{"id":11236,"date":"2025-02-27T00:27:11","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T05:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=11236"},"modified":"2025-02-27T00:27:11","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T05:27:11","slug":"house-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/02\/27\/house-iv\/","title":{"rendered":"House IV"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"House IV<\/strong> (1992)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Line\/Comedy-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 94 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language and horror\/fantasy violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lewis Abernathy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Geof Miller and Deirdre Higgins\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Harry Manfredini\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: James Mathers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 29, 1992 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Terri Treas, Scott Burkholder, Denny Dillon, Melissa Clayton, Dabbs Greer, Ned Romero, Ned Bellamy, John Santucci, Mark Gash, Paul Keith, William Katt.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0House IV<\/strong> marks a return to form for the comedic horror series after the more serious third entry which was released as The Horror Show (1989) in the US and House III in all other countries. It\u2019s the only installment that has anything to do with any of the other entries. Up until this fourth movie, they\u2019ve all been standalone films with each one centering on a different house and set of characters. It\u2019s the first one not to play theatrically (it went straight to video) and the last one in the series. Now that you\u2019re up to speed, let\u2019s proceed with the review.<\/p>\n

\u00a0House IV<\/strong> is a direct sequel (sort of) to the first House with William Katt (The Greatest America Hero) reprising his role as author Roger Cobb. Funny he never mentions his previous supernatural experiences to his new family, wife Kelly (Treas, The Terror Within) and teen daughter Laurel (Clayton). He never mentions his ex-wife and son from the first House either. And what about the old haunted house he inherited from his aunt? What happened to it? It\u2019s almost like the first movie never happened [cue Twilight Zone music].<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the here and now of House IV<\/strong>, Roger has a stepbrother Burke (Burkholder, Steel and Lace) who\u2019s been trying to convince him to sell their late father\u2019s old house to some shady types. Roger can\u2019t bear to part with it and the memories it holds. Obviously, there\u2019s a little…. okay, a lot more to it, but that\u2019s not important right now. I\u2019ll circle back to this.<\/p>\n

\u00a0While driving home after a weekend at the house, the Cobb family gets into a terrible car accident. Roger dies after being taken off life support and Laurel ends up in a wheelchair paralyzed from the waist down. Kelly decides the best thing for her and her daughter is to move into the old house and start over. They settle in without cleaning the place first. I can only surmise Kelly\u2019s going for a haunted house aesthetic with all the dust and cobwebs.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Their moving in, of course, pisses off Burke. He assumed the house was his after his stepbrother\u2019s death. I don\u2019t think this guy knows how estate laws work. In any event, he needs to find a way to get them out of the house fast or else he\u2019ll be in big trouble with the midget mob boss Mr. Grosso (Gash, To Live and Die in L.A.) looking to obtain the property with the intention of using it as an illegal toxic waste dumping site for his factory. Ah, okay. This explains the two goons that Burke always hangs around with.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Of course, supernatural stuff starts happening. A dog lamp comes to life to protect Laurel from masked intruders. A pizza becomes something scarier than the nasty anchovies on it. Laurel\u2019s mattress eats her in front of her horrified mom. Also, there\u2019s something a little off about the new housekeeper Verna Klump (Dillon, Saturday Night Fever). She\u2019s unusually interested in what\u2019s going on in the house.<\/p>\n

\u00a0So what\u2019s the deal with this house? Maybe it has something to do with it being built on sacred Native American ground? There\u2019s a spring with healing powers running beneath the house. That\u2019s why Roger and his father before him refused to sell. Now Kelly has spirits trying to warn her about Burke and his evil scheme. Among the spirits is….. oh, come on! Do I really need to say? You know this.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by one-timer Lewis Abernathy (co-writer of DeepStar Six), House IV<\/strong> is entertaining but uneven. It tells an okay haunted house story that sometimes veers into the absurdly comic with characters like Mr. Grosso who comes off more like a freak show attraction than a villain to be feared. In addition to his small stature, he has an issue with phlegm clogging his lungs. It\u2019s bad enough to warrant the use of a vacuum machine (\u201cThe Phleg-matic\u201d) to get it all out. Now get this. The sadistic little creep forces people to drink the gross stuff in order to show who\u2019s boss. YUCK!<\/p>\n

