Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Sam Panico Roger Cobb (Willaim Katt, reprising his role from the first film for as long as it takes to get his paycheck) is now married to someone named Kelly and they have a daughter named Laurel. There's no mention of his first wife, Sandy, or his son Jimmy. They visit the old Cobb house after Roger's father dies - this must be a side universe, the universe where no one gives two shits about continuity - and have to deal with Burke, the stepbrother who keeps trying to get Roger to sell out on his promise to their father to never sell the house.This isn't the actual house from House, so that's already a strike against this one. But if the interior of the house looks familiar to you, that's because the same sets were used in The People Under the Stairs.Were you excited to see William Katt? Well, he dies around five minutes in, the victim of a car crash that leaves his daughter in a wheelchair - the kind of wheelchairs that old ladies roll around in and leave in their bedrooms to haunt you (see Burnt Offerings). Like do they even make wicker wheelchairs any more?Burke has the mafia making him try and take the house, as they want to dump illegal waste there. Their leader is a little person who needs a machine to remove all of the phlegm in his throat, I shit you not.Roger is still in the house and various magical Native Americans are kindly enough to protect Roger's family. Oh yeah - Denny Dillon, who was on HBO's Dream On and the disastrous Jean Doumanian produced season of Saturday Night Live is in this as a maid.I like one scene in here a lot, where snakes take over the minds of two mafia guys and they see one another as human snakes. The practical effects are great here, yet wasted for what's a really quick scene.There's also a pizza that comes to life and sings a song before being tossed in a trash compactor. This scene is Troll 2 level inanity and stupidity. It's also one of the few good parts of this slog of a motion picture.PS - That's Kane Hodder's face in the pizza.This is one of the late 80's/early 90's movies that has no real handle on when it should be a comedy and when it should be horror. If it was an Italian film, that would be forgiven because there'd be loads of gore.You've seen worse movies - and worse House movies - than House IV. But in a world packed with strange new films to discover and old favorites to enjoy again and again, let me be the one to do the watching for you. You don't really need to see this.

Vomitron_G I recall from back in my teen days that I actually liked this sequel. And guess what? Having just re-watched it, I still kind of like it! Oh sure, the plot feels like incoherent rubbish, the humor is infantile, the drama is pretty lame (and way too much focused on in the first half of the film) and the horror is ridiculous. But "House IV" does make an effort to tie in with Steve Miner's original from 1986. Not only by starring William Katt playing Roger Cobb again (thereby somewhat serving up a story that could be a continuation - after several years - of the first film, ignoring the franchise's two other stand-alone installments), but also the tone of this 4th film and the nature of the events pretty much try to be in sync with what the original was all about (basically mixing horror & comedy with an anecdotal result). If you've enjoyed the first 'House', then 'House IV' almost feels right. Almost, as it just doesn't work as well as the first one. You'll still get a film rigged together with some amusing moments, most of the time involving fun SFX (the pizza-face man, the silly snake vs insect villain shout-out, the 'watery climax'). And I suspect they threw in that irrelevant Indian mumbo-jumbo sub-plot because a film like "Poltergeist II: The Other Side" got away with it too (or well, maybe it didn't, but they threw it in anyway). Whether you'll find "House IV" stupid or amusing, it's certainly stuff they're not making anymore these days. So I'd say it's worth a peek for that alone.

CMRKeyboadist I haven't written anything on IMDb in a long while. After seeing this movie last night I felt that I had to comment on a few things that truly frustrated me. But before I go into that I will give a brief summary of the movie...Roger Cobb, his wife Kelly and their daughter, Laurel, must make a decision about the old family house out in the middle of nowhere. Roger's half-brother, Burke, wants to sell the house and have it destroyed. Roger disagrees and decides to keep the house. On their way home, the Cobb family gets in a bad accident, killing Roger and almost paralyzing Laurel. Kelly and Laurel decide to move into the house after the accident. Now, they are being hounded by Burke to sell the house and they seem to have a slight poltergeist problem.First, I will start by saying that this was the worst of the House series.Second, I don't know what Sean S. Cunningham was thinking when he produced this. This is suppose to be a sequel to House 1 but where is the continuity? In the first movie, Roger had a son and was in the middle of a divorce with Sandy. The whole storyline to the first movie was about him rescuing his son. In this movie Roger doesn't have a son. He has a daughter. Also, what happened to Sandy? Sure, we can assume that Roger remarried and had a daughter but this is never mentioned. It's like the events of the first movie never happened and we are dealing with a Roger Cobb from another universe. This was something that really bugged me through the whole film.Third, about this so called house. It was a great house to pick for the movie but they never used it to its full potential. The thing that made House 1 and 2 so great was that there was infinite possibilities that could happen. In the first House, Roger is battling monsters, traveling through time and other universes. In the second movie, the stars are also battling bizarre creatures and traveling through time as well. This is what made the movies so much fun because you really didn't know what was going to happen next. House 4 (or should I say House 3) doesn't attempt anything fun like the first two movies. It had chances where it could have been a fun movie but never took those chances. Instead, we have about two note worthy scenes. The face on the pizza and the bloody shower scene. That's it. The one scene that could have changed the movie altogether was when Kelly sees her daughter being sucked into the bed and disappears. I thought to myself "Finally, Kelly is going to have to go in after her and travel through bizarre universes to find and save her". But no, it was all a sort of dream.Well, you see where I stand with this movie. If you want to see a good House movie, check out the first two. They are fun and adventurous films that took chances and made them work. 3/10

Son_of_Mansfield If you go into this expecting a pleasant sequel to House(1986), you will be vastly disappointed. This is a message horror movie about the evils of toxic waste and killing Native Americans. There is an odd feel to the movie, but not in a good way. Mostly it is either dumb, beating a failed henchman with a sex doll, or sick, watching a little person hack up lung butter. There is only one scene that really came close to being as funny and scary as scenes in the original house. Mrs. Cobb opens up a pizza box and the pizza has a face which starts singing to her. William Katt does return in this movie to be killed and also in one scene as a ghost. Thanks a lot. Thankfully this was the third and final House film, seeing as House 3: The Horror Show is a sequel like Zombie 2 is a sequel. Stick with the original, you can never fail with William Katt and George Wendt.