HALFWAY HOUSE
2005

Camp queen Mary Woronov plays Sister Cecilia, in charge of the girls at Mary Magdalene’s Halfway House for Troubled Girls. She spent some time at good ol’ Miskatonic University and has become an undercover high priestess of the Elder Gods, preparing for their return when not occupied with her nun duties. Woronov’s delivery and timing are a joy to watch, and elevate any scenes that she is in. Especially compared with all the amateur actors in the movie. She adds conviction to lines like “The church said I have to go through man to get to God. Well, I plan on eliminating the middle man.”
The bow-legged lead actress Larissa (Janet Tracy Keijser) can’t act, but she makes up for it by not having a problem taking off her clothes and cavorting with sex partners both male (shown) and female (offscreen). This movie is good ol’ sleazy fun, like a throwback to a 70s exploitation film, with lots of blood, beasts and breasts, as Joe Bob would say. Doesn’t waste much time establishing that the lead’s sister went into the halfway house, and that, of course, she has to go undercover to find out what really happened to her. We see the truth—the girls who try to escape from the mistreatment at the house are caught and sacrificed to the tentacled Lovecraftian beastie kept in the cellar. “Your god can’t help you now!” declares Sister Cecila.
Filmmaker Kenneth J. Hall has fun with the genre conventions: the asshole police captain with a bust of John Wayne on his desk; the creepy handyman that spies on the girls in the shower; head bitch at the prison snarling, “You got a smart mouth. Maybe I should shut it for you.”; the priest “twisted enough to vote the Marquis de Sade into sainthood”, with a plastic fuck doll in his wardrobe; and the threatened rape of Cherry Pie with a lubed statue of the Virgin Mary-to which Larissa responds, “That’s no way to treat a virgin”.
Intentional humor, a little obvious but always enjoyable, abounds in the film. In a nod to recent headlines, one character says something about how it’s unbelievable that representatives of the Catholic Church are somehow trying to cover up evidence of wrongdoing at the halfway house, and both leads glance meaningfully at each other. Yuk yuk. Hall keeps our interest in a long exposition scene by having the leads explain the plot while they’re humping! I noticed a gratuitous Exorcist reference; undoubtedly there are more in-jokes in the film And true to the genre, most of the “girls” in the halfway house look like they’re on the wrong side of thirty.
The look of the film is often shadowy and dark, but I think that is to make up for the fact that they don’t have much in the way of sets. The Halfway House is quite competently made, and armed with a wit above most indie beast & boob films. I’ll forgive the dodgy CGI explosion at the end ‘cause there are enough other good action sequences to keep you happy. The tentacled monster is a lot of fun, a girl gets her boyfriend’s head cut off right in the middle of a good hump, and we are treated to a machete attack, catfights, a hand cut off with garden shears, and someone killed with a weed-wacker to the abdomen. Would that really work? I don’t know, but it looks cool.
The Halfway House is widely available at outlets like Best Buy and Amazon.com for under 20 bucks! Showtime just recently picked up this movie, so check their schedule for repeat showings. Hall has made special effects monsters for several films, notably the octopus in Ed Wood and the self-titled critter of Carnosaur. He also wrote and directed other horror titles, including the classic Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout. Note at the end credits say, “No elder gods were harmed in the making of this motion

-Hysteric Eric