Ya know, generally speaking I have quite a lot of time for US made for TV horrors. They may never have gone in for tits, gore or the sort of boggling weirdness that I tend to appreciate most in my horror cinema but they usually made up for it in sincerity and desire to get the job done. This House Possessed just about gets the job done, but its actually kinda weak, despite what other posters here indicate. Part of the problem though by no means the biggest issue is that it doesn't really make sense, or at least doesn't explain itself to an acceptable level. Right from the start we see a melding of technological and supernatural horror, but the two never fuse to any interesting effect, they are simply applied willy nilly whenever one or the other might advance the plot and it leaves the situation rather less than compelling and more obviously contrived. The main problem though is that it simply runs too long. It has enough substance to run perhaps 80 minutes at best but instead is drawn out a tiresome 10 or so beyond that and the characters and situation just don't warrant the extended length. Story wise things are pretty basic, a music star of sorts has a breakdown and decamps along with a personal nurse to an opulent house run by electronics, but there finds that dark forces are afoot. Its a decent set up, but the scares are scant and altogether too much time is spent on the burgeoning romance between the two leads, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I didn't really buy that the (admittedly lovely) Nurse Sheila would fall so easily for her patient, nor did I find much interest in their romance. Parker Stevenson is fairly likable as the ailing star while Lisa Eilbacher is wholly charming as Sheila but their relationship is thinly written and clichéd, making all too much of the film kinda uninteresting. Joan Bennett holds up some measure of suspense as a bag lady who knows what's going on though, and Slim Pickens has a good turn as a manager, both keep things moving. The house itself is a pretty cool place as well, maintaining watch-ability between shocks. The score is quite good as well, theremin and suchlike it gives a reasonable ambiance. All in all this is never completely boring and some of the jolts do work, moreover there's an overall charm to the piece that keeps it going, but its still pretty forgettable. Possibly worth tapping if you really dig made for TV horrors, but otherwise not a film I'd especially recommend, sadly.
Review of This House Possessed
