User Reviews

As far as early '80s haunted house movies go (there were quite a few, most likely thanks to the box office success of 1979's THE AMITYVILLE HORROR), you could do worse. Neurotic mystery novelist Lauren Cochran (Robin Groves) is suffering from the anxiety disorder agoraphobia; meaning she has panic attacks when put in a crowded or unfamiliar environment. Barely able to leave her New York City apartment, she and her doctor decide the best thing for her mental state is a little peace and quiet in a tranquil setting. Lauren, accompanied by her boyfriend Mark (Christopher Loomis), decides to rent a large house out in the country so she can recover from her condition and begin work on her next novel. Strangely, the large, lakeside home she is compelled to rent looks almost identical to the one pictured on the cover of her last novel "The Nesting;" which was illustrated from her own description. Soon after moving in (Mark has to return to NYC, leaving her all alone), she starts suffering from nightmares and starts seeing ghosts lurking around. What's Lauren's connection to the house and why are the murderous spirits that occupy the place only killing select victims?

I noticed skimming through the reviews that some viewers think the first half was stronger than the second. I actually feel the opposite. The first 45 minutes or so were a little shaky and confusing, but I felt the film actually improved and became more interesting during the second and third acts. Thankfully the major plot points are adequately explained with some decent flashbacks. The leading lady is a pretty decent actress, but not quite the sympathetic heroine you'd expect to find in a film like this. The architecture on the house itself is very striking and it makes for a terrific, atmospheric country setting. The horror scenes are adequate, yet not too bloody, and there's some brief nudity and sex also. On the down side, some of the dialogue is awful (especially the supposedly witty lines given to the Mark character at the beginning), the film looks pretty dark, dreary and murky (many scenes are set inside barely lit interiors), there's a visible boom mike and some of the supporting performances are rough.

One of the major drawing cards (at least to me) were appearances from prolific character actor/horror cameo king John Carradine and talented and underrated film noir goddess Gloria Grahame, both in small but important co-starring roles. Carradine plays Colonel LeBrun, the wheelchair-bound, sickly owner of the haunted home, while Grahame (who looks astonishingly good for her age and astonishingly good considering she died soon after appearing in this) plays Florinda Costello, the ghostly former brothel madam. Neither has a whole lot of screen time, but do well with what they're given to work with. Fans of either should enjoy their work here. I'd never heard of director Armand Weston before, but it seems like he worked exclusively on X-rated films. He did a fairly good job on this, his only "mainstream" effort.

After the fun and frolics of Breaking It... A Story About Virgins (1984 reviewed on this site,but not Letterboxd since the owners have the jitters over flicks that show skin) finished my duo 1984 viewings,I looked for more movies from the 80's waiting to be watched. Deciding to view three Horror titles from 1981,I decided that this would be the one I'd begin to make a Horror of '81 nest with.

View on the film:

Retaining his roots as a prolific poster designer in the 60s and 70s once he moved into making Adult Movies during the Golden Age of skin flicks, and later saying in a interview that he felt an obligation to the producers to shoot "hard-core" scenes in a certain way they would be happy with (rather then what he would have liked) co-writer/(with regular collaborator Daria Price) director Armand Weston finishes his credits by reuniting with cinematographer Joao Fernandes for a thrust into the mainstream.

Continuing his exploration of how sensuality fits into a landscape, cultural or environmental, Weston displays a welcomed, unexpected patience in holding back from unloading a premature climax, instead sinking Cochran into the foundation of the mysterious house (the exterior being the real Armour-Stiner House) which brings up a thick atmosphere of Gothic Horror dread, spun in crawling panning shots along the red and pink silk drapes lining the house.

Entering the house with Cochran, (played by a very good Robin Groves,who keeps the slow-burn going until she explodes into a Scream Queen) the screenplay by Weston and Price peel away at the ghostly state of the boudoir (which the makers make clear was run by a woman) to uncover the horrific violence the local men inflicted on the innocent ladies of the establishment,whose ghostly aftermath has been left nestled within the walls.

Here's a run-of-the-mill haunted house flick which isn't actually bad, just boring. The film runs for over a hundred minutes see, and only thirty minutes of that time is made up of action. The rest of the film is padded with unnecessary surreal dream sequences (usually showing the lead character naked or in bed, go figure), lots of talk about nothing in particular and people going about their daily lives. Now, with a bit of snappy editing and some more suspense, this could have been a great movie.

