The Premise: Rock Star, Nervous Breakdown, Haunted McMansion
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you put a fragile rock star and his sweet young nurse into an overly designed mid-century mansion with homicidal tendencies, This House Possessed is here to answer that question with all the subtlety of a lava lamp exploding. Parker Stevenson plays Gary Straihorn, a singer recovering from a nervous breakdown, and Lisa Eilbacher plays Sheila Moore, the nurse who’s supposed to keep him calm — and ends up trapped in the architectural equivalent of a controlling ex.
To be fair, Lisa Eilbacher is cute enough to make you understand why the house might get possessive. Unfortunately, her charm is about the only thing this TV movie gets right.
The House: A Mid-Century Murder Machine
The real star here isn’t Stevenson’s hair or Eilbacher’s kindness — it’s the 8,000-square-foot Rancho Santa Fe mansion that clearly decided “open concept” wasn’t enough and went for “openly homicidal.” The house has telekinetic powers, a taste for blood, and the kind of interior design that screams Playboy After Dark with just a touch of unsolved missing persons case.
It controls water temperature, locks doors, and apparently has the ability to trigger fatal “accidents.” In other words, it’s basically a smart home before Wi-Fi existed — except instead of accidentally ordering you 14 boxes of cereal from Amazon, it kills you.
Gary the Rock Star: Chart-Topping Mediocrity
Gary’s career is tanking, he’s emotionally frayed, and his idea of recovery is moving into a house that looks like it was built by Frank Lloyd Wright’s evil twin. Parker Stevenson spends much of the movie looking vaguely sweaty and confused, which I suppose counts as “acting traumatized” on a TV budget.
His songs are about as memorable as the wallpaper in a dentist’s office, but everyone in-universe acts like he’s the second coming of Springsteen. The script keeps telling us he’s a big deal, but his music makes you wonder if the nervous breakdown was actually caused by his own discography.
Sheila the Nurse: The Only Reason to Keep Watching
Lisa Eilbacher’s Sheila is smart, empathetic, and far too good for this nonsense. She’s the kind of nurse who’d actually help you recover, not feed your paranoia — though to be fair, paranoia is warranted when your house turns on the jacuzzi jets hard enough to try to drown you. She’s also got that early-’80s wholesome-but-wry charm that makes you root for her survival.
Unfortunately, the script treats her less like a protagonist and more like bait for the house’s jealous outbursts. It’s hard to watch her running through those designer hallways without thinking, She deserves better than this, and also better than him.
The “Rag Lady” and Other Sideshow Characters
Joan Bennett wanders in as the “Rag Lady,” a mysterious figure who knows the house’s secrets but insists on delivering them like she’s auditioning for a community theater version of The Twilight Zone. Slim Pickens plays a grizzled handyman whose main contribution is confirming that, yes, strange things are happening, right before something strange happens to him.
Barry Corbin shows up as a cop who takes investigative cues from his mustache, and David Paymer pops in just long enough for you to think, Hey, it’s David Paymer, before disappearing again.
Kills on a Made-for-TV Budget
Because this was a 1981 TV movie, don’t expect buckets of gore — the house’s attacks are more about suggestion and creative camera angles. People die in showers, pools, and other domestic settings, but the violence is PG-rated and mostly relies on reaction shots. The pacing is also pure TV: lots of long scenes of people looking suspiciously at thermostats and light switches, followed by brief bursts of actual danger.
When the big “haunting” moments finally happen, they’re often undercut by awkward editing and special effects that look like they were borrowed from a Columbo episode about faulty wiring.
The Ending: Possession, but Make It Anti-Climactic
Without spoiling too much, the house’s murderous streak turns out to be tied to a tragic backstory that’s somehow both predictable and convoluted. Think ghost story meets obsessive stalker — only the stalker is a building. By the time Gary and Sheila face off with the house, you’re less scared and more curious if the property taxes would drop after such a high body count.
Why It’s Bad (and Weirdly Watchable Anyway)
This House Possessed is a slow-burn TV horror flick that takes too long to get going, leans too heavily on cliché, and has the narrative tension of a warm bath — the kind that might boil you alive if the house decides it’s mad. The scares are minimal, the acting is serviceable at best, and the soundtrack sounds like leftover cues from a soap opera.
But… Lisa Eilbacher is cute. Her performance is earnest enough to make you wish she’d been in a better horror project — or at least one with a budget big enough to give the killer house a proper special-effects arsenal. She’s the one spark in a movie that otherwise feels like a haunted open house you regret touring but can’t quite leave.
