''The House Where Evil Dwells'' is a 1982 American-Japanese

horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...

starring Edward Albert, Susan George and

Doug McClure Douglas Osborne McClure (May 11, 1935February 5, 1995) was an American actor whose career in film and television extended from the 1950s to the 1990s. He is best known for his role as the cowboy Trampas during the entire run from 1962 to 1971 ...

about an American family that moves into a reputed haunted house in the hills of Japan. It was directed by Kevin Connor and produced by Martin B. Cohen. It was based on a novel by James Hardiman and turned into a screenplay by Robert Suhosky.

Plot

In 1840, in the rural and wooded hillside region of Kushiata near Kyoto, Japan, a samurai, named Shigero, comes home to find his wife, Otami, in bed with another man, named Masanori. In a violent scene, Shigero kills them both and then himself. Flash-forward to the present day, an American family of three, which includes writer Ted Fletcher, his wife Laura, and their 12-year-old daughter, Amy, moves into this since-abandoned house and starts to experience incidents of haunting and possession. The three dead people still haunt the house and subject each of the Fletcher family to various harassment and mischief which gets more frequent and serious with each passing day. A Zen monk approaches Ted and tells him the story about the murders and urges him to leave the house. At the same time, Laura slowly becomes consumed by the evil presence of the three ghosts and begins an affair with Alex Curtis, a diplomat friend of Ted's who introduced them to the house. The evil presence within the haunted house, including the ghosts briefly possessing each member of the family to do odd things, reveals that the ghosts are plotting to re-enact the mass murder-suicide so their souls could be free from the confines of the house. The supernatural incidents becomes more frequent when Ted is nearly drowned in a lake by Otami's ghost, and the ghosts of Shigero and Masanori take the form of giant spider crabs which attack Amy one evening and it leads her to falling from a tree when she tries to escape and is forced to be sent back to America. At the climax, Ted calls the Zen monk, who exorcises the ghosts from the house and tells them to leave by the morning, before ghosts will return. When Laura tells Ted about her infidelity with Alex, he takes it very badly and attacks her. Alex arrives at the house, whereupon the ghosts also return to the house. They possess all three of them and finally re-enact the gory confrontation from the opening scene, leading to the deaths of Alex, Laura, and Ted. The movie ends with the three ghosts leaving the house for the afterlife, and implying that the souls of Ted, Laura and Alex now haunt the cursed house in their place.

Cast

* Edward Albert as Ted Fletcher * Susan George as Laura Fletcher *

as Alex Curtis * Amy Barrett as Amy Fletcher * Mako Hattori as Otami * Tsuiyuki Sasaki as Shigero (as Toshiyuki Sasaki) * Toshiya Maruyama as Masanori * Tsuyako Olajima as Majyo Witch (as Tsuyako Okajima) * Henry Mittwer as Zen Monk * Mayumi Umeda as Noriko, the babysitter * Shuren Sakurai as Noh Mask Maker * Hiroko Takano as Wakako * Shôji Ohara as Assistant Mask Maker (as Shoji Ohara) * Jirô Shirai as Tadashi (as Jiro Shirai) *

Kazuo Yoshida Kazuo (カズオ, かずお) is a masculine Japanese given name. Possible spellings It has several written forms, and the meaning depends on the characters used (usually kanji, but sometimes hiragana). Common forms include: * 一雄: first son, ...

as Editor * Kunihiko Shinjo as Assistant Editor * Gentaro Mori as Yoshio * Tomoko Shimizu as Aiko * Misao Arai as Hayashi * Chiyoko Hardiman as Mama-San * Hideo Shimedo as Policeman (as Hideo Shimado)

Critical reception

The film drew mixed reviews.

Vincent Canby Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who served as the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in ...

of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' wrote, "The House Where Evil Dwells... should satisfy all but the most insatiable appetites for haunted-house movies..." ''

TV Guide TV Guide is an American digital media company that provides television program Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or t ...

'' said, "The film has more nudity than chills, but it does have some quirky humor, especially in the exorcism scene."

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:House Where Evil Dwells, The 1982 horror films 1982 films Films set in Kyoto Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films United Artists films American ghost films American supernatural horror films Japanese ghost films Japanese horror films Adultery in films Toei Company films Films based on novels Films directed by Kevin Connor Films about writers Japan in non-Japanese culture Films scored by Ken Thorne English-language Japanese films 1980s English-language films 1980s American films 1980s Japanese films

Plot

Cast

Critical reception

See also

References

External links