Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Hayleigh Joseph This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Mr_Ectoplasma "Delusion" (also released as "The House Where Death Lives") follows a young nurse who goes to work at the Langrock estate to care for a dying millionaire. After the arrival of the elderly man's troubled nephew, anyone connected to the home begins to die at the hands of an unseen killer.This pseudo-psychological slasher film has mostly been forgotten, and registers as one of the more obscure of its peers, though not entirely for good reason. It's not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but it is reasonably well-shot and captures a claustrophobic, isolated atmosphere. The film falls in familiar trappings and does little to distinguish itself, but it does drum up a bit of intrigue with a couple of its murder scenes (each of which are clobbering administered by a loose table leg, oddly enough) which are well-executed. The acting is a mix of poor to decent, with Joseph Cotten playing the ailing patriarch, and Patricia Pearcy (of 1976's "Squirm"), who here seems to be overplaying catatonia a bit much, though she does a generally serviceable job. I actually found the letter voice-over narration an interesting way to frame the film, and certainly not one used often, especially in slasher films. The finale comes together a bit quickly and feels slapdash in nature, though it's mildly satisfying.Overall, "Delusion" is a middling slasher film, part psychological thriller and part murder mystery. It's certainly not original, but it is relatively well-shot and has a few moments scattered throughout that drum up a bit of suspense. Its limited locations exhibit what I presume was a low budget, but there is a hazy air about the film that leaves it feeling a bit like a fever dream. Not great, not terrible—certainly unremarkable, but worth a watch from slasher completists. 6/10.

Coventry Slow-moving and pseudo-intellectual horror/thriller that never at one point measures up to its glorious title – the alternate VHS box title that is – "The House Where Death Lives". I honestly hesitated to stop watching the film several times during the first half hour already because it's so boring and absolutely nothing indicates that it might get better anytime soon. The story handles about a young and attractive nurse who moves into the mansion of a wealthy but crippled elderly man (one of the final roles of horror legend Joseph Cotton of "Baron Blood" and "The Abominable Dr. Phibes") to look after him. The man recently lost his son and unwillingly obtained custody over his estranged 16-year-old suspiciously behaving grandson Gabriel. Then there's also three other servants living in the mansion and one mentally unbalanced son that lives locked away in a remote bedroom. One giant big happy family, in other words! The mishmash of personalities soon causes tensions in the house and people start turning up dead. Seriously, the title ought to be changed to "The house where you are bored to death" or something, as this is really one of the most uninteresting and substantially void horror movies I've seen in my entire life. The nurse character is dull and damp (even her sexual hallucinations are tedious) whilst all the other characters are plain and simply irritating. You possibly can't bring yourself to feel sympathy for any of them and you actually just hope they all die quick and gruesomely. There's not a trace of suspense, the supposedly ingenious twist-ending is hugely derivative and the murders are uninspired and bloodless. Bloodless, damned! What's the point of an early 80's horror movie when the set up is dull and the deaths are gore-free? I've seen episodes of my mother's daily soap opera that were more exciting than this turkey. One to avoid at all costs, unless of course you suffers from a bad case of insomnia. Where all medication fails, this movie is guaranteed to put you asleep.

lemon_magic To be fair, I have to admit to something up front: just before e I saw "Delusion/The House Where Death Lives", I happened to see the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" for the first time at a midnight movie showing. TCM knocked my socks off, and I was hungry for more rousing, scary movies that I had never heard of. In my naiveté, I assumed that "TCM" was only the tip of the iceberg, and that there many more, dozens more, as good or better, if only I were able to track them down. So when a friend and I saw this was playing at a local movie house (since gone under), we decided to take a chance, even though we'd heard nothing about it and had no idea where it came from. My reasoning was: I'd never heard of "Chainsaw" before I saw it, and it was great. I'd never heard a single thing about "Delusion" either. Therefore, it might be great, or at least interesting. The fact that absolutely no one else bought tickets for our showing should have clued us that there might be a problem, but alas, it did not. 40 minutes into the movie, both of us were sitting slumped in our seats, unable to move, brought almost to the edge of death by the boredom and sluggish pacing and dead-weight performances of this movie. I am not kidding. We both later agreed that the sensation was not unlike being drained of blood while floating in a quagmire of cooked farina. While the movie was playing, no hope or joy or animation was possible. summoning the energy to talk back to the screen or hoot in derision or make wisecracks was inconceivable. The movie went on and on and on, and nothing happened, and nothing happened, and then there was a moment where a guy was stuck in a storeroom and was scared and yelling and it was almost exciting, but then he got killed and the movie went back to being an exercise in excruciating boredom. Because we were young and vital (20-year-olds), we managed to hang on until the credits rolled. And once the movie stopped sitting on our heads and trying to kill us, we were able to summon enough energy to leave the theater and, eventually, to get on with our lives. I know I am not being fair to this movie. I went in hoping for the visceral thrills of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and got something entirely different, and HWDL suffered greatly in comparison to my 20 year old tastes. (Perhaps if it had appeared as "Delusion" instead of the alternate title, my expectations might have been different.) And I certainly wasn't used to dubbed movies or moody Gothic pieces.So if I were to watch it again (say, catching it on cable), I might have far more tolerance for the movie than I did in 1980. But I will always remember the way "The House Where Death Lives" seemed to suck the life right out of my body.

Dave_Lawrence It's very difficult to put into words just how poor & tedious this film is to watch. It was a chore to sit through such a dire, tiresome and insultingly substandard cinematic effort - I want to claim back the time it took to watch this, and the small amount of cash I bought it for. (Even though I think i picked it up for £1:99)