\u00a0The true centerpiece, however, is the pizza with the talking face in the center. It\u2019s brought to the house by a delivery guy who dazzles mother and daughter with a song-and-dance called \u201cI\u2019m Your Pizza Man\u201d before relinquishing the pie. When Kelly sees that their dinner is alive (and singing the annoying Pizza Man jingle), she goes all Norman Bates on it, stabbing it furiously before stuffing it down the garbage disposal. She then tells her grossed-out daughter, \u201cThere! No more anchovies!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0Let\u2019s talk about the daughter Laurel for a moment. She gets around in an ancient wooden wheelchair that looks like it was salvaged from the set of 1980\u2019s The Changeling. She\u2019s supposed to be 12YO. The actress playing her, the late Melissa Clayton who died of melanoma in 2017, was around 19 at the time of filming. I never would have guessed she was that old. It\u2019s weird how much she looks like a preteen. It\u2019s weirder that she and her mother manage to get that big clunky wheelchair up and down the stairs. I don\u2019t see a stair lift anywhere.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I wouldn\u2019t say the acting in House IV<\/strong> is bad. I definitely wouldn\u2019t call it good either. The word I\u2019m looking for is otherworldly, an adjective that also applies to some of the goings-on- e.g. the scene where Burke finally gets his comeuppance at the end. That is truly freaking bizarre! Back to the acting, it\u2019s passable, but the characters always seem one step removed from reality. The plumber (Keith, The Last American Virgin) who shows up to check the pipes is like a visitor from another realm. There\u2019s also a Native American, a family friend named Ezra (Romero, Hang \u2018Em High), on hand to lay some NA mumbo-jumbo on Kelly when she needs answers. Okay, he\u2019s more of a clich\u00e9 than anything else, but he fits right in with the rest of the weirdness. The most bizarre performance comes from Burkholder. He\u2019s like a parody of a bad guy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I will say House IV<\/strong> has an interesting cast. Dabbs Greer, who played Reverend Alden on Little House on the Prairie, shows up for one scene playing Kelly\u2019s concerned dad. Denny Dillon was one of the cast members on the disastrous 1980-81 season of SNL. Ned Bellamy, who plays one of Burke\u2019s goons, is one of those actors whose face you recognize but can\u2019t quite place. He\u2019s played small roles in several films and TV shows, but he\u2019s probably best known for playing Guard Youngblood in The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Dr. Tom Mason (Bela Lugosi\u2019s \u201cdouble\u201d) in Ed Wood (1994). As for William Katt, he\u2019s not in it all the much, but he does fine with his limited screen time. Treas is also fine as the widow dealing with more than a disabled child and a**hole brother-in-law.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I saw House IV<\/strong> way back in \u201992 when it hit video stores with no fanfare. I thought it was okay, but never felt compelled to watch it again until now. I\u2019m a completist as you all know. I reviewed the first three House movies. It wouldn\u2019t have been fair not to do the fourth and final one as well. I didn\u2019t mind watching it. It\u2019s more or less on par with the first two movies. The special effects look just as cheap and cheesy. You can\u2019t take a single bit of it seriously. It\u2019s amusing and not the least bit scary. It\u2019s weird is what it is. Is that such a bad thing?\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House IV (1992)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New Line\/Comedy-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 94 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language and horror\/fantasy violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lewis Abernathy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Geof Miller and Deirdre Higgins\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Harry Manfredini\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: James Mathers\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 29, 1992 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Terri Treas, Scott Burkholder, Denny Dillon, Melissa Clayton, Dabbs Greer, Ned Romero, Ned Bellamy, John Santucci, Mark Gash, Paul […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11262,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/House-IV-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11236"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11264,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11236\/revisions\/11264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}