Text © Richard Gary / Indie Horror Films, 2016
Images from the Internet
House of Forbidden Secrets
Written, filmed, directed and edited by Todd
Sheets
Extreme
Entertainment / BD Productions / Full Moon Productions /Unearthed Films / MVD Entertainment
93
minutes, 2014
Although
this film was released less than three years before
the last one I saw by the director, Dreaming
Purple Neon (reviewed HERE), I watched this one shortly after it, and it was interesting to see the
differences, and especially the similarities.
Even at
this point, Sheets is not new to the director’s table, and that experience and
know-how shows, even with a micro-budget. Yeah, this is VHS-1980s-type fare,
but it is also no surprise that this has been accepted and shown at dozens of
festivals in its nearly four years of existence.
 |
| Antwoine Steele |
The story starts
with it being Jacob Hunt’s (Sheets go-to guy, Antwoine Steele) first day on the
job at an office building as a night security guard. Meanwhile, in one of the
rooms, a medium named Cassie Traxler (Nicole Santorella) is holding a benign séance
to bring back the spirit of a customer’s husband. Instead, she manages to
unleash the evil spirit of a demonic priest (the excellent Lew Temple, who has
been in a slew of stuff, including The
Devil’s Rejects, 31, and a run on The
Walking Dead) and the restless souls of those he has killed.
By Cassie’s
action, the building’s basement has now turned into the stomping ground of the
murdered and angry spirits of a 1930s brothel which we see in flashbacks, that
was run by a couple played by the one and only Dyanne Thorne (here not-ironically
named after one of her most famous characters in 1977’s Greta, the Mad Butcher, and her husband, Klaus (Howard Maurer,
Thorne’s real-life husband). This is Thorne’s first role in nearly a quarter
century, and it’s great to see her in all her eye-raising, inconsistent accent
acting. This may sound like I’m being negative, but she is amazing and an
important touchstone in modern horror history. Plus, she’s still lovely at 70
years old; the Las Vegas air has done her well. As a side note, when I met her
in the early ‘90s at a Chiller Theatre in New Jersey, she was very open and
sweet.
So our two
main characters and a bunch of others (i.e., the fodder), such as the building
maintenance guy, a film crew, and Cassie’s assistant, go a-roaming through the
endless basement, picked off one by one in a number of gruesome manners, including
crucifixion.
Actually,
there is a lot of religious overtones throughout the film, including a lustful
and murderous priest, and the psychic can be seen as sort of the flip slide of
the Christian dogma, but still being a kind-hearted person, i.e., it can be interpreted
as someone Christian may be “evil, and another who is pagan can be “good.” Personally,
I believe this is a positive thing, because in my book, dogma (formalized
religion), especially in today’s Trump-ified United States, shows that belief
does not necessarily = peace and love. While I don’t know what the director had
in mind, that’s what I read into it.
This
certainly is a nicely wet picture,
with a few wonderful moments of explicit gore, including a face dismantling, and much of
it appears to be appliances. In one of the differences between this and the
later film, there is less of a latex look here to the visceral shenanigans and,
well, is that the same large intensive? I ask that as a hypothetical question. There
is some female nudity, usually with blood splashed on the breasts, but no male,
though there are all gendered bits in the later film.
As for similarities
between the two pictures, well there definitely are some story motifs that
overlap. I’m not implying that one is a remake, or that there is a rip-off,
just some interesting turns in an auteur kind of way. For example, both
buildings (shot in the same complex,
by the way) have unending basements that hold terrors of malevolent and demonous
denizens, with a group of fodderites trying to find a way out. And this may be
a bemused stretch, but they also both have a strong character whose last name
is Cane/Kane.
 |
| Nicole Santorella |
The acting
here is pretty decent, with the zaftig Santorella leading the way. Okay, occasionally
there’s the over emphasis here and
there, but the cast fares really well. It’s amazing the difference in
characters played by Steele here and in Dreaming
Purple Neon. The hammiest role award, however, definitely has to go to
Lloyd Kaufman in one of his typical vested (does he own any other clothes?)
rants, even though this one is “drunken.” Lloyd is always a hoot as the buffoon
and humor content, and I hope he keeps on doing it, and there are a couple of nice
quick nods to The Toxic Avenger included.
I’m just shocked that if Lloyd is here, where is Debbie Rochon? But I digress…
There is an abundance of cameos here
that is quite impressive, such as the aforementioned Thorne and Temple, and
then there’s the likes of Ari Lehman (the first Jason Voorhees, as a kid), George Hardy from Trolls 2 (1990), and Allan
Kayser (from 1986’s Night of the Creeps
and TV’s “Mama’s Family”).
The
lighting is just right, which is no small thing, as I’ve seen too many films
that take place in suspicious and dangerous places where it’s so dark, you lose
the action: “Wait, I know there’s something happening, but what the heck, it’s
hard to see!” Here it’s pretty clear from beginning to end. The basement set
design is also quite well done.
But the
most important thing these two have in common, however, is that they are both
incredibly watchable and damn good fun.
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