Comic Statues & Busts: Bowen Angel from Bowen Designs

Between the realms of fantasy and the reality of the american frontier lies miss ryans place a house of seductive ladies and sensuous surroundings. Expert in the pleasures of the flesh these women nettie and katya among them put the wild in the west and a whole lote more. Studio: Lions Gate Home Ent. Release Date: 11/23/1999 Starring: Kelly Mcgillis Bronagh Gallagher

This film is hard to sum up because there is really not a plot, per se. The film follows the lives of prostitutes living in a brothel owned by Brenda Fricker. This is not the brothel of TV westerns, this is a dark, dank place barely lit by candle light in a dingy little ten building frontier town. McGillis plays Nettie, who helps the other prostitutes through their time at Fricker's establishment, as well as the competition down the street. It is implied she performs abortions for unexpected pregnancies. She tries to raise her five year old son in the house, with less than successful results. Eileen is Irish, and befriends German dancer Katya, who replaces Eileen's best friend, who we see murdered in the opening scene. Georgie is the new young prostitute who knows she can do better that this one horse town, and sets out to prove it. Ada is the prostitute with children who is getting older and less desirable to the men.

The entire cast does a fantastic job. Sanders' direction (he also cowrote this) is very intimate wihout being exploitative, except for McGillis' topless scene. The film is sad, without being a complete downer, but you get the idea that this is what the prostitutes went through. The pace seems deliberately slow so we get to know the characters. The pace is a little too slow at times, and a few supporting actors blur in confusion here and there, but Sanders keeps things going.

Despite the stupid title, and cleavage baring video box, this is not something along the lines of "Bad Girls" or "Hard Bounty." This tells a very realistic story of tough lives gone wrong. If anything, it is hard to forget.

This is rated (R) for some physical violence, gun violence, some gore, female nudity, strong sexual content, and strong sexual references.

I only saw the first ten minutes of the movie but that was enough to turn it off, not bother rewinding it, and rush back to the video store to get my money back. Afterwords I read the reviews on imdb.com and thanked the lord I turned off the movie when I did. Avoid this at all costs unless you need to do a thesis on BAD moviemaking. There is no "zero" star rating so it gets a 1.

I just watched this film. It was unrelenting, a story of the rough circumstances prostitutes endured in the West a little more than a century ago. Its a woman's story, almost totally without a male point of view. The men are represented as beings who mostly just mumble and play cards. Their voices are heard often muttering on the soundtrack. We can't make out what they're actually saying. Representing the guys as stick figures helps emphasize in what reduced and lonely circumstances the prostitutes inhabit their dance hall and saloon world. There are no women who are not prostitutes in this early western town. Just as the men have little regard for the women, the women think little of the men. I think this may be a fairly truthful accounting of the West before it was civilized. The film has got me thinking about how desperate male-female relationships may have been in America not all that long ago.

I'm not sure which 80s horror films were being referenced by House of the Devil, but they certainly weren't any of the good ones. While the slow build was a signature style of the 80s, it wasn't as slow as this. Luckily, I rented the DVD and ultimately skipped ahead after waiting about an hour for ANYTHING to happen. This film doesn't build suspense so much as it pretty much kills it entirely. While the retro 80s feel may seem terribly clever by its creators, this film gives classic 80s horror a bad name (though the style of the film leads me to believe the director confused the 70s with the 80s). The cheesy schlock is there, but the pacing and direction are all wrong. It's dull and predictable; the antithesis of suspense. I can only imagine the film is entertaining to those believing they are watching a loving tribute to 80s horror films, but only if they have never actually seen any good 80s horror films. After reading reviews of Ti West's Cabin Fever 2 and Trigger Man, I think it would be wise to add him to my list of directors to avoid.

