House of Dreams (1963) watch online HD

Being the first to write on this film I suppose I should give a brief overview of what it is about. A man (played by director Berry) has a recurrent nightmare concerning a spooky house down the street. The nightmare is mostly slow moving artsy stuff with an organ score even more discordantly off key than Carnival of Souls. Anyways, in the dream he sees someone he knows and when he wakes he learns that the person he dreamt about has just died. His wife tries to convince him it is nothing but this same sequence of events happens again, ending with another dead.

I should stop there so not to spoil anything. The film is obscure to say the least. The plot was intriguing enough for me to sit through but anyone who found 2001 boring should definately stay away. This film personifies independent low budget filmmaking. Not much excitement in the traditional sense although worthy of being viewed for its pre-Eraserhead weirdness. I gave it a 5 for it's ambitions and there are some neat ideas (like having the credits written on the floors of the old house.) Still, if anyone who has lived next to a spooky house and wanted to make a no budget movie about it this film might serve as a good indication of what you'll come up with, a slow, dull home movie.

If you let it, this film will take you away, to a place that will remain in the near shadows for decades. Bob Berry, the one-man-band, produced HOUSE OF DREAMS for about a dollar eighty. If you make the mistake of watching the cheap, you will miss the inspired. Sixteen millimeter, black and white, minimal sets and muddled sound work with the simple blocking to create and involve the viewer in the tense visual fabric. Aesthetic distance evaporates and the scary parts actually scare. HOUSE OF DREAMS and Penzener's I WAS A ZOMBIE FOR THE FBI, remain two excellent examples of true Auteur, no-budget film-making. HOUSE OF DREAMS was shot and posted on film, as opposed to ZOMBIE, which was produced on tape. The presence of actual sprocket holes makes Berry's production the most hard won and authentic period classic.

The main distraction to this film is a very crude sound job--even by Carnival of Souls standards. But as with that film the lack of much sound other than dialogue creates a mood that adds to the atmosphere which is so essential to this type of horror story. Like Carnival this movie revolves around one specific location--in this case a house and the film is about how the frightening things the main character sees in his dreams (or are they only in his dreams) at this abandoned house impact his life outside the house and dreams--and there are even more psychological motivations in this one than in Carnival.

To be clear Carnival of Souls is a bigger budget film and better--or more traditionally better made-- than this one--to keep things in perspective. And the plots are not the same. It's just these films draw comparison to each other perhaps because there aren't many films like them.

The early real world scenes with no sound other than obviously post dubbed dialogue do go on for too long but as the film advances the dream scenes get longer and the real world stuff gets shorter and they balance each other well and some tension mounts for as the dream trips to the house increase the main character's life falls apart.

All the dialogue--virtually--is dubbed after the film was shot which hurts the performances which other wise wouldn't be too bad and director Berry actually gives a good performance regardless as the tortured writer lead character. The abandoned house is a pretty creepy location which helps. The music score is actually pretty interesting, sure in the dreams its atonal and irritating--but that's on purpose as it's an unsettling dream. It's easy to make fun of the organ music at first but it does it's work. The film contrasts the real world events with the dream ones and it's possible the lack of sound is intentional as there are a few scenes which seem to be more natural sound-wise that should be viewed as normal compared to the scenes and events without sound that aren't real. Or it's a happy accident.

This film is unusual even a bit experimental, well photographed if not too well edited--the normal scenes cut jarringly from shot to shot--but this same approach to the dream scenes is quite good. Maybe it's all just an accident that the film is effective at all --a result of its limitations, but once you get over what it lacks in polish the more it will get to you. For the curious film viewer and genre fan give it a watch for its virtues and its faults if you have some patience and imagination of thought you may well find this film pretty memorable.

It's not often I write a negative review of a film; as an independent film maker myself, I rarely think of expressing a negative opinion of a film. But "House of Dreams" is perhaps the most disappointing movie I've watched this year. The acting is wooden; the direction is odd. But the main distraction is the god-awful, ever present, electric organ music. This isn't like from an electric keyboard; this music was played on one of those kid's electric organs from the early 60's, and it just ruins this cringe- worthy production. It's so overbearingly bad that I practically tuned out the last ten minutes. Don't take my word for it; check it out for yourself. You can't say I didn't warn you.