Red-Band Trailer for DEATH HOUSE Brings Together Horror Movie Icons for Absolute Insanity
This weekend I went to the Son of Monsterpalooza horror convention and attended a panel for a new horror movie coming out called Death House, and this movie looks absolutely insane!
The movie was directed by B. Harrison Smith, who says that he made Death House as a way to help reinvigorate the horror genre. He's an ambitious guy who hopes the film will be a cultural timepiece for the genre. The team behind the film didn't set out to make a cheap-ass horror film for the sake of making a cheap-ass horror film. They wanted to make something great, something that hardcore horror fans would respect and appreciate. The movie is also packed full of horror movie Easter eggs.
Dee Wallace (E.T., Cujo, The Hollowing) is one of the film's stars, and she says that Death House is one of the most unique horror film projects that she's ever been a part of. SHe's been in a lot of horror films over the years, so that's saying something.
The director went on to reveal that this is the first in a series of five Death House movies that they want to make. The script for the film was written by the late Gunnar Hansen, who is best known for playing Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films.
The cast of the film also includes Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street), Kane Hodder (Friday the 13th), Doug Bradley (Hellraiser), Bill Moseley (House of a 1000 Corpses), Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes), Danny Trejo (Machete), Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator), Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead), Don Shanks (Silent Night Deadly Night), and Camille Keaton (I Spit on Your Grave). That's largest collection of horror actors in a single film.
Here’s the detailed synopsis for the film:
The Death House is the Area 51 of Evil… a subterranean government facility that holds humanity’s worst on nine levels. Hell, Dante’s ninth level, holds the Five Evils… the “dark stars” of Death House. These individuals are so heinous they can never walk among society again. They may also be supernatural.
Agents Toria Boon and Jae Novak have their own dark pasts, arriving at Death House to tour its levels and observe its denizens first-hand as well as the medical and mental experiments of Drs. Eileen Fletcher and Karen Redmane. Their depraved experiments date back to the Nazi doctors of WWII.
Prison cells are virtual reality holo decks that recreate prisoner environments before they were incarcerated. A special hallucinogenic gas keeps inmates under control. The victims are homeless, bused into Death House to play literal victims while killing habits are studied. The results are sick, but only a hint of what goes on here.
Hell literally breaks loose inside the facility when an EMP device detonates, killing all power and communication and… releasing every prisoner. Boon, Novak, and Fletcher are caught in a race against advancing prisoner hordes led by occultist Neo-Nazi Sieg. The monsters are freed, and they’re going down.
Boon and Novak’s fight through Death House turns into a house of horrors gauntlet; their only hope of escape is descending into Hell and enlisting the help of the Five Evils. Events culminate in a violent face-to-face standoff with absolute evil… only to find that they have traveled down a rabbit hole and through a looking glass. Black is white and white is black and the definitions of good and evil no longer apply.
Who are the monsters? Who will escape?
Hansen's final wish before he passed away was to get Death House made, and they did it. The movie is described as having an '80s horror film tone, and it's explained that this isn't a mashup of these actors' onscreen personas, "rather it is a fresh horror/sci fi/action story that dares to be different and give audiences something new in an age of reboots, remakes, and regurgitation."
There's no release date for the film yet, but as a fan of the horror genre, I can't wait to see it!