2015) is also solid as Diane, another sister.

HOUSE is an entertaining, easily figured out movie that fuses Henri Georges-Clouzot’s 1955 thriller LES DIABOLIQUES with familiar, occasionally bloody and goofy slasher tropes—its cut-to-it pacing and intriguing set-up are largely due to Paul Trejo and Jean-Marc Vasseur’s tight editing (especially during the often off-camera kill scenes) and Tim Suhrstedt’s immersive, sometimes color-wild cinematography. Richard Band (THE RESONATOR: MISKATONIC U, 2021) created a mood-effective, occasionally quirky score for HOUSE, further elevating it above other films sharing its stalk-and-slay setups—at times his score reminded of me RE-ANIMATOR (1985), whose soundtrack he created, and, on occasion, SUSPIRIA (1977) and FRIDAY THE 13^th (1980). HOUSE isn’t inventive in its plotting or characters, but it’s engaging, viewer-immersive and smart, something most filmmakers in this genre should aspire to.

 

Deep(er) filmic dive

According to IMDb, HOUSE‘s story also bears a strong resemblance to a 1932 Myrna Loy film, THIRTEEN WOMEN, where a woman rebuffed by a sorority sets out to cause the untimely deaths of its sisters.

Lois Kelso Hunt’s voice was dubbed because director Mark Rosman didn’t think it was scary enough.

Rachel Talalay, script supervisor on HOUSE, went on to work on other films, notably as the director of the 1991 A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET sequel FREDDY’SDEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE.