THE HOUSE WHERE EVIL DWELLS: Charming 80s B-Movie Romp

The House Where Evil Dwells is a terrible movie. The House Where Evil Dwells is an excellent movie. Both statements are true, although they contradict each other, because this story about an American family haunted by Japanese ghosts is charmingly absurd.

Cultural clashes rarely work well on screen. Usually, this is the result of ignorance on the part of screenwriters and directors, who, instead of consulting experts, rely on their own imagination — generally stereotypical and far from the truth.

A case in point is The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise in the leading role, about which Tomomi Katsuta, a Japanese critic, wrote: It is not a story about a samurai based on historical truth; it is rather a story of an “Americanized” or idealized version of a samurai, a story of a utopia created for Americans.

The House Where Evil Dwells is a similar case, but so exaggerated that ignoring the realities of nineteenth-century Japan cannot hurt more than ignoring postwar German history in Iron Sky, where Nazis found safe refuge on the Moon.

The action in the prologue of The House Where Evil Dwells takes place thirty years before the events of The Last Samurai. Tom Cruise has not yet undergone a rapid course in katana mastery that turned him into a fencing master, and the local community must deal with the same problems as the rest of humanity anywhere and at any time. For example, with infidelity, which has accompanied our species since the dawn of time.

Lovers caught in the act often become victims of immediate revenge by the one who discovered them, and exactly the same affect sets in motion the plot of Kevin Connor’s film (a director primarily of television productions and series). A double murder and seppuku are followed by transformation into supernatural beings, which a hundred years later wish to repeat the tragic events, using visitors from the United States to do so.

The ghosts look roughly like Princess Leia’s hologram from the first (that is, the fourth) Star Wars film, and to create them, an old German technique called Shauftausen was used — the use of mirrors positioned at the correct angle. The modest budget allowed for nothing more, and although the effect is not very convincing, it still looks better than low-quality CGI. I would be lying, however, to say that the apparitions are a source of fear here or that there is anything to be afraid of at all.

They constitute an unintentional comedic element, manifesting as a face on the surface of haunted soup or a menace leading to the final showdown, in which not very skilled actors pretend to be karate practitioners, and each of their blows sounds like the crack of a whip. Moreover, the ghosts can control the bodies of bloodthirsty crabs capable of climbing trees…

Enjoying the absurdity is hampered (especially in the second half) by chaotic editing, which led Connor to speak multiple times about the film in explicitly negative terms. He insisted that his version looked completely different, highlighting the bonds between characters and having a more dramatic character, but the producers allowed themselves unconsulted interference.

It is hard to believe that additional depth would give weight to such a bizarre film, so the director should be grateful to his collaborators, because only thanks to their invention did The House Where Evil Dwells become a cult B-movie, rather than a Dallas with a shiver. Someone who puts the words The spirits will know that you spoke with me. The revenge will be terrible. You must leave now into the mouth of an exorcist monk cannot have sufficient empathy to evoke strong emotions in the viewer.

The rupture between the two visions harms the film. It never had a chance to become what the director aspired to, but the producer’s correction came too late for a transformation into a slasher with the characteristic style of the 1980s to fully take place. For this reason, one could draw a table and list scene by scene, on one side, those great, entertainingly nonsensical moments, and on the other, the endlessly, painfully boring ones.

The House Where Evil Lurks is worth seeing at least because of its unusual setting (the entire film was shot in Tokyo, not — as is usually the case for cheap productions of this type — in a studio), and this is where its originality lies. For me — a fan of Japanese culture and B-movie cinema — that is a sufficient argument in favor of the film, and if you feel similarly, the screening should not disappoint you.