• Wide Release
• Director: Peter Rader
• Written by: Gayle Jensen, Peter C. Jensen
• Running Time: 90 minutes
• Language: English
• MPAA Rating: R - Restricted
• Cast: Eric Foster, Kim Valentine, Brinke Stevens, Len Lesser, Ida Lee, Craig Yerman, Joan-Carol Bensen, Angela O'Neill, R.J. Walker, Furley Lumpkin, Jeanette Jamron, Anitra Jamron, David Algeier, Michael Flaherty, Ryan Gallagher

Purposely designed to shock and dumbfound, “Grandma’s House” rumbles along like a car on empty. And you know that unless you find a gas station soon, you’re in trouble. With this film, there’s no gas station for miles and you know things aren’t going to get better. There’s nary an explanation in sight for the contrivances in this film, be they the outlandish behaviour of the characters or the comatose-like exposition early on, all traded in for a what could have been more comprehensive character studies and better plot construction. “Grandma’s House” unravels like a children’s fable told by a restless parent desperate to remember how the tale ends and making things up as they go. At the outset, few things make sense and further inspection reveals even more problems, but, hey, it’s got plenty of atmosphere. Yes, that’s one thing it does have.

When their only parental figure, their father, dies; Lynn and David are sent to live with their anomalous grandparents, both of which seem plucked out of Grant Wood’s 1930 American Gothic painting. They live on an expansive orange groove somewhere in Southern California nestled beside a tiny ravine and a large forest. Perfect, it seems. Their initial introduction is awkward and strange and right away David gets an uneasy feeling about his new surrogate folks. He even has nightmares, one of which involves him sneaking into the basement and observing his grandfather doting over a corpse. The next day, he brushes them off as his anxiety from his father’s death and the sudden uprooting from his home. It doesn’t much matter as it, along with the abrupt introduction of a sinister looking gypsy woman, helps set the tone of menace for the remaining 80 or so minutes. By subverting standard social mores, and adding the sense of looming dread at every turn, Jensen tries to wring out a measure of suspense where there generally wouldn’t be any. To be sure, it points back to Hitchcock and, for the most part, he succeeds. What would be a rather standard jaunt to a public pool, unfolds as an almost dodgy and menacing affair as Lynn is hit on by a boy, Kenny, many years her senior and clearly with one thing on his mind, while David catches the ominous gaze of the strange gypsy woman who has turned up at the pool and is observing him from behind some bleachers. Both work as sexualized examples of the predator and prey scenario, with differing attitudes. The merging of sex and death in this scene would become a prominent theme throughout.

The trip home suggests the looming danger is getting closer as the family joins some rubber neckers at the ravine just as the cops dredge a corpse out of it. The grandparents throw a picnic for some neighbours, the Sacketts, whereupon David is introduced to Raymond, a boy about his age with an ever-present adolescent zest for sex. Raymond leads David down a ravine and into a drainpipe where a girl was supposed to have been raped and murdered. He shows David the spot where she was dispatched before producing female undergarments. He suggests that they belonged to the dead girl. Sex and death. Across the grove Lynn and Darlene discuss dating Kenny and the inevitability of sex. They are joined, unbeknownst to them, by the sinister gypsy woman who watches from behind a tree in the orchard menacingly.

It’s at this point in the film; things begin to go off the rails as David, from an upstairs window, observes his grandparents moving what looks to be the corpse of the gypsy woman into the cellar. Later, they burn her clothes. David sneaks downstairs and opens the fridge and inside lays the ragged bound gypsy woman, who looks very much dead but, alas, she isn’t. This builds towards a tension filled scene, and maybe the film’s finest moment, where the grandfather chases David from room to room with a shotgun. The grandfather’s intentions remain uncertain to both David and the audience which definitely adds to the sense of danger. Hanging by a window ledge, David watches as just below him his grandparents briskly transfer the body from the cellar. All of this adds up to a taut few moments of edge of your seat bliss.

Veering into the ridiculous, the film, in the last thirty minutes, succeeds mainly in confusing the viewer by adding a whole bunch of plot twists and a series of double-reverses, none of which make any sense whatsoever. When the identity of the creepy gypsy woman is revealed, then further inspection of the film’s earlier part is needed. A lengthy ten minute chase scene involving Lynn, David and the woman, across the orchard, over some train tracks and through the house, all of which points to a preposterous misunderstanding, is ludicrous beyond words. Even further examination of previous events calls into doubt the actions of the grandparents, namely the burning of her clothes. As the film draws to a conclusion, there is another twist, the culmination of David’s earlier nightmare, that resounds with a thud; a revelation that fully integrates the sex and death theme into a single unit, as the boy, the product of an incestuous relation, takes on the aggressive traits of the father (both parents actually) in retribution for the bound (and sexualized) mother; who was apparently driven mad at the boy’s conception. Almost Oedipus? Her symbolic death at the hands of the father is more a sacrifice of silence, something of which brings another layer to the tedious chase scene. We understand that Stevens’ character has undergone a transformation in the sense that her maternal instincts are revived, but are we supposed to accept that she is unable to speak in order to protect her progeny? Considering the fact that she has broken out of a mental institution, hiked several miles to the grove, and even committed a couple of murders, all in an effort to guard her kids, how can one be expected to buy into her sudden inability to express herself?  

Despite many flaws, there is much to be praised about this film. Brinke Stevens has never looked more beautiful and sinister than she does here. Given that she has very few lines, she manages to convey a character that is all things menacing, indistinct and sexy. Reflecting on earlier scenes, like that of her watching David from the bleachers or stumbling upon her daughter in the orchard, her gaze is at first communicated as something dangerous and threatening, however, in hindsight, it reads as a loving mother watching over her children – children she hasn’t seen in years and is intent on protecting. Stevens has made a career out of appearing in mediocre b and c grade productions but in this film, a film with a rather significant budget, she shines.