Not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it's oddly fascinating. Like a bad car accident, it's hard to take your eyes off this one. First and foremost of Boarding House's flaws is the fact that it was shot on video tape then transferred to film. This process creates a grainy washed out picture that makes Super 8 look like state of the art film stock. The story rambles, the acting is putrid, and the effects are laughable. The camera man can never seem to figure out where he's supposed to point the camera and manages to cut off the actors' heads (which I suppose is appropriate for a horror film) with annoying regularity. If director Wintergate and company were not under the influence of mind altering substances during the making of this movie, then I daresay they should have been.
The back story of the titular house is related rather sloppily through an onscreen police file computer display. I highly suggest hitting the mute button during this sequence, as the computer's incessant beeping will have you scrambling for heavy objects to hurl at your television. The computer tells us that Professor Don Hoffman and his wife, leading experts on telekinesis and the occult, were the house's original owners. These two had the good fortune to die before the film even starts, thereby not having to show their faces onscreen. Their deaths were an apparent double suicide, and their thirteen year old child was committed to a sanitarium after witnessing the deed.
The next few owners of the house come to sudden and messy ends, thanks to a mysterious telekinetic force. One woman gets her hand caught in the garbage disposal, and her husband is tossed from his deck chair into the swimming pool where he drowns. The latest owner is Jim Royce (Adley) who has inherited the house from his uncle. Jim is heavily into meta-physics and is teaching himself the art of telekinesis at home in his spare time. He places an ad in the local paper specifically looking for hot young babes to move in with him. Astonishingly this lame attempt actually works, and Jim soon finds himself with a bevy of beautiful and largely brainless roomies.
Odd things start happening right away. One girl has an ice pick telekinetically shoved through her hand, another freaks out when the walls of the shower stall start bleeding (some folks are soooo touchy). People start dying, but none of the other characters seem to notice. The movie doesn't really build up to the ending (a poor man's Scanners rip-off), but sort of bumps into it along the way.
Boarding House's one saving grace is its pacing. The story moves gleefully and mindlessly along. Granted, it never actually GOES anywhere, but the movie never slows down long enough to be dull. Before ennui can set in the viewer is treated to a graphic eye gouging, or a gratuitous shower scene. If that's not enough, the seventies-ish hairstyles and clothes (despite the fact that Boarding House was made in the early eighties) will have many viewers muttering "Dear God, did I actually dress that way?" It's not great cinema, but at least it's not boring.