House of Dreams (1963) – Robert Berry.

'Why is Life such a mess?'

Low budgeted indie psychological chiller, shot on eye-wateringly high contrast B/W stock, does little to belie its penurious $10.000 price tag. Blocked scribe Lee's (Robert Berry) eerily precognitive nightmares about a desolated domicile, fatefully compel him to revisit this childhood haunt, discovering that not all dream houses are heaven sent! If one can overlook the prosaic dialogue, and excruciatingly enervating score, House of Dreams might remain watchable fright-lite for aficionados of goofy, home-made haunted house hokum. Undeniably static, with a lugubrious pace, there is an innate strangeness to the feature's off-kilter psychological discords. Performances are adequate, the dramatic elements are overwrought, soap-opera mawkish, which arguably provides an additional patina of psychotronic grist! The film would be greatly improved by Czech dubbing, with literarily upgraded subtitles, since House of Dreams tangentially expresses an accidental Art-house aesthetic. Even at 71 mins, its an uphill trudge, but some of the non-dialogue sequences have a weirdly expressionistic quality, suggestive of some long-forgotten silent-era short, and I am somewhat leery of the poster suggesting any comparability with Carnival of Souls, gittafook outta here, man!!!!