The Halfway House

It’s 70s sexploitation meets 80s splatter in The Halfway House, an independently produced horror film written and directed by Kenneth J. Hall (of Puppet Master fame).

With tongue firmly in cheek, the story follows the trail of the mysterious disappearances of nubile young women. Following the scent, a baby-faced cop named Dick Sheen (Shawn Savage) and the horny sister (Janet Tracy Keijser) of one of the victims zero in on the Mary Magdalene Halfway House for Troubled Girls, run by the righteous Sister Cecelia (Mary Woronov, most famous for 1982’s Eating Raoul and coming up in Rob Zombie’s sequel to House of 1000 Corpses).

The Halfway House puts on no airs — the look and feel is quick and dirty, the acting is uneven at best, the tentacled Cthulu-inspired monsters are made of floppy rubber, and the story is unashamedly populated with lipstick lesbians in too-tight Catholic schoolgirl outfits and pious priests with naughty whip-and-chains fetishes.

I think if I were a 14 year old boy I would have enjoyed The Halfway House a lot more but for what it is, this movie succeeds. The dialogue is passably funny, the storyline is tried and true, and Hall has a deft directing hand (which would clearly be better-served by a bigger budget and more adept actors). There’s plenty of blood, screaming, and body parts (severed, and otherwise exposed) and I guarantee after seeing this you will not be able to think about The Virgin Mary without also thinking of Vaseline.

Good, unclean fun, The Halfway House is halfway decent and certainly worth a peek on DVD. Break out the wafers and wine, and enjoy.

Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson for Horror.com