“Kelly, Roger’s dead, you’re all alone, and I want this house.”

Justin’s rating: The real scares come when they see the closing costs!

Justin’s review: Whenever I get into reviewing a series, I generally don’t like to skip any of the entries for the sake of completion. But however much I enjoyed House and House II, from what I read the third movie was just some goofy slasher that wasn’t supposed to be in the series until they made an abrupt name change. So I’ve decided to leapfrog that and go straight to 1992’s direct-to-video House IV.

So you know how horror movies always like to make fun of the trope how the worst haunted houses are the ones built on top of Indian burial grounds? And yet you never quite see movies that actually do this? Well guess what: The house in House IV is totally built on an Indian burial ground.

It also happens to be the family summer home of House’s Roger Cobb (William Katt), who tells his wife and daughter how his grandfather took a blood oath on his wedding day never to sell it. No wedding day is complete without self-mutilation, I say! Well, one car accident later, Roger’s dead, his grieving wife Kelly (Terri Treas) and paralyzed daughter moves into the house, and his pushy step-brother comes around to try to sell the place to a phlegmy factory owner so that he could dump toxic chemicals on the land.

Wonder what the spirits are going to say about that?

It makes absolutely no sense why his family would want to move into this rundown dump, especially since they presumably had an actual house of their own before the crash. It’s certainly not a wheelchair-friendly abode, what with the stairs and narrow door frames, but “this is what Roger would want me to do!”

Weird stuff proceeds to happen, and I’m all, “Bring it on, wacky house!” A weird housekeeper moves in for no explained reasons. A pizza starts singing. The mattresses try to eat them. The shower turns to hot blood. Roger’s ashes start moving on their own. If I lived there, I’d be so excited to see what strange happenings the next day would bring. My life’s pretty boring.

The series’ theme of main characters working through personal trauma with a good old-fashioned spectral parade continues, as Kelly can’t quite get over having to sign the order to terminate Roger’s life support after the crash. That angle is definitely the weakest part here, with repeated turns to maudlin hospital scenes.

While it’s great to see a little bit of connection to the first movie and the return of a few crew members who worked on the original two films, House IV is very much a mixed bag. The main draw for this series is the fun mixture of comedy, adventure, and creature horror, and it’s this balance that is wildly out of whack here. House IV has all of these things, sort of, but it can’t seem to figure out how to put them together in a way that’s enjoyable or even coherent. For example, the house itself alternates between trying to terrify the two women and trying to protect them, as if it can’t make up its mind if it wants them gone or to stay forever.

Still, everyone seems to absolutely hate on House IV like crazy, and I can’t agree with that. I showed up for weird haunted house stuff that’s done in a generally non-offensive way, and for the most part, that’s what I got. It’s The Shining if Three’s Company moved in. I am genuinely bummed that this series didn’t continue after this installment, because I think it found an interesting niche that had a lot of potential for subsequent houses… and their hauntings.