Boldly Borrowing: House III - The Horror Show (1989)
My dear readers, as some of our more devoted members may recall, my sweet Penny Dee and I found ourselves with a spot of trouble in the basement, as there was a bit of piping where one could hear a child’s hushed voice reciting the Lord’s Prayer backwards. While I had every intention of calling a professional to dispel the matter, I must confess that in a fit of manly pride, I became convinced that I was fit for the task myself. With a spanner at my side, I descended into the basement to quash this nuisance with my very own hands. Unfortunately, my efforts thus far only seem to have aggravated the problem and now a whole confounded chorus of children can be heard. While the most sensible approach would be to stuff my pride, hang my head in defeat and phone a plumber, I sense that I might have a more agreeable result if I went at it with a slightly different wrench.
The price is low, but at what cost?
Detective Lucas McCarthy (Lance Henriksen) is also deeply familiar with having problems in the basement. Ever since apprehending Max Jenke (Brion James), a cleaver-wielding serial killer, he has been unable to shake the man’s influence on his slumber and he’s having an absolute dickens of a time getting a proper night’s rest. Lucas’ dreams are beginning to have an undesirable effect on his home life, as he sometimes wakes in the night to discover that he’s strangling his wife. She’s awfully understanding about all this nocturnal throttling, the dependable old gal, but is still suitably concerned about his mental well being. Detective McCarthy hopes that attending Jenke’s pending execution will be just the emotional solvent he needs to put all this ugly business behind him.
Unfortunately, the execution does not prove to be as cathartic as Lucas had hoped. Jenke demonstrates a resistance to lethal amounts of electricity and the the warden is forced to request additional voltage. Even after absorbing a subsequent shock that sautés his epidermis, Jenke is able to tear himself from the electric chair and offer Lucas promises of supernatural retribution. This sight alone might have been unsettling enough to prevent poor Lucas from getting his “forty winks” but it is soon revealed that Max’s threats are far from idle. Though his body is a briquette, his spirit manages to invades the McCarthy’s cellar. From this base of operations, Jenke flares the furnace dramatically, stirs Lucas’ sleep and resumes his habit of hacking people to bits. Detective McCarthy was hardly a portrait of mental stability before his worst adversary transformed into an arc of evil electricity and he has some difficulty convincing those in his professional and personal life that Jenke’s life is far from extinguished.
It is mostly dark meat
As anyone who lived through the glory of the 1980s may recall, the success of one Freddy Krueger was positively inescapable. Obviously, the mass appeal of a mutilated child killer who carries on his black deeds even in death was too great to be denied and a healthy flow of imitations soon followed. The Nightmare on Elm Street series proved to be so successful a formula that Wes Craven himself would plagiarize it for Shocker (1989). But even Freddy Krueger’s creator did not have the audacity to borrow as boldly as the minds behind House III: The Horror Show. Though Jenke only appears fully singed in a few scenes, he is still a scarred maniac with strong furnace ties who manages to haunt the dreams of the living even after being executed and while he doesn’t murder children exclusively, he does decapitate one right before our eyes. If less-than-vigilant viewers fail to see the connection, the helpful tagline, "you'll wish you were back on Elm Street" makes clear the depth of their mimicry.
I, for one, applaud both the audacity of their unlicensed association and the quality of their impersonation. Though I frequently wish myself back on Elm Street, I am more than happy to visit any like-minded locale.
The Horror Show runs 95 minutes and is rated R.
