HALLOWEEN HORROR CHALLENGE Movie 17 - HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR 2 more ep.

HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR (1980)
SYNAPSE FILMS
1.33


Two more episodes of the 1980 British TV show thanks to the five disc set from Synapse Films. I watched RUDE AWAKENING (episode #3) and GROWING PAINS (episode #4). 

RUDE AWAKENING stars Denholm Elliot as a surveyor with a sleep problem. When we meet him he is feeling up his shapely but stupid secretary. A costumer comes in and asks him to come and look at his expensive house so it can be put on the market. He goes and checks it out and while there he sees his dead wife fall out of the dumbwaiter. But when the suits of armor start attacking him he wakes up. His nagging wife is still alive and he heads to work. 

This basically turns into a horror version of GROUNDHOG DAY with our hero dreaming his day over and over again, but different each time. The players are the same, but the circumstances are different. It gets pretty extreme with some brain surgery and the leads trapped in a building being demolished but unfortunately it all adds up to a ending you see a mile off.

GROWING PAINS is much better. A ten year old boy is messing around in his Father's lab. The kid eats some concoction his dad had been testing on rabbits. Soon he is in the backyard hallucinating, then dies. His broken parents end up adopting another child. A kid that is so well behaved it is downright creepy. The mother seems to incessantly bitch at the poor kid and the Dad hides in his basement lab working. We start to get the idea of why the other kid was so disconnected. Soon the house starts showing signs of being haunted. A rabbit shows up dead. the family dog loses its shit and eats the whole lab and attacks the Dad. The kid is clearly back to stake his claim on the family. 

Both episodes have good acting and nice production values. RUDE AWAKENING is not bad but GROWING PAINS is actually very good. I will check out more soon. 

Review © Andrew Copp