Bezenby This one isn't too bad per se, it's an anthology film with five stories, most of which zip by fairly quickly. The real problem is that the stories are barely there at all! A guy's been knocking boots with another man's woman and heads off to find his hotel, only to find himself at a morgue run by a bad actor. Within, he finds the coroner telling stories relating to the corpse he holds there. Sounds like a good set-up, but...well, most of the stories aren't any good at all. The first is concerned with a woman who hates kids, who then finds her home attacked with deformed kid monsters. Good for atmosphere, but I've just described the story fully with one sentence.The next describes a guy who kills women on camera and gets caught. That's the plot. Don't get confused.The third is actually not too bad. Two criminologists try and outwit each other. I'll leave it at that, as this one actually has a plot, of sorts.Number four makes even less sense. A chug nut gets trapped in a room and hooked on booze. That's...uh...the plot...Story five is what happens to the cuckolder. I'll leave it up to you to imagine what happens to him...The things is, the movie ain't terrible. It kept me going, and it did have atmosphere at several points. It's watchable enough, but your not going to be declaring this to be any more than the fluff it is. Watch it if you get desperate one night. It won't offend you.

bkoganbing After a quick night of kanoodling with mistress Leslie Paxton, John Ericson is caught out in the rain, but kindly old mortician Ivor Francis allows him to get out of the cold and wet while he tells him job stories. And for Francis, being a mortician is a job he relishes.The title Alien Zone is quite the misnomer because there are no creatures from another planet in this film. Unless you consider the perceptive Francis from another world. Because what Francis does is show him four coffins with bodies inside and tells him about how all of them got there. Apparently no one who is a client at the Francis Funeral Home ever died a really natural death.The stories are of an uneven quality, the best being the third one which involves a couple of vain police inspectors, Charles Aidman and Bernard Fox, each thinking he's the world's best detective. The dialog is really good in that story. The others involve Judith Novgrod as a reclusive school teacher who hates kids, Burr DeBenning as a psychotic murderer, and Richard Gates as a selfish yuppie. They all get a good comeuppance in the end.Despite a misleading title Alien Zone is not a bad anthology film and how does Ericson and his story fit into all this. Not really hard to figure out even if you don't see the film.

Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic) I still remember seeing this as a teenager on late nite Creature Feature when in an altered frame of mind and being totally freaked out by what now watching as an adult is a pretty interesting 1970's Amercian made "Anthology Horror" bit -- Which I saw in the form known as HOUSE OF THE DEAD. And, amazingly, a budget line DVD company called Treeline Films has a nice little tape sourced $5 DVD release of the film for sale as part of their "Chills Pack" collection. It's worth a look.Made in 1978 by a woman director named Sharon Miller (who had begun her career as an assistant editor on some of Ralph Bakshi's films & would later direct countless episodes of shows like KNOTTS LANDING and BAYWATCH), HOUSE OF THE DEAD has a decidedly "Made for TV" movie feel to it even though I have been assured that it did play theatrically & is endowed with an MPAA rating for some violence. Treeline's DVD appears to feature an edited for TV full frame version which does look edited for content in a couple of spots with violence though it's nudity-free & relatively staid demeanor as a film speaks to me of what might have been a failed TV pilot episode.The film is made up of four stories linked together by a central piece about a philandering husband (John Ericson, who looks familiar) who gets lost on his way back to his hotel from his mistresses' house while in an unfamiliar city for a plumbing convention. Right. Through a series of mishaps too mundane to outline, Ericson finds himself brought in from the rain by a man who turns out to be a mortician, played by ubiquitous 70's & 80's television character actor Ivor Francis, who's sleepy, macabre demeanor is the film's most redeeming quality. I always loved him on BARNEY MILLER, and his presence also underscores the "TV friendly" nature of the production. Francis proceeds to relate four stories about the occupants of four caskets in his parlor, each of which has a "Poetic Justice" twist ending that is very reminiscent of Rod Serling's NIGHT GALLERY series.And like NIGHT GALLERY the stories shown are more sort of macabre fables on human qualities by shorthand sketches of characters who might deserve having something horrible happen to them in a way of having the world pay them back for being such insufferable bastards. The first sketch is probably the most "horrifying" in the traditional sense, with a shrew-like schoolteacher literally haunted in her own home by mutant green lighted children who appear with Halloween masks on their faces in the film's single best image. Watching her scurry around like a frightened rodent with her hair mussed under a cap from an aborted shower is actually quite amusing, though the absence of a proper "splatter" conclusion for the piece is disappointing -- Even though director Miller does go all out for the 70's Psychedelic Effect during certain scenes, and I can easily see how it blew my mind. Like, wow.Part two is also an interesting quasi-horror bit that anticipated HENRY - A PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, Buffalo Bill from THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and every other personable serial killer while ripping off PEEPING TOM in presenting us with the ironically amusing tale of a young schlep who invites young women over to his very neat bachelor pad where he murders them while filming the fun on a camera that he, his victims and the police all address at various times. It is short, funny and to the point, though it really isn't that scary, with the most interesting quality being that it is all shot from the single, unmoving perspective of the murder camera. Part three is the best acted section, telling the tale of two world class criminologists (played by likewise ubiquitous 70s/80s character actors Charles Aidman and Edward Fox) who pit their wits against each other in a deadly game of detective work, that while not that exciting gets the job done in padding out the length of the whole film to feature form & maintaining our interest with a clever little story. I definitely got a bang out of the end.The last section is the one that really freaked me out and why I sought the film out at all: An office worker Ebenezer Scrooge type who thinks everyone else is an annoying time waster gets subjected to a bizarre series of psychological tortures after wandering into a vacant store and falling into a trap -- Just who puts him through his ordeal is never revealed, but at the end he emerges as a disheveled street person. I'm not sure exactly just what lesson was supposed to be learned, but then again I am not sure exactly what the motivation for the entire movie was, and hence the suspicion that it was a TV pilot for a related series (possibly intended to be called ALIEN ZONE) that was aborted, and the whole thing was shoved onto movie screens instead as HOUSE OF THE DEAD in an effort to tap into the LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT infamy, still quite potent in 1978.I am honestly not sure what to make of the film as a single piece and can understand why some of the other commenter's may have objected strongly to the film -- It seems to exist without real purpose, not being frightening enough to really be called "horror" and too bizarre, warped & twisted to be thought of as standard drama. I "like" the movie because of my personal history & how it intersected with me at the right moment, stuck with me for two decades after wards, and now seeing it as an adult find it to be interesting enough to watch again and write about. If that doesn't qualify a film for some sort of cult status I have no idea what would.

Mister-6 I have completely had it: from now on, I WILL NOT judge a movie by a cool cover."Alien Zone" (or "House of the Dead") has so many things wrong with it that a review tends to become a list on poor movie qualities. I'll try and resist the temptation and continue.First of all, why it's called "Alien Zone" I have no idea; there are no aliens in it and the only thing alien about it is the notion that the people involved thought that it had any entertainment value.The plot (snicker, laugh) details a mortician's stories about the individuals who reside in his velvet Eterna-loungers. The stories themselves (mean teacher, snotty office worker, rival spies, etc.) are not in any ways or means interesting, scary or even creepy. They're just...there. And even Fox (Dr. Bombay! Dr. Bombay!) contributes little to nothing. There's less irony than there is dead weight (sorry, couldn't help myself).Avoid this movie. Don't watch it, don't glance at it, don't even look at the cover in your video store. And if your video store has any copies of "Alien Zone", petition them to get rid of it as soon as possible. Get an act of Congress passed to take it off the shelves of every store in the world before future generations have to endure it.Go on, be a hero.No stars. There isn't enough money in the world to make me give even 1/4 of a star to this travesty. That Elvira showed it on TV is bad enough. She should be ashamed. I know I would be.