The House Where Evil Dwells

What could have been just another of the generic haunted-house movies so prevalent in the 1970s and ’80s is elevated by an intriguing backstory and setting. The House Where Evil Dwells begins in 1840, in a fictional hillside town just outside Kyoto, with dramatic scenes of lust that transform into an insanely drawn-out slo-mo sequence of jealousy, murder, and suicide (aka hara-kiri) when a samurai arrives home to find his wife accompanied by another man. It’s wordless but shriek-filled, deranged and sexy, beautiful and bloody all at once.

Based on an unpublished novel by English writer and PR man James Hardiman, who was likely drawn to Japan as a setting after spending some time there as a young journalist, the film soon shifts its action post-credits to the same locale in the present day. A cornball American diplomat stationed in Kyoto, Alex Curtis (Doug McClure), hooks up his old friend Ted Fletcher (Edward Albert), Ted’s wife Laura (Susan George), and their preteen daughter with a place to live—a “dream house” where Ted can peacefully write. It’s 200 years old, with a classic thatched roof and stunning surroundings, but because we recognize it as the site of the savage opening events, we know it’ll be anything but dreamy. Mild supernatural occurrences start as early as the first night, but the married couple ignore the signs to engage in a steamy bout of sex—this is the ’80s, after all—performing the acts that the slain lovers were stopped short of doing in the opening.

The House Where Evil Dwells is a supremely silly film that is also highly entertaining. Fun touches include the large tarantula-like crab creatures who attack the daughter and her babysitter, some haunted soup, an (over)abundance of nudity, and the recurrent ghostly presence of the characters from the beginning—simply appearing as glowing blue versions of themselves, created by some old-school camera trickery—who mill around and occasionally pop inside the living. There’s also an exorcism conducted by a nearby Zen monk, who initially warns the family of the house’s dangers. Despite all the craziness unfolding—while the dad just kind of cluelessly focuses on his work—you still basically know where it’s all heading even before it’s revealed that Alex and Laura are having an affair. But it matters little. Kevin Connor, perhaps best known for the culty sleazefest Motel Hell from two years earlier, does some surprisingly solid work here. The production values are stellar considering the film’s modest budget—that this is a Toei Company co-production probably helped—and who doesn’t love ancient curses messing with the lives of not-so-likable people?