The Nesting (1980, Blu-ray Review)
Director: Armand Weston
Cast: Robin Groves, Christopher Loomis, Michael David Lally, John Carradine
Blue Underground / All Regions / Rated “R” / 1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen / English 7.1, 5.1 and mono / Subtitles: English, French, Spanish / 103 minutes
Extras: Deleted and extended scenes / Trailers / TV Spots / Poster & stills gallery
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I am not a fan of ghost/haunted house horror. It rarely is done in a way that isn’t completely cheesy and predictable. Doors will open and close by themselves, strange disembodied voices, inanimate objects fly around the room and maybe, just maybe you get a specter in a a white, flowing dress. I fucking hate that shit and as a rule, just stay away from it. Granted, there are movies like Tobe Hoopers classic Poltergeist that will live on forever in my movie collection and I will pull it out and watch it every so often because it’s just that good and it stands the test of time. But for the most part, meh… give me a good slasher flick any day. Case in point; adult filmmaker Armand Weston’s broke-dick supernatural clunker, The Nesting.
Agoraphobic New York City fiction writer Lauren thinks it would be good for her illness to get out of the hustle and bustle of the big city so she rents a house out in a small, rural town. On arrival she is stunned to see that the dilapidated old house is exactly like one she wrote about in her latest book, The Nesting. This seems very odd but she moves in anyway and almost right away begins to have weird dreams, visions and all of that typical other stuff that happens in haunted houses. She thinks she is going crazy but soon learns that the house has a bit of a torrid, violent past. While finding out, she is met by some of the nutty-ass locals who seem to want her to go away and never talk about the house again. But the house has different ideas; like killing those same mother-fuckers. What is the shocking mystery surrounding the house?
Weston’s classic hardcore “roughie” films like The Defiance of Good and The Taking of Christina are top-notch in my book and his directorial skills in The Nesting are pretty damn good, but his dialogue and storytelling is, well, on par with porn. The lines these actors have to spew and apparently how they are directed to deliver them is amateurish at best. They all sound like robots reciting a lame stage play. The always awesome John Carradine who starred in such exploitation trash as Shock Waves and Satan’s Cheerleaders (both from 1977) stars as “the Colonel” and he was by FAR the coolest thing about this movie. He delivered his lines with every bit of the overacting greatness for which he is known. The backstory of the house being a brothel even failed to be interesting because I suppose Weston didn’t want to bring his sleazy talents into this “legit” movie.
Were there tits? Yeah, a few but nothing like it should have been. I should have seen tits, bush, fucking and ghosts with no heads still balling in the afterlife. But noooooo, Mr. Horror Director had to keep it relatively clean. You would think that if the nudity department was lacking, he would make up for it with the scares and/or bloodshed, right? One scene where a dude runs into the lake to escape the house and is pulled under the water by zombiefied arms was pretty fucking chilling, otherwise ZILCH on the scary deal. Aside from a little squirt of blood here and there, enough to call it a horror movie, Weston shorted us there too. I really hate taking a shit on movies because god knows I could never make one, but when I am bored sitting through a movie, it’s really the only thing a movie can do to make me hate it. It’s the crux of my horror, cult and exploitation movie watching… DON’T BE BORING!
It’s a shame I hated the movie so much because Blue Underground did an incredible job with the high definition transfer from the original film negative. Weston’s dark, stylish camerawork really works here because you can actually see what’s going on in the sparsely lit scenes. Any film damage that may have shown up on previous home video versions have been neatly taken care of with no real blemishes to speak of. The dialogue on the other hand seemed to be mixed very low in most scenes while the music, screams and sound effects blared. Curiously Blue Underground decided not to release the “Director’s Cut” of the film, but to add those missing scenes to the disk’s extra features. Maybe I would have liked it then? Naaaaaaah… but if you were already a fan of this film and a looking to replace your shitty Warner Home Video VHS, this is the time to do it. Pick up your copy June 28, 2011!