As it is, we're left with a slow-paced film which has some good scares occurring at irregular intervals. A string of gore murders (following scenes which seem to take an age to actually get to the action) is included for the genre fan to enjoy, with various victims getting scythes in faces, getting impaled through the eyes with railings and, in a fantastic shock scene, dragged into the still waters of a lake by rotting hands which rise up out of nowhere. The ghosts don't really haunt their mansion as such, instead appearing in dreams or to play music or pop up and smash a window occasionally.

The film is heavy on atmosphere, complemented by some effectively spooky music and an interesting setting in the octagonal mansion. The usual technical errors you will find in a low budget film are present (here it's mainly continuity errors) but there's nothing majorly wrong with it. The cast is primarily made up of unknowns, although genre veteran John Carradine makes a welcome appearance as an old man who spends half of his scenes lingering in a wheelchair and the other half lingering in his deathbed! Robin Groves is okay as the female lead, more down-to-earth and realistic than most, but she does display an annoying tendency to scream too much in the final act. Sadly the male leads (on the side of good) are generally wooden and it's left to Bill Rowley and David Tabor to ham it up enjoyably as weird rednecks.

It's a shame that this movie is pretty hard to sit through, because it closes with a bang-in-your-face ending which really does make you sit up in your seat. The genuinely horrific finale is a flashback to when the former inhabitants of the mansion (prostitutes) are murdered by a trio of angry townsfolk. This is powerful stuff as we watch the men go from room to room, slaughtering innocent (of crime, that is) folk in their wake. The best scene in the movie, but it's a shame that there's so much twaddle to sit through before you get to it. You could do worse, though, I suppose.

It sits on the crest of a hill overlooking the Hudson River to the west, a mere 18 miles north of NYC ... the truly bizarre-looking structure known as the Armour-Stiner Octagon House. Built from 1859 - 1860 in Irvington, NY by financier Paul J. Armour, and expanded from 1872 - '76 by tea importer Joseph Stiner, the structure is one of the few remaining octagonally shaped Victorian residences in the world; is now the site of a museum that is open for touring by the general public; and has deservedly been designated a National Historic Landmark. It is a site that I have long wanted to visit. OK, that last bit is an exaggeration. Actually, it is a site that I have wanted to visit for the last five days ... ever since I watched the truly superior horror outing "The Nesting," which features the Octagon House prominently in its story. Released in May 1981, "The Nesting" is a film that I never got a chance to see during its limited run back when, but have long wanted to experience, for the simple reason that it features one of my very favorite actresses, the legendary Gloria Grahame, in her final screen role. I wasn't really expecting much in the way of scares and cinematic quality, but let me tell you, this one really did catch me off guard. The film has proved a triple winner for this viewer, having allowed me to catch not only a stunningly effective horror wringer, but also having let me experienced Ms. Grahame in her swan-song act (and, surprisingly, still looking great five months before her passing, at age 57) and learn about a terrific place for a day trip outside NYC. Simply stated, I just loved this one!

The film introduces us to an attractive-looking author named Lauren Cochran (played by Robin Groves, whose filmography seems to be a sadly short one), whose latest novel, "The Nesting," we see lying on the table of her NYC home. The cover of this book, like so many other Gothics, depicts a young woman fleeing from a creepy-looking Victorian abode, this one being strangely octagonal in shape. Lauren, who describes herself to her therapist, Dr. Webb (Patrick Farrelly), as "an uptight, neurotic, creative, brilliant nutjob," has lately begun to suffer from agoraphobia - a fear of going outside her home. As a self-administered therapy of sorts, Lauren gets her boyfriend, Mark Felton (Christopher Loomis), to drive her upstate, where the country air might do her some good. The two stop at the side of Estes Pond (which will later figure prominently in the film), hard by the quaint little town of Dover Falls. They then climb a small hill, at the top of which they find the exact same house that had been depicted on the cover of Lauren's book! Our authoress is strangely drawn to the abandoned house, so much so that she decides to rent the place to do her writing. She thus visits the house's owner, one Colonel LeBrun (John Carradine, whose filmography includes over 350 films, dating from 1930 - '95), who suffers a stroke the moment he looks at her face. But the colonel's grandson, Daniel Griffith (Michael David Lally, who would go on to appear in one of this viewer's favorite films of the '90s, 1991's "The Rapture"), goes ahead and rents the place to her anyway. Once ensconced in the old abode, unusual things begin to transpire almost at once. Music and footsteps are heard coming from the upstairs floors. Lauren sees the ghostly figures of prostitutes and their patrons in the house's bedrooms. Her typewritten manuscripts are tampered with in the middle of the night. A man seems to appear in her bed from out of nowhere. When the house's handyman, Frank Beasley (Bill Rowley), attempts to rape her (you might almost think of him as Frankly Beastley!), the spectral figure of a blonde woman (our Gloria!) comes to her rescue, levitating the man bodily and throwing him about. When Lauren goes to Frank's best friend, the slovenly Abner Welles (David Tabor), to ask him about the history of the house, Abner tries to kill her, chasing her by car to a lonely farmstead, where the ghostly blonde woman again comes to Lauren's aid. Thus, Lauren is driven to the inevitable conclusion: Her house is haunted, and peopled by phantoms who used to dwell therein. Eventually, the truth comes out. Yes, the Octagon House was indeed the site of a former brothel, and the site of an unspeakable tragedy. But that is just the beginning of this truly imaginative thrill ride.

