If there's something strange in Jason (Mike Horner) and Terry's (Tamara Longley) new house, who are they gonna call? Gina (Cindy Carver), Krensky (John Seeman), and Abigail (Jill Ferari)! Unfortunately for the haunted homeowners in House of Strange Desires, the ghosts decidedly do not get busted.
While there are some "first draft" shortcomings of the script (mostly that there's no clear origin, reason, or motivation for the malevolent spirits, almost certainly misidentified as paranormal/occult expert Krensky as a succubus), to the movie's benefit, (co)writer, director, producer Lawrence T Cole resisted the urge to lean on camp or comedy and kept the tone earnest, which made for some charming laugh-out-loud moments that can only come from movies like The Room or Miami Connection that don't come at the viewer with any winks or nods. There were also a few great details, like the spirit(s) only manifesting in physical form after being drawn by Jason's semi-possessed hand and the use of sheer fabric to denote the barrier between the tangible and spectral realms.
About halfway through the movie, something about the setting and interaction between Jason and Terry reminded me of Dangerous Desires which, turns out, was also a Cole picture. [Writing this now also brought to attention Cole's apparent passion for putting "desire" in titles: Challenge of Desire (1982), Forbidden Desire (1983), House of Strange Desires (1985), and Dangerous Desires (1982).] Both films have an undercurrent of melodrama (though in Dangerous Desires, that shit's turned up to 11). I wonder if Cole started making more serious porn explicitly or implicitly to atone for his early, much sleazier career. Either way, movies like this sort of explain how he segued into the writer's room on the final season of Dynasty.
Let's see if Rimmer provides an Collector's Choice reasoning:
The story could have been made much scarier, but Tamara is so pretty you wouldn't want anything really bad to happen to her.
That's the only subjective sentence in his review, and sheds absolutely no light on why a collector should choose it. At least he didn't make in any glaring errors, so that's something.
Look, House of Strange Desires isn't going to blow anyone's mind, but the rough edges gave it a lot of character and it would be a great pick for a Midnight Movie viewing. CC50
° Some "six degrees of"-esque musings on Cole's "Desire Suite". In addition to this movie, Ken Scudder and Mike Horner were in Challenge of...; Ken Scudder (again), Jesse Adams, John Seeman, and Jonathan Younger were in Forbidden...; and Gail Sterling was in Dangerous....
° Tracey Adams starred in Dangerous Desires and was also in Visions of Jeannie. Tamara Longely was also in it. It's not a Cole film, but a sort of spiritual sister - no pun intended - to House of Strange Desires. Visions has a far superior original song, for what it's worth.
° I would like to know who did Jason's drawings. They're really good!
° I was very surprised that while The Rialto Report post about Bob Wolfe's studio mentioned loops generally and Linda Lovelace specifically, there mas no mention of his part in making the infamous Dogarama.
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On deck:
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