These
strippers really enjoy serving their customers—preferably with some melted
butter and a side of potatoes. Yes, Damon Knight’s pun is still zingy
sixty-five years later. However, these exotic dancers are not aliens. They are
as earthy as it gets. Usually, they have to lure men (who really ought to be
more suspicious) back to their (charnel) house, but this time dinner will unexpectedly
delivery itself in John Stuart Wildman’s Ladies of the House, which releases today on VOD.
A
relatively nice guy like Jacob never should have taken his slightly addled brother
Kai to a strip club for his birthday, but their obnoxious friend Derek always
has to get his way. When the club scene turns sour for them, Derek decides to
follow home (i.e. stalk) one of the dancers. That would be Ginger, Lin’s newest
housemate. There are rules to living in her house. Dinner rituals are a big
deal, but Ginger has not fully acclimated. When the three lads try to invite
themselves in she unwisely agrees. After a lot of boozing, the three amigos
find themselves in a sticky Very Bad
Things situation.
At
this point, Ginger’s housemates arrive, locking in the intruders rather than
calling five-o. They are pretty much done for, especially if Getty, Lin’s lover
with anger management issues, gets a hold of them. Things are going to get ugly
for the intruding trio, but at least their experiences will help kids learn
proper strip club etiquette.
Known
for his Utilitarian concept of filmmaking, John Stuart Wildman also happens to
be a film publicist for some of New York’s more prestigious screening events,
whom we all know and like quite a bit, so you can now consider yourself fully
informed. However, House delivers the
kind of grindhouse love any cult film fan can appreciate. Yet, this feels like
an intensely personal film, almost like Blue is the Warmest Color, but with more cannibalism.
Shrewdly,
Wildman and co-writer Justina Walford follow the EC Comics playbook, meting out
gory payback for the appalling displays of loutish behavior. By the time we get
to the third act, absolutely no one will want to see Derek the pond scum walk
out of the house under his own steam. Indeed, Samrat Chakrabarti clearly enjoys
playing that kind of a jerkweed character, which helps make House so subversive.
Still,
Gabriel Horn’s Jacob is convincingly contrite enough to keep our loyalties
divided between cannibals and the meat for their grinder. Farah White and
Melodie Sisk convey a strangely legit sense of long-term couplehood, leaving us
intrigued for more back story. Michelle Sinclair also comes across appropriately
down-to-earth and slightly naïve as Ginger. Evidently, she has a lot of fans
who know her for her work under the name “Belladonna,” but surely nobody here
knows what that might be.
