Boardinghouse (1982)

Boardinghouse (1982) is frequently touted as being the first horror movie to have been shot entirely on video.  It shows.  Not only is it incredibly cheaply made, with a no-name cast and terrible script, but it also features various video effects to indicate the presence of a murderous paranormal force and computer screen text to carry various plot points.  The film tries to combine elements from a number of horror sub-genres, encompassing themes from haunted house thrillers and slasher movies, before finally lurching into a no-budget version of The Fury (1978) for a conclusion.  I recall the horror writer Ramsey Campbell describing his experience of watching direct-to-video movies that were so bad that it was impossible to watch them in one continuous sitting - you have to break every twenty minutes or so and do some vacuuming or ironing in order to maintain your sanity, they are so excruciating.  Well, Boardinghouse falls into this category - I lost count of how often my attention wandered and I had to wind back in order to pick up the plot again.  Anyway, the plot is simple: young dude inherits a house infamous the number of murders, suicides and unexplained deaths that have occurred there over the years and decides to let it out to boarders - beautiful female boarders - who end up being murdered in various bizarre ways.  On top of this, the young dude is experimenting with developing paranormal powers, most specifically telekinesis - he sits cross legged on the desk of his office, in only his Y-fronts, practicing his ESP meditation, while the original owners of the property were ESP researchers.  Of course, it turns out that one of the boarders - the one living in the attic - is actually the unhinged daughter of the researchers, herself possessed of psychic powers, out to reclaim the property she believes is rightfully hers of interlopers, using her powers to kill.  Inevitably, it climaxes in a deeply unimpressive psychic showdown between her and the hero and one of the boarders he has been training in ESP.  

Like many such bottom-of-barrel low budget epics, Boardinghouse was something of a pet project for its instigators - John and Kalassu Wintergate, with John Wintergate writing, directing and starring (under a fake name), with Kalassu Wintergate playing the heroine.  Produced for around $10,000 and shot mainly in one location, the resulting film is predictably terrible, confusingly constructed, abysmally acted and poorly shot. A multitude of sub-plots ultimately go nowhere and, in truth, little of interest ever really happens.  Even when something does happen, it is so poorly and cheaply staged that it has no impact whatsoever.  Now, to be absolutely fair, the film was apparently originally written and shot as a horror comedy, but the original distributor wanted a straight horror movie and had as much of the humour as possible cut.  Which probably explains the finished film's extremely odd and uneven feel, with obviously comedic characters turning up at disconcerting moments for no apparent reason and various events unfolding in the most ludicrous ways - a cop character, for instance, becomes possessed at a party at the house, randomly shoots a guest, then himself, with nobody seemingly noticing for several hours.  Unfortunately, there's nothing in the surviving comedic sequences to suggest that Boardinghouse would have been any more effective as a comedy, but the wholesale re-editing does, at least, explain the film's disjointed feel and underlying air of absurdity.  While the film exists in various different edits of varied running times there is, incredibly, a 157 minute 'director's cut' in existence.  I can only imagine that this is the video played to visitors to those Swiss euthanasia clinics - long before the 157 minutes are up, any doubts about ending their lives will have vanished and they'll be begging to drink that lethal cocktail...