Creatures of War #24: House (1985)

Ghosts in houses and gods in clouds

Hey!

Outpost: Black Sun is staring at me from my bookshelf, judging me for neglecting it for another post. Don’t worry, its time will come. I have been in a re-watch movie mood lately. I haven’t seen a new-to-me movie in a while, and normally I strive to do a couple a week. Maybe I should feel bad about that, but I’m just happy to revisit some old favorites right now.

Ghosts in houses

I watched House (1985) because I mistook it for House (1977)— an honestly not-so-different-once-you-really-think-about-it haunted house movie. House (1985), despite not being the film I wanted to see, was a blessing in disguise. It follows Roger Cobb, a Vietnam War veteran and horror author attempting to write a new book about his war experience. He's been very successful, but he's hit some writer’s block and is going through a separation with his wife after the disappearance of their young son. While staying at his late aunt’s allegedly haunted house, he encounters both literal and figurative ghosts of his past.

House is a campy, cheesy horror-comedy. There are no real scares for adults, and it is fairly bloodless. What it does have is a shocking psychological effect. The degradation of Roger’s current mental state felt disturbingly life-like and genuinely stressed me out. Sure the creatures look like Chuck E Cheese mascots, but to see Roger dismember one while being unsure if it was potentially an actual person kinda fucked me up.

For all the war-horror movies I do, I don't tend to focus on the war part. House is not really a war movie, but it makes a gallant effort at being a post-war film. The horrors of war don't stop once you go home, and in Roger’s case, sometimes they’re almost worse because you're one of the few people with that same experience. House may use oversized, bloated puppets to make this point, but it gets that point across all the same. Trauma ghost movies are a dime a dozen, but I think I was just so struck by House because of how silly it dared to be. Serious topics generally call for serious movies, but as we have established time and time again, I love a silly movie explaining a serious topic. Serious movies have to be great to leave an impact; stupid movies only have to be fun. House is fun, charming, and it delivers its message.

I also want to acknowledge the wonderful set design of the titular house. I’ve said this before, but lately, I’ve been mourning lived-in sets. House’s house feels real, it feels cool, it just feels like something. It’s not greenscreen, it’s a honest to god set. I have nothing against greenscreen, CGI, or any other virtual set design, but there is just something irreplaceable about a tangible space that characters interact with. I live in an old house myself, and it has given me a newfound respect for architecture. My apartment is the upper level of a 1800s home that has survived floods, an actual explosion that leveled the rest of the block, and being (potentially illegally) converted into the apartment in which I currently write this. It’s not the most practical living situation, but every time I look out my beautiful arched windows, I don’t want to be anywhere else.

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Gods in clouds

I'll admit, I don't know many veterans. Sure, I know some, but I'm not close to any and certainly not close enough to pry into what their service was like. What I do have is a customer service job that deals with lots and lots of different people. What inspired me to write about House this week was a recent interaction I had with a Vietnam War veteran. I had to give him my whole spiel about how the person he needs to speak with isn't here¹, and it's gonna cost X amount to fix his problem. He was understandably frustrated and went into a rant about how the great country of the USA treats veterans. I've been on the receiving end of this rant many times, and I never quite know how to respond. I'm just someone paid to deliver bad news based on rules I don’t make. He proceeded to tell me how many people he had killed. He said women, men, children, all senseless. All because he was told they were the enemy, and now he's back home, and for what?

I'm tired of being the bearer of bad news and of the “I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do” speech. I've seen this man several times, and he's always been very nice to me. He understands I'm not the authority here and don't make the rules, but I also understand that does nothing to ease his problems. I did what I could, and we made some progress. I bend rules when I can, and when I cannot, I think about those who make them. Take a glance at the news lately, and you can see what’s happening with the people who do make the rules. We have little power in this country as individuals, but there are people out there calling the shots. Not vague concepts of rule makers; there are actual flesh and blood humans who decide who gets what. They seem untouchable, like gods up in the clouds, but they're just men². We don't have to agree with what they do, and we can pull them from the sky to stand trial on the ground.

I don’t know much about politics or how to make these changes. I have no good advice on what to do, but I know there are people who do. The day I am writing this is the day of the “Hands Off!” protest, and even in my tiny, ultra-conservative town, there is a little line of people yelling on the street. Call a senator, go to a protest, bend some little rules, do very little, or do a lot. But don't just look at the sky and curse at the stars because your enemy is not up there. He's in some cushy chair in a large white building, playing god with all of our lives.

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That’s all folks

The next post will be on some unknown timeline. Next week, next month, next year, who’s to say? I would certainly recommend House, though (and also the other, weirder House). Double-feature generically named haunted house movies, and thank me later.

Bonus

Some of the new-to-me movies I did actually watch recently:

• Mortuary (1982) - Underrated, honestly

• The Psychic (1977) - It’s cool and Italian. Enough said

• The Gate (1987) - Basically Poltergeist

From Movie Sludge on Tumblr

1. And is frankly never here

2. And women, but let's be honest, it's mostly men.