The Halfway House starts with Annie Morgan (Ashley Fires) getting kidnapped as she goes about her business, if that wasn't bad enough her kidnapper ties her to some sort of sacrificial alter before ripping her clothes off & letting some demonic creature eat her, I guess it just wasn't her day. Annie's sister Larissa (Janet Tracy Keijser) becomes worried about her & goes to the police, Sergeant Dick Sheen (Shawn Savage) fees there is a connection between Annie's mysterious disappearance & reports of several other young women going missing from the 'Mary Magdalan halfway house for troubled girls' situated in the same area where Annie was last seen but can't convince his boss Inspector Hinds (Michael Gaglio) so Larissa volunteers to go undercover unofficially in an attempt to try & find her sister, simple eh? It's not long before she unearths sinister secrets at the halfway house...
Co-executive produced, written & directed by Kenneth J. Hall I thought The Halfway House was total complete & utter crap, it's as simple & straight forward as that. I'm actually quite surprised by the number of semi positive comments this piece of dung has, I simply can't see one ounce of entertainment value within it's turgid 90 odd minute duration. The script feels like an exploitative WIP (women in prison) film with a touch of a 50's monster film thrown in there for good measure, the problem is it's never really that sleazy, the females are rather unattractive & the monster appears for all of 4 minutes. I also had the feeling that the girls could just leave whenever they wanted, I mean there were only three people who worked there & they weren't under arrest so why couldn't they just walk out the front door? The way these women talk you'd think they were banged up in Colditz! The character's are awful, there's a perverted priest, the 'tough' female hero, the cop, the butch lesbian & her gang a well as a few faceless cardboard cutout victims & there isn't even any funny dialogue in it either. I'm sorry but this is just terrible, it's not explicit enough to please anyone looking for sex & it's not scary enough for anyone looking for chills so why exactly does this film exist? Answers on a postcard please...
Director Hall was obviously working on a low budget but I still don't think that's an excuse for turning in such a crap film. Ther are no scares, there's no tension, there's no laugh value while the sex & nudity is brief, tame & very forgettable. Even the obligatory shower scene is a letdown as it features lots of not very attractive women who could do with losing a few pounds... Gore wise there's a decapitation, someone has their hand chopped off with a pair of garden shears & someone is impaled with a machete, nothing to get excited about really.
Technically the film is probably as good as it could have been but it's still a very cheap looking little film that has nothing going for it. The monster looks awful & the room it comes out of must have some sort of fog machine in it as it seems to come out in a huge cloud of smoke for no apparent reason other than to hide it's body... The acting isn't so hot, sorry.
The Halfway House is just another totally forgettable, dull rubbishy no budget straight-to-video horror film that fails to inspire or impress in any way. Definitely not recommended.
Co-executive produced, written & directed by Kenneth J. Hall I thought The Halfway House was total complete & utter crap, it's as simple & straight forward as that. I'm actually quite surprised by the number of semi positive comments this piece of dung has, I simply can't see one ounce of entertainment value within it's turgid 90 odd minute duration. The script feels like an exploitative WIP (women in prison) film with a touch of a 50's monster film thrown in there for good measure, the problem is it's never really that sleazy, the females are rather unattractive & the monster appears for all of 4 minutes. I also had the feeling that the girls could just leave whenever they wanted, I mean there were only three people who worked there & they weren't under arrest so why couldn't they just walk out the front door? The way these women talk you'd think they were banged up in Colditz! The character's are awful, there's a perverted priest, the 'tough' female hero, the cop, the butch lesbian & her gang a well as a few faceless cardboard cutout victims & there isn't even any funny dialogue in it either. I'm sorry but this is just terrible, it's not explicit enough to please anyone looking for sex & it's not scary enough for anyone looking for chills so why exactly does this film exist? Answers on a postcard please...
Director Hall was obviously working on a low budget but I still don't think that's an excuse for turning in such a crap film. Ther are no scares, there's no tension, there's no laugh value while the sex & nudity is brief, tame & very forgettable. Even the obligatory shower scene is a letdown as it features lots of not very attractive women who could do with losing a few pounds... Gore wise there's a decapitation, someone has their hand chopped off with a pair of garden shears & someone is impaled with a machete, nothing to get excited about really.
Technically the film is probably as good as it could have been but it's still a very cheap looking little film that has nothing going for it. The monster looks awful & the room it comes out of must have some sort of fog machine in it as it seems to come out in a huge cloud of smoke for no apparent reason other than to hide it's body... The acting isn't so hot, sorry.
The Halfway House is just another totally forgettable, dull rubbishy no budget straight-to-video horror film that fails to inspire or impress in any way. Definitely not recommended.