It was billed for as long as the memory can remember as the Expendables of horror, providing the greatest ensemble of genre actors in living memory.
Sadly beyond the star power of Death House, this film is quite disjointed and very uneven in terms of tone.
When two agents are sent to the aforementioned Death House prison, an underground facility housing the best of the bad, they are pitted in a race for survival as the security goes down and the prisoners are freed from their cells.
Front the bad bunch is Kane Hodder sans any mask or prosthetic and from the long list of horror alumni; he is the one you feel is really giving it his all and attempting to drive the story forward.
Besides some excellent practical effects the film is quite tame when it comes to action scenes and seems to never catch fire despite the interesting premise.
On the flipside the CGI on show here is really poor and lets some promising scenes down.
Icons Dee Wallace and Barbara Crampton are also passable in their roles as doctors at the facility, who study the criminals and their pathologic ‘evil’.
The idea was originally pitched by the late Gunnar Hansen (who turns up in a short cameo) and then Director and Co-Writer B Harrison Smith took the reins on following the original Leatherface’s death.
It does feel like there are parts of two films here that just don’t match up as the action scenes don’t really have any pacing to them and you never really feel like the characters are in any serious peril.
This followed by a very limp finale which only seems to hint at a sequel makes you feel empty. Death House promised so much but delivered very little sadly.
⭐️
Bloody Flicks 