Hell House: Book of Samiel – DVD Review

The Film:

The Shively house has had a history of murder and mayhem associated with it. Everyone who has occupied it has been possessed by demons and committed atrocious and heinous acts of murder. The demons come out and play when anyone goes near the house or comes into it. This is the foundation for director Jason D. Morris’ Hell House: The Book of Samiel.

With that little bit of back story on the Shively house, we have a group of kids that want to go spend a night in the Shively house for some fun. Ignoring all the warnings and signs that this may not be a great idea, they go do it anyways. If anyone needed any warnings, it should have been me and anyone else that viewed this giant piece of crap of a film. This film was so stupid and ridiculous that I don’t really know where to begin. Aside from the shoddy special effects, terrible acting, horrible plot, incoherent story, and very confusing scenes, I only have to say this for the film. There was some nudity, full-frontal even, and I still hated this film. If you know me, that says a lot for it.

Actually, I was not expecting that much. It is a film distributed by Brain Damage Films, known for putting out low-budget fair and some of them are pretty awful. This is another one of the pretty awful ones. Let’s get down to what was so awful in the film.

The special effects were atrocious. First and foremost, one of the very first scenes when Paul (Michael Anthony Carlisi), Dani (Sheila Kraics), Steve (Geof Libby), and Sasha (Jessica Marie) go out for the night and our talking about the history of some of the occupants of the Shively house, there is a scene where a father finds his daughter giving head to her boyfriend and he blows the boyfriend’s brains out with a shotgun and then lights him and his daughter on fire. The digital effects for the fire were ridiculous. The graphics were almost transparent and it could not have looked any worse than it did. They could have tried to load on the gore, but this was not the case. The gore was very minimal and utter crap.

So, we have demons. Let the demons be the focus. In just 78 minutes they try to cram in some character development on Dani and her abusive father in just one small scene. We know Paul’s father is an alcoholic who is a Realtor of some sort because he has keys to houses that are on the real-estate market. They introduce Paul’s father to explain how the kids get a key to get into the Shively house. Paul and Steve also are hellbent on trying to scare the crap out of the girls in order to win a bet they have going with each other. I guess this was thrown in the plot so that viewers would not know exactly when something was really demonic or just one of their pranks. There is a scene with a television crew that is doing a piece on the house and after filming the cameraman turns into a demon and kills the two of them and himself by letting everyone on fire. I guess that scene was in there to show us that just by being near the house the demons can possess you and kill those with you, but I am not sure. Nothing really is fully explained or shown to the viewer through scenes.

The most annoying thing about this whole movie was that the music was so loud and at times when the director chose to have dialogue and the dialogue was hard to hear because it was drowned out by the music, which incidentally, sucked! I think there was one scene in it that I thought was humorous, if only slightly. At one point, Sasha is riding on top of Steve during sex and the blinds aren’t fully closed so anyone can see in and Paul and Dani show up to pick them up right after Dani got hit by her father. Dani is so upset and hurt from getting hit again by her abusive father and is in tears. She is so emotional that when Paul honks for Sasha and Steve, Sasha coming to the window topless, yelling out “4 more minutes” (until they are done having sex) and Steve yells “2 more minutes” Dani starts laughing with Paul and everything is ok again. Nothing like horny friends to get one in a good mood again after getting beat by one’s father.

I have said this before and I will say it again: supernatural movies that involve demons and apparitions of some sort usually don’t work when there is no budget for having decent effects of any kind. The demons in the film looked terrible and the CGI was some of the worst that I have ever seen. With a production company name like Digital Shadow Films, one would think that they had some decent digital effects in their repertoire, but no chance. Pair that up with a dull and badly executed plot, character development (or lack of) and a lack of any sort of passable acting, and you have Hell House: Book of Samiel.

The DVD:

Audio/Video: The sound in this film was not done well, as stated before, I could not hear the dialogue well because the songs and music in the film were too loud in volume. There were dips and swells in the audio- really loud at times and very quiet at other times. This is a screener though, so the picture was not of the highest quality. The picture was anything but crisp.

There are tons of extras on this and I wish there were not for it did not deserve to have so many.

Commentary: Director Jason D. Harris and producer Jeremia Draper are on hand to tell us just how one makes a worthless film and what goes into the process. The audio on the commentary is atrocious. There was so much white noise and they really could have done with using some sort of Dolby noise reduction, as the static cut in and out through-out the whole commentary. At 6 minutes into the commentary, I wanted to claw my face off. The director comments on how they are watching at older unedited version of the film to use for comment on as they rushed to get this commentary on the DVD. I guess that may be why no one bothered to remaster the audio so it did not have so much background noise. Both the director and producer are so lethargic during their commentary that I think they dozed off at times when it was dead air.

Behind the scenes and cast interview: Actors and actresses Mike Carlisi, Sheila Kraics, Geof Libby, and Jessica Marie talk about how awesome an experience the making of the film was. Scenes from the film are edited in during the interview when mentioned by cast members. Fairly goofy and unprofessional, just like the movie they were in. Certain shots in the film are shown with behind the scenes footage. One of the actors even goes off camera to give someone a cigarette. Really? Yes. Really. They show a scene of rehearsing with the script, which I thought was odd because it looked like no rehearsed at all. Unfortunately, this segment is a long 25 minutes.

Production Interviews: Includes director Jason Morris, producer Jeremiah Draper, production manager Jennifer Brugman. If one did not get enough of them on the commentary, here they are again. This is shot better and done a little bit more professionally. Its over 34 minutes long. There is more behind the scenes footage mixed in and they go into how the shoots went. I found this interview to be the most satisfying thing on the disc. I think Jason Morris would be a real cool dude to hang out with and hope his films get better in the future. I may have a problem hanging out with him because gore and sex are not his favorite things in horror films, but one would not know since there are 4 or 5 sex/sexual scenes in this film and they tried to go for gore scenes.

Music Video: Sexual Vampire: A low-budget music video by Chris Heaven. Ever heard of him? I have not either. It showed some scenes from the film and had me cracking up. The guy looks like he got thrown in a blender with Duran Duran and Ric Astley (a goth version). I will never ever trust men that wear leather pants. Ever.

Production Stills

Deleted scenes: I am surprised they left anything out. I guess the film would have been the average 90 minutes if they had left them in. There are 3 scenes cut out. Two of them gave a little bit of insight into how abusive Dani’s father was, which may have helped understanding her character a little bit more.

Short Films:

Consequence: Directed by Robert Carrera and produced by Jason Morris.

The mayor of a city meets a man, not her husband but a district attorney, for some after-work fun in a parking garage and are privy to the murder of a young girl. There happens to be a lady photographing the DA when he goes to see if the girl is still alive, which she wasn’t. I wish the woman that starred in Consequence was in Hell House, because she is smoking hot. Sadly, this short film was more entertaining then the full-length movie itself.

Strange Company: Directed by Robert Carrera

A short film just over six minutes. Again, better than Hell House. I am thinking this director should have made Hell House.

Story boards

Trailer

The Film: Rating:

The DVD: Rating: