SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Rainey Dawn House of the Dead AKA Alien Zone (1978). I think House of the Dead is definitely the better title for this one -- Alien Zone doesn't fit it too well at all that sounds like a sci-fi film and this one has no Aliens in it (well maybe those creepy kids in the first story).I really enjoyed all of the stories in this anthology. I think the 1st story, Mrs. Sibiler, and the 3rd story, The Investigator and The Detective, are my favorites - tied for first place. Then I would say the 2nd story and last but not least the 4th story. Of course the story that starts and ends the anthology is the best off all (Talmudge and The Mortician)... The Mortician tells Talmudge and the viewers the 4 stories plus they have a tale of their own.Worth watching if you like horror anthologies.8/10

bkoganbing After a quick night of kanoodling with mistress Leslie Paxton, John Ericson is caught out in the rain, but kindly old mortician Ivor Francis allows him to get out of the cold and wet while he tells him job stories. And for Francis, being a mortician is a job he relishes.The title Alien Zone is quite the misnomer because there are no creatures from another planet in this film. Unless you consider the perceptive Francis from another world. Because what Francis does is show him four coffins with bodies inside and tells him about how all of them got there. Apparently no one who is a client at the Francis Funeral Home ever died a really natural death.The stories are of an uneven quality, the best being the third one which involves a couple of vain police inspectors, Charles Aidman and Bernard Fox, each thinking he's the world's best detective. The dialog is really good in that story. The others involve Judith Novgrod as a reclusive school teacher who hates kids, Burr DeBenning as a psychotic murderer, and Richard Gates as a selfish yuppie. They all get a good comeuppance in the end.Despite a misleading title Alien Zone is not a bad anthology film and how does Ericson and his story fit into all this. Not really hard to figure out even if you don't see the film.

junk-monkey A 1978 portmanteaux 'Horror' film made in Oklahoma. However bad that sounds to you - the reality is worse.This is, apart from anything else, a very dull film. Highlights included the longest (pointless) slow zoom in on a radio sat on a toilet ever committed to film as a bad actress exited frame, got undressed off screen, put on a dressing gown and reappeared. It's pure pointless padding. You could almost hear them discussing this shot in the editing suite:"This is a hell of a long pointless shot, I think we aught to cut away to something and cheat her coming back in." "Are you crazy? That will be over far too fast, leave it as it is. It's filling up 45 seconds of screen time - leave it, we'll get a feature out of this yet..." The dialogue is dreadful: leaden, repetitive, and pointless (what could hear of it - the copy I watched came as part of the 50 DVD box set called Nightmare Worlds and the print - or the transfer - is dreadful. The sound is muffled and for great periods the colour alternates between being totally washed-out, or so incredibly dark you cannot see anything on the screen. This combined with the dodgy sound did not make for easy watching.)The whole movie has the feel of a bunch of student/ amateur shorts nailed together with a framing device to make a feature.Don't bother.

Coventry Whenever the title "House of the Dead" is mentioned nowadays, people – and horror fanatics in particular – automatically link it to that hag Uwe Boll's AWFUL video game horror adaptation about UN-frightening looking CGI zombies on an island. Another movie with the same title existed already since the late 1970's, though it's also known under the completely irrelevant title "Alien Zone", and that one is a lot better! It's a low-budget exploitation attempt to create a horror anthology similar to the contemporary successful British films, like "Tales that Witness Madness" or "Asylum", complete with a detailed wraparound story and a sinister host. Whilst on a business trip in an unknown city, a guy named Talmudge cheats on his wife and gets lost on his way back to the hotel. Since there's a heavy thunderstorm going on, a seemly friendly mortician invites him in and informs him abut the background stories of four "clients" of his. None of these horror mini-tales is groundbreaking or particularly shocking, but they all feature an admirably dark atmosphere and revolve on rather inventive topics. The first story is extremely short and introduces a lonely female schoolteacher with a clear aversion towards children. When she goes home one night, she senses a strange presence in her house and subsequently gets attacked by a large collection of eerily deformed and mask-wearing children. I'm not quite sure what the deeper meaning of this short story was, but those kids sure looked creepy! The second story is – once again – a very short reworking of the classic film "Peeping Tom", with a perverted man inviting girls to his apartment and murdering them for the eye of the camera. The tone of this segment is definitely disturbing, but it has no satisfying ending, since it just cuts back to the mortician who explains the culprit got executed for his crimes. Huh? What's the point? Then comes the third and unquestionably best chapter of "House of the Dead", about an intellectual criminologist competing with his overseas colleague of Scotland Yard for the honor of most deductive police investigator in the world. This segment has an incredibly predictable climax, but it's very enjoyable thanks to the wit dialogs and convincing on screen chemistry between actors Charles Aidman and Bernard Fox. The fourth and final segment hints at some really horrific themes, but unfortunately the elaboration is poor. It's about an egocentric man who gets terrorized by unseen forces and eventually becomes everything he detests himself. Namely a needy and filthy individual who blindly gets passed by on the streets. It's a curious little tale that definitely deserved some more plotting and perhaps a slightly longer playtime. Naturally the film ends with an unmerciful fate for Talmudge (adultery, remember…). The late 70's definitely brought forward better horror films than this, but "House of the Dead" is nonetheless a worthwhile and entertaining little chiller that offers a handful of frights and delightful genre clichés. It's a film for undemanding trash-fans.