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May 1, 2017

Movie Review: House on Straw Hill (1975)

Oh, Udo Kier, you magnificent man who can pull us all into your films with your charisma alone. Because gods know you’re not that great of an actor and the movies you work on kinda suck…except for Ace Ventura and Johnny Mnemonic.
To hell with you all! Those were awesome movies!


House on Straw Hill is the story of Paul, a temperamental writer (who isn’t, amiwrite - see what I did there?) who sequesters himself in a country cottage to work on his next novel. His first, and only so far, was such a phenomenal success that he’ll have to work extra hard to pull it off again. He hires a typist, Linda, because he believes he can get his work done faster if he doesn't have to worry about the physical labor of the creative process and just be all brilliant and angsty and shit.

What he doesn’t realize is that Linda is fucking crazy and has only taken the job so she can exact her revenge on Paul for a MAJOR wrong doing he’s committed against someone she loves. And anyone who gets in the way? She becomes like a human steam roller and crushes any obstacle.




Now I love a good revenge flick. And I’m totally down with Linda’s reasons for wanting it against Paul. She’s so fucking cold through the whole film. She kills people with no hesitation and no remorse. At all. Linda Hayden plays Linda with great skill and is completely believable. And she gets naked a lot which certainly doesn’t hurt.

But this movie is basically an art film disguised as a thriller. A FUCKING ART FILM. You all should know by now how I feel about FUCKING ART FILMS. All those fucking odd angles, inter cuts of bright red blood and death, the simultaneous thrusting sex moves while a branch bangs against the window frame, etc. All the sex leads me to believe they tried to play a little exploitation game, too. Give me a FUCKING break.

I am so tired of you.
Aside from Linda Hayden, the acting is terrible. They fucking dubbed Udo’s voice, for crying out loud. His accent is part of his charm but I guess if he’s supposed to be dictating to someone, it WOULD be important to be able to actually understand him. So maybe they should have written his character differently, hmmm? The model playing Paul’s girlfriend was also stupendously awful.
If you like artsy films, you’d probably like this. If you like Udo and Linda, you’d probably like this. For me, neither is enough to ever wanna watch this again.

1 Hatchet (out of 5)







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