Plot: In a shotgun marriage of Halloween, Carrie
and The Amityville Horror, the
1982 horror cash-in Boardinghouse
records the strange goings-on at arguably the most cursed ranch house in Los
Angeles County. As the opening crawl explains, not so long ago a pair of
married Nobel Prize winners—"leading authorities on
telekinesis"—were found dead on night of their 16th
anniversary party. Their daughter was at the scene, and apparently so
traumatized that she had to be committed. Some years later, right around the
time that the daughter is due to be released from the nut-hatch, the old house
becomes the residence of a group of starlets looking for a place to crash at
night after days spent on "jaunts around the casting couch." Paying the rent
for the ladies? A craggy-faced dude with terminal '80s hair (played by the
director, John Wintergate), who spends his downtime sitting around in his
underwear, honing his psychic powers.
The house also comes with a weirdo Vietnam vet gardener
(also played by Wintergate), who's "not used to women" but wouldn't hurt a
fly. ("A fly? No," one of the
ladies protests. "Us? Maybe.") Harmless or not, the gardener may be the worst
Tom Waits impersonator ever.
But a mumbling, skittish groundskeeper is hardly the worst
of the housemates' problems. Though none of them ever remark on it, they and
every single one of their visitors seem to be constantly fleeing levitating
weapons, often while semi-nude. The body count reaches its peak at a big pool
party, featuring the smokin' hot rock band 33 1/3 (an actual band, fronted by
Wintergate's wife and Boardinghouse's
female lead, the single-named Kalassu). After much eye-clawing and gut-gouging,
one of the nubile young actresses reveals herself as the recently freed
daughter of the Nobel Prize winners, and subsequently devastates a showbiz
bigwig with the power of her fakey accent.
Key scenes: It's hard to decide which of Boardinghouse's many outlandish scenes of scantily clad ladies
covered in fake blood is its best, but it's hard to top the first of many
shower scenes (complete with leg-shaving for added verisimilitude), which ends
with the shower-ee getting so freaked out by the blood dripping from the walls
that she thrusts her breasts into the shower door a few times, then imagines
she's been turned into a pig-woman.
The rest of Boardinghouse's best scenes involve Wintergate and Kalassu's
dabbling in telekinesis, whether it be Wintergate showing off the old floating
soap trick…
…or Kalassu using mind
control to retrieve some yogurt from the fridge.
The two dabblers in the dark
arts are so simpatico that it's only natural that they end up together in the
shower, having some of the most unconvincing simulated sex ever shot (while the
true villain plots a cat sacrifice in a few awkward cutaways).
Can easily be
distinguished by: Aside from the
cruddy image—shot on videotape—Boardinghouse makes sloppy use of its "Horror Vision" gimmick,
which occasionally (but not always) inserts an image of a formless blob on the
screen before anything awful happens.
Boardinghouse also sports an odd editing structure that allows for
unconnected blackout gags, like this wacky golf routine:
Sign that it was made in
1982: The opening and closing crawls
are presented as blocky text on a computer—a computer responding to the
command "Run Case File."
Timeless message: This about sums it up:
Memorable quotes: When Wintergate asks his lounging ladies what they
want for dinner, they all adopt a taunting voice, and yell "Chicken chow mein!"
in unison. That may be the creepiest moment in the movie.
Available on DVD from Code Red