Its title may make it sound like a low-grade would-be shocker, but writer-director Ti West's "The House of the Devil" marks itself from the beginning as an ideal horror movie for those who are unimpressed by contrived shocks or gratuitous gore but would like to see a film with somewhat believable situations and characters who (mostly) talk and act like real people. It's a rare attempt to take a decidedly sensationalistic subject and approach it in a naturalistic, relatively believable way (granted, "The Omen" took a somewhat similar tack about 35 years ago, but, well, this movie does it better), and West's efficient script and assured direction are enough to further distinguish this movie from the competition. The title and the opening graphics about Satanic cults leave little doubt as to what's coming, but the movie takes its time in revealing the particulars, and does so with a minimum of clunky exposition or backstory (it's not even clear until the very end whether there was any actual supernatural involvement in the film's events). In place of the all-too-common horror-movie trope of obnoxious dolts being picked off one at a time, viewers get a story that, at least until all hell breaks loose in the final act, should actually be pretty relatable for anyone who's ever been young and trapped in a hellish living situation with little means of escape.

Jocelin Donahue makes for a refreshingly normal horror-film protagonist as Samantha, a cute, vaguely tomboyish college sophomore desperate for some quick cash so she can escape from her oversexed roommate and rent her own apartment. A seemingly perfect opportunity arises in the form of a lucrative babysitting gig for the Ullmans, a couple seemingly eager to get out of the house to view the upcoming lunar eclipse, but as is so often the case in horror movies the job isn't what it seems. For one thing, her prospective employers turn out to be the epitome of creepiness, led by Tom Noonan as the imposing, secretive Mr. Ullman. Those who saw Noonan as the bizarre detective on the last two seasons of "Damages" will be familiar with his erratic movements and irregular speech patterns, and here they're combined with a patchy beard and ominous-looking cane to produce a character who manages to be frightening without doing much of anything. And Noonan's character may as well be Mr. Rogers compared to his wife (Mary Woronov), whose brief appearance in the early going is marked by an imperious stare and a demeanor creepy enough to send a less cash-strapped babysitter running for the hills. In the end, Noonan and Woronov both strike a near-perfect balance in their roles--they're spooky enough that viewers in on the story will know there's something up with them, but not so overtly menacing as to make it implausible that Samantha could believe they were merely weird rather than truly nefarious.

Once Samantha inevitably takes the job after some tough negotiations over the price, the movie settles in for an extended stretch devoted more to establishing an eerie atmosphere than to delivering any real scares (with one brief but very notable exception). While some will surely be bored by a middle section that consists largely of Samantha walking (and in one memorable scene, dancing) around the Ullmans' apparently empty dwelling, West does an admirable job of steadily ratcheting up the tension while capturing the inherent scariness of being alone in a spacious, isolated house. The movie does surrender a good deal of its carefully constructed air of mystery with its frenzied, nightmarish climax, but the conclusion is still made all the more effective by the slow buildup preceding it. Suitably, the violence is employed sparingly and almost entirely in the final 15 minutes, with what bloodshed does occur presented in a blunt, unflinching manner that goes well with West's overall minimalist approach.

Given the endless barrage of stupid-looking horror flicks landing in theaters, it's a shame this one didn't make much impact at the box office, but viewers who like their scares delivered intelligently should be sure to check it out. At about 90 minutes it doesn't stick around anywhere near long enough to get boring, and still manages to take its time getting its pieces in place before everything goes to hell (no pun intended). The typical pitfalls of horror cinema--cheap effects, flat characters, brainless dialogue, direction that treats subtlety as an unpardonable crime--are all very little in evidence here, making "The House of the Devil" the rare horror film that should appeal to both enthusiasts of the genre and those who typically avoid it. Injecting a measure of realism into the devil-movie template may seem like a thankless task, but fortunately West and co. turn out to be more than up to it.

