This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

A pop singer suffers a nervous breakdown and decides to vacation out in the country, but not before recovering from a fall onstage at the last performance. He takes the attending nurse from the hospital he was recuperating at as a personal nurse, as they slowly fall in love at this remote mansion set in the outskirts of a small town.The film begins in a rather humorous vain, as a couple decide to 'make out' on the lawn, at which point a hose extends out like a serpent to spray them down, like one would dogs.The House is indeed alive with some presence, using the resident cameras as veritable eyes; so when the crooner and his love interest move in, they become the subject of rumors throughout the small town, apparently, there were some rather tragic deaths in the house's history, but when the local librarian comes to deliver some interesting documentation, she is invariably crushed to death at the front gates, like the great giant metal teeth of a hell mouth, followed by the manager {with a cutting reflection}, and even intermittent lover Tanya {"there's nothing like a hot blood shower to help get the cobwebs out"...} goes insane.It is a sort of 'coming home' for Sheila, with the incessant sensation of deja-vu. Sheila reveals that she has no recollection of her existence prior to seven, but "The Rag Lady" knows*, a classic characterization of the 'crazy cat lady' type who lives in a shack filled with garbage... and cats. But she apparently knows too much for The House's liking, divulging her own involvement in its history, gets a scalding dip for her trouble.The House also does not seem to like the fact that Gary and Lisa are to be married, and refuses to let them out, complete with locking doors, windows, freezing air conditioning, suffocating heat, slammed gates, breathing walls, and the serpentine hose. ∞_____________ * Played by none other than Joan Bennett, who is recognized as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard of Dark Shadows, in quite a role reversal, displaying quite a range.

Considering it's both a TV movie and a haunted house movie, it has to be said that This House Possessed really is rather good; although only on its own terms. The plot follows the story of a burnt out writer and singer of awful pop songs as he moves into a modern computerised house with his live-in nurse and later girlfriend. It's not long before strange things start happening in the house and the nurse comes to believe she may have some connection with it. One problem this film has is the plotting; the first half of the movie is basically a soap opera and while it's not especially uninteresting; it's not really what I tuned in for and it takes a while for the movie to finally get going. The first half of the film does, however, set the characters up, which benefits the film well later on. Naturally, owing to the fact that this is a TV movie, there's no gore and little violence; but there's a few death scenes and most of them are pretty decent. It all boils down to a twist that is made so obvious that I'm not really sure if it's actually supposed to be a twist at all. The idea of the house taking 'revenge' on it's inhabitants is hardly original and even the computer idea had been done previously in 'Demon Seed', but the film generally plays on it's central ideas well and it is at least an interesting film. The film has apparently become quite rare and I wouldn't say it's worth a lot of trouble to track down but if you can find a copy, it is at least worth a look.

A haunted house where the haunting manifests most of the time through the computer that controls nearly every part of the house... fascinating. Yet the haunting is so powerful it can kill/watch/manipulate people miles away, and it seems the force inside the house has feelings, since it's main aim is to bring the person it loves into it's power. The script of this movie is highly original and most of the scenes are really great - the "bloody shower" scene or the very atmospheric scenes at the beginning, when the house watches the people through some monitors at night...just sitting there and waiting... - this movie really gets in your mind and stays there. Throw in a very good performance by the female leads and a convincing performance by the male lead, a really great score that helps much to enhance the thick atmosphere created by the extremely good directing, editing and photography, and here you have it: a really outstanding haunted house movie! One reviewer here criticized the use of "suddenly opening doors" in this movie: Well, yes, at one point a door opens itself, but since the house is alive a lot of stuff moves itself here, so you can't criticize that, unless you want to criticize that the movie doesn't need a lot of blood and gore to create tension... Yes, the fire at the end looks not so good at the indoor shots, but, since most of this seems to be shot outside a studio in a real (great-looking) house, I guess they just couldn't burn this great house down! But just look at that cool "breathing-wall" shot! And maybe they were low on budget, too, and if this is true, then it makes the movie even more greater, since to create such a great movie with a low budget is really a masterpiece!

A nice 1981 b-horror movie starring the late Joan Bennett and Slim Pickens about a burnt-out pop singer moving with a nurse to a high-tech-house to find out that his new building has an evil intelligence and no regrets to kill its habitants.This TV production is a b-movie flick with a good horror atmosphere, similar to the late Hammer Horror TV shows and several Twilight Zone episodes, and an eerie Theremin-like mystery sound track. Unfortunately the film lacks of good actors, thrills and good special effects.In fact, this movie was just made twelve years before "Jurassic Park" but shows primitive special effects like suddenly opening doors or some flame overdubs to suggest a heavy fire that were even better produced in the 1933 version of "King Kong"."This House Possessed" is not good enough to become a horror classic and also not weird enough to become a classic entry in Michael Weldon's "Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film". At least it's thrilling and great fun to watch after midnight with a bag of crisps and a can of lager beer.