"The Nesting" (and no, we never do learn the meaning of that title, other than the fact that it is the title of Lauren's latest book) offers the viewer any number of wonderful scare sequences and shock moments. Thus, the initial exploration of the lonely old house; the startling eruption of pigeons from out of a downstairs window; Lauren getting stuck on a high windowsill of the abode, and her catastrophic "rescue" by Dr. Webb; Frank's getting tossed about by that phantom lady, and his eventual demise in the nearby pond; the entire sequence with Abner chasing Lauren down the highway, with his car repeatedly slamming into Gloria's imposing image, and that harrowing sequence in the farmyard, with Abner's demise by scythe being perhaps the film's most memorable moment; and finally, the sequence during which we learn of the tragic history of the house, via a narration by the Colonel on his deathbed, and see, via flashback, the horrible events that had transpired there decades ago. Director Armand Weston helms his film with a sure hand, and his script, cowritten with Daria Price, is a clever and imaginative one. (I do believe that Michael Weldon, in his book "The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film," is being unduly harsh when he says of the director "Weston previously directed hard-core sex movies. He should go back to them.") The film's musical backdrop (by Jack Malken and George Kim Scholes) ratchets up the tension to just the proper key, and cinematographer Joao Fernandes (who, in 1984 alone, shot such films as "Children of the Corn," "Missing in Action" and "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter") has lensed the picture in a wondrously artful manner. The film's players, although composed of folks who might not be household names, other than Carradine and Grahame, all deliver very effective performances, and Ms. Groves, in the lead, is especially credible and appealing. She makes for a very sympathetic heroine, and also demonstrates that she could have been a fine "scream queen" herself. Her shrieks of terror are truly convincing here, and given what her character is forced to undergo, I suppose that this should hardly come as a surprise.

But perhaps best of all in "The Nesting" is Gloria Grahame herself, playing the part of Florinda Costello, the madame of the old bordello. Grahame, of course, had been a star of the first rank some 35 years earlier, beginning shortly after her first role in 1944's "Blonde Fever." She would go on to become one of the true queens of the film noir genre, win an Oscar for her role in 1952's "The Bad and the Beautiful," and appear in some 40 theatrical pictures. Her final days were the subject of the 2017 biopic "Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool." Gloria is both stunning to look at and the cause of several shivery moments in the picture in question, and her work in this, her final film, has only reinforced my desire to see her in three other horror movies that she appeared in: "The Todd Killings" ('71), "Blood and Lace" (also '71) and "Mansion of the Doomed" ('76). Grahame, with her sultry sexpot ways and slightly lisping delivery, always managed to add some captivating charm to whatever project she appeared in, and her farewell performance in "The Nesting" is no exception. And, oh ... I would hate to be remiss in not mentioning one of the other true stars of The Nesting: the Octagon House itself, a structure that, once seen on film, exerts a compelling fascination on the viewer, as well as a desire to visit the place in person. The Octagon House has now been put in my Pantheon of All-Time Great Horror Houses to Visit, a pantheon that includes the Ennis House in the Los Feliz section of L. A., from 1959's "House on Haunted Hill"; the Ellington Park Hotel in Warwickshire, from 1963's "The Haunting"; Wykehurst Place in West Sussex, from 1973's "The Legend of Hell House"; the Remsen Street brownstone in Brooklyn Heights, from 1977's "The Sentinel" (which I have visited many times and tend to naturally think of as the Sentinel House); and the Amityville Horror house, from 1979's "The Amityville Horror." Fortunately for me, the Armour-Stiner Octagon House has been open to the public for tours since April 2019, and I do hope to be visiting it very shortly. I only hope that my experience there is a lot more pleasant than poor Lauren Cochran's, and that I do not encounter any ghostly ladies of the evening wandering around its Victorian halls....

