House III: The Horror Movie With 0% On Rotten Tomatoes That’s Actually Good?

Everything points to House III: The Horror Show being a terrible movie. It has the rare honour of a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. One of the writers is credited as Alan Smithee, the pseudonym reserved for those who wish to disown a project. The original director was fired a week into filming. The film was a massive commercial flop, with the anthology House franchise to which it belongs completely changing its format and making the fourth film a direct sequel to the original to try (and fail) to rescue the series. And yet it’s not as bad as all that suggests. In fact, I might be as bold to say it’s actually a pretty good movie.

The film has an odd history, right up until the moment it was released. Conceived and made as a standalone film, perhaps even the beginnings of a new franchise, The Horror Show was then retroactively given the moniker House III in some territories to try and promote it as part of that successful horror series. House 2: The Second Story can barely be referred to as a horror film, going deep into the realm of comedy and fantasy. The tonal whiplash with House III is severe. Making it part of the same franchise certainly hurt the movie through expectation alone. There’s no plot, thematic, or tonal connection between the films. It seems the only prerequisite for being a House movie is that the film has to feature a house, and by that metric 95% of films are in this franchise. Take that MCU!

So House 2 was essentially a children’s fantasy film. Or would have been if Bill Maher didn’t suddenly appear halfway through spouting homophobic slurs. House III takes itself much more seriously, as the switch to roman numerals suggests. It’s a gritty cop drama, complete with plenty of swearing, and also much more of a straight horror movie. I mean, it’s still silly but it’s also dark and bloody. A little girl has her head cut off onscreen within the opening minutes. It’s disturbing but yeah, okay, I laughed. It’s also funny when the cop hunting the notorious serial killer, who has kidnapped a child, utters the line “he really gives me the creeps.” Yeah, no shit.

The film sees Lance Henriksen’s Detective Lucas McCarthy capture serial killer Max Jenke, played by Brion James. When Jenke is executed, McCarthy finds that Jenke lives on in some supernatural form, haunting him and his family in their home. It’s somewhere between a supernatural haunting movie and a slasher film, with Jenke able to reform, cleaver in hand, whenever he wants to kill. Produced by Sean S. Cunningham, the film is more of a return to the style of his Friday the 13^th series than past House instalments. As a fan of those films, even the bad ones, I greatly enjoyed it. Harry Manfredini’s music also echoes his work on that series.

Similar to Friday the 13^th, House III ran into issues with the censors. While violent, the gore is certainly held back in some places. The theatrical version is frustratingly trimmed. It’s a film that revels in the horror tropes of the time. When it was released I’m sure it all seemed tired and trite after a decade plus of this kind of movie. Now it’s charming to horror fans. The film includes many of the staples of the era with few twists. In some cases the twist is that nothing happens. We’re watching a teenage girl have a shower, expecting Jenke to jump out and torment her, but no, it’s just 90 seconds of her showering.

What is atypical for a horror film of this era is that the performances are strong across the board. Lance Henriksen might not be the usual horror star of the ‘scream queen’ era, lacking breasts and short shorts, but he’s great as the gruff, tormented cop dad. Maybe why I like the film as much as I do is because it’s very easy to imagine it being a feature length episode of Millennium. It’s fun to see Aron Eisenberg, Nog from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, as the son, sans ears. And the highlight is Brion James as Jenke. The actor stated this was his favourite role and it’s easy to see why. He’s having an absolute blast playing the deranged killer in all his forms, including dressing in drag to disguise himself as McCarthy’s (incredibly horny) wife. It’s a broad character and performance that wouldn’t be out of place in Con Air.

Jenke had an electric chair in his apartment and would sit on it for increasing increments every day to build up an immunity. Come on! That’s such an insanely fun idea. How can people dismiss this movie so easily? The execution scene is nuts and I love it. Jenke takes minutes to die, the electricity warping his skin as he begins to bulge and throb, ultimately ending in him bursting into flames as he escapes the restraints and walks towards McCarthy. It’s brilliant and the effects are great. Of course, Jenke lives on in some other form, described as “pure evil as electromagnetic energy. An electricity of evil.” He’s like a denizen of the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks. How can this film get any better? What more do people want?

Taunting McCarthy psychologically as well as physically, Jenke then becomes much more of a Freddy Kruger-type figure. The film’s final form is as a facsimile of A Nightmare on Elm Street. House III really runs the gamut of influences. Saying the film uses dream logic is kind because there’s little logic at all to Jenke’s powers. He creates visions, infects dreams, takes control of a furnace and a television. Whatever the film requires of him. But the effects are great throughout. Jenke’s face appearing on the side of a turkey’s head is disturbing, his head bulging through a women’s pregnant belly is an icky practical effect, and there’s a very funny double disarming. To make the character look like he has no arms, he’s in a big suit to hide them down his sides making it look like David Byrne in Stop Making Sense has been in some terrible threshing machine accident.

If there is one truly significant issue with House III it’s that the ending sucks. The villain is defeated easily and fairly lamely, being electrocuted in a dream and shot repeatedly in the real world. We then get a bright and happy ending scene which really needed a dark final sting. It’s bookended by a similarly hokey beginning but that works because you know it’s only a matter of time before it’s punctured by darkness. If only there was a sequel tease of Jenke still living. Hell, if only there was a sequel. Instead House 4 tries to return to the franchise’s roots, bringing back the protagonist from the first film (before promptly killing him off). It’s terrible and yet has a 14% Rotten Tomatoes score compared to III’s 0%. House III is no masterpiece but it is underrated and the best film in the series after the original.