A boarding house is reopened years after gruesome murders were committed there. Suddenly, the body count begins once more!A boarding house is reopened years after gruesome murders were committed there. Suddenly, the body count begins once more!A boarding house is reopened years after gruesome murders were committed there. Suddenly, the body count begins once more!
John Wintergate
- Jim Royce
- (as Hawk Adly)
- …
Lindsay Freeman
- Debbie Hoffman
- (as Alexandra Day)
Joel Riordan
- Joel Weintraub
- (as Joel McGinnis Riordan)
Selma Kora
- Sandy
- (as Belma Kora)
Cindy Warren
- Pam
- (as Cindy Williamson)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe original version of the film ran a total of two hours and thirty eight minutes, but was cut to one hour and thirty eight minutes by the distributor back in 1983. This was the first shot on video film that was blown up to 35MM and released in theatres in 1983. Slasher // Video released a 30th Anniversary DVD with an extensive amount of extras, including several songs from the band Lightstorm as well as including for the first time the original 2hr 38 min Dir cut
- GoofsBlood is already seen on a person before they shoot themselves.
- Alternate versionsThe re-released version shown at festivals is missing several scenes, most notably the pie fight in the kitchen.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The Big Box: The Body Shop (2010)
Featured review
Tape-to-film horror pic hits a new low
My review was written in March 1984 after a Times Square screening.
"Boardinghouse" is a nearly watchable assemblage of footage that fits in the horror genre, though fans of the form should be warned that it was videotaped in 1982, and inadequately transferred to film for current theatrical release. With "no refunds" policies proliferating (partly because of such awful junkers as this one), caveat emptor. Technically inept opus expediently piles almost all its plot and story content into inserts of computer display listings, leaving the live-action footage for frequent displays of cheap, fake gore (which looks strange given the variable-color nature of this tape-to-film transfer) and semi-improvised, sub-porno quality dialog and nudie scenes.
Set in a nondescript Los Angeles house (no spooky mansion atmosphere) which, as usual, is blamed for a series of murders and accidental deaths takin place, story concerns the effect of a Professor Hoffman and wife, Nobel Prize winners for their research in the occult and telekinesis (evidently a new categoryfor the Swedes), whose daughter killed them and is now on the rampage at their house, turned into a boardinghouse for pretty young women by its current owner Jim (Hawk Audley, who doubles as the film's inevitable key suspect, a sinister gardener wearing a truly phony goatee). Not wanting to be original, incest turns out to be the reason for the murders that set this creaky plot in motion.
As the girls are picked off one by one, the viewer is treated to such boring material as a bar of soap that levitates and a chromakey-style superimposed monster image that is thrown in from time to time. Scene construction is so poor that during an exposition scene with the police (who like the rest of the cast look like school chums who showed up for the videotaping with no preparation) there is a sudden fade to black right in the middle of a speech, as if one of the cameramen ran out of tape. No retakes, please.
Late in the picture, several scenes are thoroughly overexposed, but the spoiled footage is included in the final print. Pic's presenter, Howard Willete, uses as comeon a process dubbed "Horror Vision", supposedly the old gimmick of using visual and sound warnings to the audience when they should look away from the screen, but this is just another bad joke.
The frightening thing about "Boardinghouse" is not that it is terrible, but that it opens a Pandora's box for future no-budget, no-effort taped horror films.
"Boardinghouse" is a nearly watchable assemblage of footage that fits in the horror genre, though fans of the form should be warned that it was videotaped in 1982, and inadequately transferred to film for current theatrical release. With "no refunds" policies proliferating (partly because of such awful junkers as this one), caveat emptor. Technically inept opus expediently piles almost all its plot and story content into inserts of computer display listings, leaving the live-action footage for frequent displays of cheap, fake gore (which looks strange given the variable-color nature of this tape-to-film transfer) and semi-improvised, sub-porno quality dialog and nudie scenes.
Set in a nondescript Los Angeles house (no spooky mansion atmosphere) which, as usual, is blamed for a series of murders and accidental deaths takin place, story concerns the effect of a Professor Hoffman and wife, Nobel Prize winners for their research in the occult and telekinesis (evidently a new categoryfor the Swedes), whose daughter killed them and is now on the rampage at their house, turned into a boardinghouse for pretty young women by its current owner Jim (Hawk Audley, who doubles as the film's inevitable key suspect, a sinister gardener wearing a truly phony goatee). Not wanting to be original, incest turns out to be the reason for the murders that set this creaky plot in motion.
As the girls are picked off one by one, the viewer is treated to such boring material as a bar of soap that levitates and a chromakey-style superimposed monster image that is thrown in from time to time. Scene construction is so poor that during an exposition scene with the police (who like the rest of the cast look like school chums who showed up for the videotaping with no preparation) there is a sudden fade to black right in the middle of a speech, as if one of the cameramen ran out of tape. No retakes, please.
Late in the picture, several scenes are thoroughly overexposed, but the spoiled footage is included in the final print. Pic's presenter, Howard Willete, uses as comeon a process dubbed "Horror Vision", supposedly the old gimmick of using visual and sound warnings to the audience when they should look away from the screen, but this is just another bad joke.
The frightening thing about "Boardinghouse" is not that it is terrible, but that it opens a Pandora's box for future no-budget, no-effort taped horror films.
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- lor_
- Feb 6, 2023
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- Budget
- $10,000 (estimated)
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