Halloween Month is nearly over, and Balladeer’s Blog is here with a review of what is often called the worst Australian horror film ever made.
HOUSEBOAT HORROR (1989) – “Mullets ahoy!” would make a good alternate title for this Shot on Video disaster from Down Under. Star Alan Dale of Neighbors fame leads a cast of untalented actors and barely adequate musicians who get chopped up by a disfigured slasher.
Ignore reviews which claim this flick is a Heavy Metal Horror Movie. Whatever the awful band in Houseboat Horror may be, they are definitely NOT Heavy Metal. If they were, I’d have covered this movie in my look at over Thirteen Heavy Metal Horrors from the 1980s. The band here is called a “disco group” multiple times, which made me wonder if Australians really still considered disco “cool” by 1989.
Taking things from the top, Houseboat Horror is set in Victoria, Australia at Lake Eildon going by the fictional name Lake Infinity. Alan Dale stars as director Grant Evans, who will be making a music video with a supposedly hot new Aussie band on a houseboat.
Text onscreen tells us it is October, which in Australia should be Spring, but the Aussie filmmakers for some reason have the characters keep saying it’s Winter. Guess they forgot what month they claimed it was.
The destined slasher victims proceed in multiple vehicles to Lake Infinity to shoot their video. The car with the musicians and a couple of groupies in it actually shows sense enough not to pick up a creepy, oddly dressed hitchhiker who turns out to be the movie’s slasher, Acid Head. Continue reading
