Review – The House of the Dead (1980)

Fleeing a torrential rainstorm, a guy enters a seedy business. The place turns out to be a mortuary with a creepy undertaker and four closed coffins. Do I even need to tell you that it turns into a horror anthology piece? Evil children attack a crabby teacher, a serial killer films his crimes, two investigators vie for the title of world’s best detective, and a guy is tortured for no apparent reason. The fourth segment was in some ways the forerunner of torture porn, but it didn’t have anywhere near enough gore to qualify as a direct ancestor. Though I usually get a kick out of vignette movies like this, for some reason (cheap production? bad script? lame stories?) this one didn’t do much for me. Mildly amusing