Grandmother's House Reviews

After their father dies, teenaged Lynn (Kim Valentine) and her little brother, David (Eric Foster), go to live with their grandparents (Ida Lee and Len Lesser) on a farm. A mysterious figure in a long dress and shawl (Brinke Stevens) hangs around, and David sees his grandparents dragging her body about the house, finally stuffing her into a refrigerator in the basement. She is actually the crazy mother of the two children, who was institutionalized long ago and whom they believed to be long dead. The grandparents have not killed but merely drugged her; when the kids find her handcuffed to the steering wheel of a truck in the garage, they free her, then watch in horror as she goes on a murderous rampage. Apart from its stylish photography by Peter Jensen (who also wrote the poor script), GRANDMOTHER'S HOUSE is a botched job. The dialog is generally sketchy and uninformative, so that certain points of the plot are never clearly resolved. Also working against this gothic horror tale, filmed in the California citrus belt, is its sunny setting. The acting is uneven, the young performers being particularly ill-served by Peter Rader's slipshod direction. Only craggy-faced Len Lesser, though forced to lurk about as the sinister grandfather, gives a creditable performance--a tribute to his restraint as an actor.