This 1981 horror film tells about a female writer, Lauren Cochran (Robin Groves) who suffers from Agoraphobia and rents an old house that seems familiar where she wants to write and relax. Soon, Lauren has vivid dreams and discovers that the house is not only haunted, but was a brothel years ago in which murders too place. This has it's moments, but not much and Groves (Silver Bullet) is ok in it. The film shares similarities with other supernatural horror flicks like "The Amityville Horror," "The Changeling" & "The Evil." If you're into the genre, give it a try.

Lauren Cochran (Robin Groves) is a writer who lives in New York City and lately has been suffering from anxiety attacks, which her Doctor, Webb (Patrick Farrelly) put down to a condition called agoraphobia, which is a fear of leaving the house. Lauren decides to escape Manhattan and head to a small town called Dover Falls to finish her current novel. Her friend Mark Felton (Christopher Loomis) drives her to Dover Falls. They stop by the side of the road, take a break and stretch their legs. Lauren comes across an unusual large octagonal house that she feels she knows. It's exactly the same house she wrote about in one of her previous books entitled 'The Nesting'. And that the cover illustration on the book that she described for the artist to draw is precisely the same as this house she is looking at now, even though she has never been there before. She immediately decides to rent the property. She makes arrangements with the house's owner, a Colonel Lebrun (John Carradine) and his grandson Daniel Griffith (Micheal David Lally) and moves in straight away. That night Lauren has a dream about the house, or was it a hallucination or possibly even ghosts? While visiting, Dr. Webb has an 'accident' and is killed. The local handyman Frank Beasley (Bill Rowley) is mysteriously drowned after trying to attack Lauren. More strange things happen, record players start on their own, words are mysteriously typed onto her work and Lauren continues to see strange people who seem able to just appear and disappear at will. She decides to investigate the house's history, and talks with a local farmer called Abner Welles (David Tabor) who becomes violent towards her when questioned about the house. Lauren becomes more and more unsure if what she has experienced is real, hallucinatory or if indeed there are ghosts inhabiting the house. Co-written and directed by Armand Weston I thought this was a decent enough haunted house horror film. The script by Weston and Daria Price takes quite a long time to establish the situation and is fairly slow going at times. But I have to say it kept me pretty interested and watching right through to the end. One thing that disappointed me was the lacklustre ending, after all the build-up I was hoping for something a little more substantial than what was offered, it just ends up being a bit of a let down and rather pedestrian. Robin Groves was good in the leading role, but I thought Micheal David Lally was awful. There's not much gore in it, just a scythe whacked into someones face, someone is impaled and some gunshot wounds at the end. There's a bit of nudity, but not much. The film looks OK and has a decent atmosphere to it, and the octagonal house is both unusual and cool, I don't think I've ever seen another house like it. If you don't mind a horror film with a slightly slow pace then you could do a lot worse than this, but then I suppose you could probably do a lot better as well. Worth watching, if you can find a cheap copy or catch it on T.V. for free.

Also known as Phobia and Massacre Mansion, this movie fits into a genre that I really need to make a Letterboxd list for: films where a woman either inherits an old home or goes home, only for supernatural forces to ruin everything.

A section 3 video nasty, The Nesting does not skimp on the mayhem despite an early slow pace. New York City novelist Lauren Cochran (Robin Groves, Silver Bullet) decides to cure her agoraphobia - a fear of places and situations that might cause panic, helplessness or embarrassment - by temporarily moving in to the Victorian mansion domicile of Daniel Griffith (Michael Lally, who is known more for his poetry than his acting) and his grandfather, Colonel Lebrun (John Carradine!).

This movie reminds me of Superstition and I mean that in the best of ways. When the supernatural decides to kill someone in both of these movies, it does not mess around. It dispatches people in the most extreme ways, such as ghostly hands pulling someone into a lake or a scythe right to the brain.

Even better, there are numerous dream sequences and reveals of the past of the house, which was once a brothel. That's where Gloria Grahame* shows up in her last role as the madame of the home and the last survivor of a series of murders.

Daria Price also wrote Dawn of the Mummy, which is another underrated 80's gorefest. This was directed by Armand Weston, who worked in adult, writing movies like the Serena-starring N.Y. Babes and directing the film Personals, which has hardcore re-enactments of interviews of real people who ran personals ads.

*I absolutely love that the credits say "with the grateful participation of Gloria Grahame."