The more I think about The House of the Devil, the more I realize what a remarkably clever movie it is. The story is set in the early 1980s, when many Americans were apparently disturbed by the proliferation of Satanic cults supposedly running rampant across the country. Taking his passion for classic horror a step further, writer/director/editor Ti West has painstakingly infused his film (I'm not exactly sure if it's an homage or period piece) with many nostalgic moments including his use of freeze-frame, choice of music, and some great genre faces of the era. House is the tale of a pretty young college student (Jocelin Donahue) who desperate for cash, accepts a babysitting job from a creepy old stranger (the always-wonderful Tom Noonan). Something's not quite right about him though as well as his family and his house, but we don't know exactly what's going on until the very end. This was a great intense and highly suspenseful film, Ti West did a tremendous job of recreating the era down to the most minute detail, from a Walkman the size of a brick to Farrah-feathered hair all the way to those red, waxy Enjoy Coke! fast food cups.

Even the grainy photography, muted palette, and the slight optical jitter of the opening titles are pitch-perfect. West only loses out on complete authenticity in one way, and that's...well, that The House of the Devil is much better than the other modern straight to video horror films that attempt to do the same.The restraint of The House of the Devil impresses me more than just about anything else about it. West's screenplay isn't overwritten or littered with witty dialogue. There aren't any awkward pop culture references to try to sell its early '80s setting. There aren't any cheap jump scares, to the point that someone could watch the overwhelming majority of the film and not clue in that it's a genre piece at all. The House of the Devil is stripped down to bare essentials -- one quietly charming, sympathetic girl stranded in a remote house, unaware how close to death she really is -- and that simplicity is an essential part of its strength. The House of the Devil very easily could have been a trainwreck. This is a movie after all, that revolves around a pretty college girl wandering around a house for something like fifty minutes straight. The first genuine jolt doesn't happen until the 35 minute mark, and it's another half-hour until anything that looks like it might pass for horror crops up. The House of the Devil is so exceptionally well-crafted and perfectly cast that it's eerie and unnerving even without much of anything happening. Ti West states in one of his audio commentaries on this disc that it's more of a mystery than a traditional horror flick, and that's very much the approach the film takes. Of course there's going to be an attack by some sort of Satanic cult -- otherwise, why would there be a card at the beginning that spouts off statistics about all that? but The House of the Devil is much more fascinated with the build-up than the inevitable release.

This is just a masterfully crafted film, horror or otherwise, on every level. It's a horror/suspense movie that could very easily be mistaken for something shot in 1982 yet never devolves into a caricature. The House of the Devil is engrossing and unnerving despite its minimal dialogue and disinterest in overt scares, there was some gore but it didn't start until the very end. The cinematography, sound design and especially the score are all outstanding. There's not a weak link or misstep anywhere along the line really. Viewers who are more used to the Saw sequels and desaturated shakycam flicks might be bored with it, but for those of us who grew up with atmospheric, suspenseful horror like The Changeling (a long-time favorite of mine and one of the touchstones pointed to in the extras). The House of the Devil really does look terrific on Blu-ray it opens up the mattes slightly to reveal an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, and the film and its extras fit comfortably on a single-layer Blu-ray disc. House also sport 16-bit, six-channel DTS-HD Master Audio, and it sounds incredible. Also included are a stereo PCM track and subtitles in English and Spanish. As for the extras, Ti West joins his star for a semi-serious audio commentary, then returns for a more irreverent track with producers Larry Fessenden and Peter Phok and sound designer Graham Reznick. Three deleted scenes are presented in high definition, totaling about seven minutes. "In The House of the Devil" is really just a lot of production footage edited together with no narration, 13-and-a-half minutes, in standard def. "Behind The House of the Devil" (five minutes, HD) is a more focused look behind the scenes, compiling interviews with the cast and director. this easily ranks as one of the most exceptional horror movies of recent memory. The House of the Devil also looks and sounds fantastic on Blu-ray, and both of its audio commentaries are essential listens and is a movie that screams out to be discovered. Highly Recommended!.

This movie is obviously low budget, but it's actually really impressive! The suspense builds throughout the movie, for a pretty decent ending. I am a horror movie junkie, and I really enjoyed it.

I thought this film was worth watching simply because it brings back that 80's horror genre feel. It is slow. I however enjoyed the story and acting was decent. Worth renting for sure :)