BoardingHouse
Having inherited the house at 20950 Mulholland following the death of his uncle, Jim Royce is advertising for housemates to fill the ten bedrooms, asking for a hundred dollars a month for rent and looking for “girls, girls, girls,” setting it up as a party mansion filled with aspiring models and actors who spend their days lounging in the hot pool or preparing for auditions.
What Jim has not advertised is the history of the house, a series of deaths of the owners dating back to ten years previously when it was owned by an expert on telekinesis and the occult, much like Jim himself, Doctor Hoffman and his wife found dead in unexplained circumstances in the fall of 1972 and their teenage daughter Debbie committed to an asylum soon after where to this day strange events continue to occur…
A micro-budget supernatural slasher horror oddity of 1983 shot entirely on videotape written and directed by John Wintergate, mistakenly credited as “Johnn” in the opening credits and under his pseudonym Hank Adly (also misspelled as Hawk) in the cast in his dual roles of Jim Royce and the surly Vietnam veteran gardener, it is difficult to determine what the intention of BoardingHouse was to be, a film so glaringly incompetent in every aspect it is staggering that it was completed and released.
Originally cut an 88 minute theatrical version with ten minutes of footage reinstated for the home video release, the longer edit is the version now carried by Arrow, though an “unofficial” 157 minute version also exists under the title Psycho Killer, and it is incredible to consider that if what remains is the most coherent construct of the best takes of what was shot just how astonishingly bad what was excised must have been, footage apparently just caught rather than planned or set up, often out of focus or badly framed.
Opening with a warning that a black leather gloved hand will signal imminent violence, the credits and other video effects are primitive, saturated coloured washes blasting the screen, while the low light levels and poor definition can be deemed a mercy as they soften the picture, lessening the pain of the acting of Jim’s giggling girls led by Victoria (Kalassu Kay, Wintergate’s wife), attempting telekinesis herself after Jim’s demonstration of soap floating and making a noise like a stressed baboon when scared.
Joined by Sandy, Suzie, Cindy, Gloria, Pam, Terri and Debbie (Selma Kora, misspelled as Belma, Tracy O’Brian, Mary McKinley, Rosane Woods, Cindy Williamson, Elizabeth Hall and Alexandra Day), they are helium-voiced airheads who wander around in bikinis or wet t-shirts while Jim sports a thong, and with bad continuity which makes it seem the band set up a day before they play, pie fights, mutilated cats and bodies buried in the backyard, a stay at the BoardingHouse makes MTV Cribs seem the height of intellectual stimulation.
BoardingHouse will be streaming on the Arrow platform from Friday 10th October
