Review: Boardinghouse (1982)

Directed by: John Wintergate
Starring: John Wintergate, Kalassu, Alexandra Day
Written by: John Wintergate
Music by: 33 1/3, Kalassu, Teeth
Country: United States
Available on: Blu-ray (AGFA/Bleeding Skull!)
IMDb

Boardinghouse is an astounding film for plenty of reasons, none of which are related to the quality of the filmmaking. The sheer narcissism from writer, director, star, special effects artist, and rock star John Wintergate that’s funneled into this project is impressive. It seems created entirely as an excuse for Wintergate to flash some abs, don a speedo, and hang out with naked chicks, one of whom is his wife, Kalassu Wintergate, which is considerate. The two of them are the core of the band 33 1/3 (also, Lightstorm), who provide the film’s soundtrack (which is pretty killer, actually). Sort of incidentally, though very significant historically, Boardinghouse was the first horror film shot on video, opening the gates to a vomitorium of homemade splatter and slum-horror in the ‘80s and early ‘90s.

The movie has a plot, sort of: There’s a boarding house at which a lot of mysterious deaths have occurred, which has been commandeered by the nephew of one of the decedents (played by Wintergate) who’s obsessed with telekinesis. He invites a bunch of aspiring actresses over to murderbait-and-chill. There’s a detective investigating and there’s a random woman (who’s allegedly British) whose sudden appearance kicks off a series of whoopsie-daisies of the bloody kind.

As is generally the case with flicks like this, most of the screen time is people standing around bullshitting between non-sequiturs, punctuated by sequences of “HORROR VISION!” in which someone dies in a storm of reddened corn syrup and animal innards. There’s lots of loudness to be found, via a clickity-clacking computer that narrates the proceedings on occasion, some bleep-bloop sound effects as kills unfurl, endless scream loops, throbs, whooshes — stuff like that. There are nightmare visions of butchered pig heads. There’s a climactic battle between telekenetics that’s essentially a Whitesnake music video.

Supposedly, Boardinghouse was intended as a horror-comedy, but the distributor insisted the comedy be cut. It takes an imagination beyond the human brain’s capacity to envision this as premeditatedly funny. It seems more feasible that once Wintergate started showing his poorly realized ego-child to pals, he decided the familiar “gosh darn producer interference” story better explained what the fuck this is.

Overall rating: 6.5 out of 10