House III: The Horror Show



AKA: The Horror Show

Some time ago, Detective McCarthy finally caught notorious serial killer “Meat Cleaver” Max Jenke, a man who is suspected in the killing of over 100 people. It was a hard and bloody road for McCarthy to catch Jenke, but the detective feels like all his obsessively hard work has finally paid off, as the date for the killer’s execution is finally upon him. But it turns out that Jenke is just as obsessed with McCarthy as the detective is with him, because during his execution Jenke miraculously jumps up from the electric chair and vows to come back to tear McCarthy’s world apart. The Detective thinks Jenke’s words are just the ravings of a dying man, but Professor Campbell, one of the witnesses at the execution, warns him to be careful. Because Campbell is convinced Jenke isn’t dead, but has merely been elevated into another form of reality. Of course, McCarthy initially just thinks the professor is nutso. But as he starts seeing Jenke outside of his nightmares and strange things start happening around his house and to his family, he quickly becomes convinced that Jenke has somehow found a way to subvert death, and is now using his new skills to torment him and his family.



House III: The Horror Show is an American horror movie from 1989, and is the sequel to House and House II: The Second Story. Or, I guess it’s more appropriate to say that it’s technically a sequel to those films, because part way through production MGM decided that it wanted to take a new approach and basically “reboot” the series. So the story was changed to be more serious and it was decided that the movie should simply be re-titled The Horror Show…. At least in the US. But I guess the distributors in other territories didn’t get that particular memo, because the House moniker was still retained everywhere else. Oops. So the House series ended up with a sequel, that was supposed to be a sequel, but then wasn’t trying to be a sequel, but still ended up as an official sequel, either because people can’t make make definitive decisions, can’t bother to communicate, or simply because the rest of the world looked at MGM and said “Fuck you, we’ve already started printing the posters.” Ain’t life grand.



Truth be told though, MGM probably had the right idea with their initial plan, as making the third film a straight-up horror slasher really sets it apart tonally from the other two films. Because while the first two films are also admittedly very different from one another, they still both had an underlying level of lightheartedness about them, and even a sense of humor. But this film doesn’t have that same sense of humor about itself…or at least it doesn’t have any beyond the unintentional kind that usually involves characters saying profoundly stupid things while trying to keep a straight face, or the killer’s laugh, which just sounds ridiculously stupid and cartoonish. I mean, honestly, if it didn’t have the House III name in front of it, I doubt most people would realize that the films were linked. Granted, knowing that they are linked does make a few of the internal film elements make a bit more sense. But then again, making a movie about a house that’s haunted by some kind of weirdo associated with one of the character’s pasts isn’t really all that unique a concept no matter what tone you’re going for.


As for figuring out what they were going for here….good luck.

Really though, I think the biggest reason to try to disassociate the first two films from this one is that The Horror Show just…isn’t all that good of a movie? I usually start writing these things the day after I watch it so that I have some time to ruminate on them. But this movie I really procrastinated on even starting, because the vast majority of it is just so damn dull. Don’t get me wrong, the movie does have some very bloody and fun bits (and some really odd ones, let’s be real). But almost all of those moments are interspersed by looooong stretches where absolutely nothing important is happening. Or in some cases where something important IS happening, but it’s taking too damn long to get to that point. I mean, okay, yes movie, it’s really nice to see a brother and sister relationship where the siblings are actually loving and super supportive of each other, and not constantly harping or at each other’s throats. It’s something that’s rare to see and very cute. Good for you. But, like, you’re clearly just showing me this so you can re-establish at the end that the sister’s boyfriend is still hiding in the basement. We already knew that. We JUST saw him, like, five seconds ago when he said he was going to wait in the basement. Reiterating that is just needlessly padding out an already established plot point. And why do we need to know that the son is swindling companies out of a “year’s supply” of random junk like powdered chocolate? Seriously, what the hell? What is the point in sharing that? Is that just a random holdover from the original script? Please just get to the plot already.



Not that the plot is really anything to write home about, either. I mean, on the surface it’s fine, but the movie also clearly expects you to really test your suspension of disbelief muscles regarding several key elements. For instance, one of the reporter’s outside Jenke’s execution asks McCarthy if the killer’s death means he’s going back to work, since he took time off after his partner’s grizzly death. Which heavily implies that Jenke’s arrest, trial, and execution happened in…what? A matter of a couple months? Like, excuse me? Are you kidding? Nothing involving bureaucracy moves that quickly. Hell, it takes some people that long to contest a bloody parking ticket. Trials and executions can take years. Even people on death row in “We Roast-em, Toast-em, Texas” average a wait time of close to two decades before their demise. Implying it happened in a matter of months is silly. As is expecting us to believe that Jenke somehow built up a resistance to electricity so that the initial shock wouldn’t kill him, as if the human body can somehow build up an immunity to volts as if it’s some kind of poison. That’s just…not at all how that shit works. And if he has become some form of electricity after his death, how is he somehow reforming into a physical body? Or is he just a standard ghost now? And if so, just how does building up an immunity to electricity help one turn into a ghost? How are the logistics of any of this supposed to work?! A part of me wants to blame a lot of this nonsense on the film being some kind of quick rip-off of Wes Craven’s Shocker, which had an incredibly similar plot, but shockingly enough (heh!), this movie actually came out first. So it doesn’t even have that excuse for being so damn confusing.


*sigh*

Needless to say, I am not all that impressed with The Horror Show. It does have some fun, gory bits thrown in there, I will give it that. And it also has some moments of effectively creepy atmosphere, and it does a good job of melding reality with McCarthy’s hallucinations. But most of the movie still ends up feeling very dull, or annoyingly illogical. Which is impressive considering the plot of House II is pretty much bat-shit insane. But at least that film established some rules for its universe. Or at least it tried to, anyway. This one meanwhile feels like it’s just throwing random things at you and hoping you won’t notice that it’s not giving you an explanation for it. And for a movie that seems to be trying to be a more serious slasher, its villain often feels more like something pulled out of a Saturday morning cartoon than he does a serial killer. I’m sorry, but I just cannot listen to that guy’s “evil” laugh and take him at all seriously.

This doesn’t even sound like Brion James when he speaks, what the hell….

So the movie gets a solid “meh” from me. As far as supernatural slashers go it’s fine really, all things considered. Especially if you just need something quick and easy to watch, or simply want something you can put on in the background that you don’t really need to pay all that much attention to. But I think there are still better, much more entertaining horror movies out there more worthy of your time.

House III: The Horror Show is available on a variety of streaming services.

House III: The Horror Show is also available on Bluray.

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