Alien. Jaws. Minions. Some movies say it all with . House never achieved that level of mononymous fame, but it wasn’t from lacking effort. A film about a haunted spot of some kind, House hit wide release 40 years ago today and, like countless forgotten horror flicks, it made enough money to get stuck with the and spawn a string of lousy sequels.
Roger Cobb (William Katt) is a popular author dealing with several classic movie hero issues: he’s divorced, his young son has disappeared without a trace, and his effort to move from pulpy horror novels to a serious book about his Vietnam War service has left him with writer’s block and distressing flashbacks. House starts with Roger’s elderly aunt taking her own life, and Roger—who grew up in her house and watched his little Jimmy vanish from it during a visit—decides to move in to work on his book in what he tells noisy neighbor Harold (George Wendt, basically playing Cheers’ Norm) as “solitude.”
That’s a simple setup for a movie frequently called “goofy” and “bonkers” in its Letterboxd reviews. Is House a haunted house film? Yes. A Vietnam War movie? Yes. A sitcom? Again, yes. House feels like it took elements from the recent hit Poltergeist —a missing boy, a house linked to another dimension, an investigation supported by modern tech—blended them up, then tossed a cartoon dynamite stick into the mix.
Grotesque goblins jump out of closets, a mounted fish comes alive, the well-intentioned neighbor keeps dropping by with snacks, we keep going back to a dark, leafy soundstage standing in for Vietnam, and Roger wears the most revealing V-neck sweater you’ll ever see. By the time another neighbor (Bond girl Mary Stävin) aggressively flirts with Roger, then switches gears and dumps her little boy on him for a babysitting gig that ends with Roger having to save the kid from monsters, you’ll stop trying to guess what’s next.
House knows exactly how absurd it is, and you can picture past tweens getting their first taste of the genre via TV reruns and VHS tapes. Revealing too many of its odd twists and turns would ruin the experience—and “experience” is the right word here. In most cases, its out-of-nowhere plotting and set pieces would feel messy and disjointed. But if you approach House like a theme park ride that’s going to hurl a bunch of wacky stuff at you, you won’t be too disappointed when its internal logic falls apart. No one goes through Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion for tight storytelling.
Of the plot that does exist, the Vietnam angle is surprisingly the most intriguing—it’s a reminder of how deeply the Vietnam War had seeped into every part of American pop culture. A currently stalled House reboot was , but it’s hard to imagine its potential hero having Fallujah flashbacks before a final battle with a zombified squadmate out for revenge.
There are why Iraq’s influence has mostly been limited to indie films, flops, and short mentions in character backstories, but seeing even a ridiculous horror-comedy make Vietnam-related PTSD central to its plot is a surprisingly clear example of the gap between how the two wars are remembered. It’s a stretch to claim House has anything deep to say about wartime trauma, but it’s a remarkably bold move for a movie that also includes a curvaceous witch-monster waddling around with a shotgun. It makes you wish modern films could tackle similar topics with such weird honesty.
But House is a horror-comedy at its core, and time has been kind to it—creature effects that contemporary reviewers once called cheap now look charmingly retro. Roger’s eventual trip into another dimension hidden behind his medicine cabinet is still an engaging adventure, and even the rubbery creature suits fit the film’s cozy tone. It’s not a classic, but it’s the type of filler movie that kept theaters and Blockbusters busy between major releases. Four decades later, it can still do that when you’re facing a long evening of mindlessly scrolling through Netflix.
House is streaming .