My first movie was a shot-on-video movie. It was called The Monster Man, and you would be hard pressed to find a copy of it now. I understand what it takes to make a low-budget SOV flick, so I cut these movies a lot of slack (or I try to, anyway), and am always on the lookout for new ones, or rare ones. Thanks to Hadrian Belove at the Cinefamily in Los Angeles my pal and co-creator Jorge Lopez and I were subjected to the mind-melting experience that was Boardinghouse.

So what is this movie about? Good question. I think I will relay to you more what happens, than what the film was actually about. I think the truth is in there somewhere and maybe I need to watch the film again, or you can draw your own conclusions. Let's go with the latter. Boardinghouse deals with a house that has had a violent history of unexplained deaths. The only surviving member of the family, Jim Royce (played by an actor named Hawk Adly, who is really John Wintergate, the film's director), inherits the house and decides to (ready for this?) open it as a boardinghouse for hot girls to keep him company while he practices his meditation and telekinetic abilities. In no time at all, beautiful girls fill the house, more than happy to live with the creepy and sleazy-looking Jim. And then weird things start to happen.

What kind of weird things? Well, here things get a bit confusing. This movie almost can't decide whether it is a haunted house movie, a slasher flick, or a psychic killer movie. And unfortunately for the audience it is kind of ALL OF THOSE THINGS until we get the "surprise ending" that kinda/sorta explains the whole mess. But in between we get scenes where a woman turns into a demon pig while taking a shower. A psychic killer makes a nurse hang herself. A woman's face melts and her eyes boil out of her skull. Jim moves a bar of soap with his mind. A crazy gardener (also Wintergate) threatens one of the ladies with a chainsaw. A girl has a vivid dream involving zombies grabbing her through the mattress (see poster). And the rest is filled with fluff about a rock band while Jim bones nearly every girl living in his damn house.

This SOV opus was shot on consumer-grade video...and then transferred to 35mm film stock! Why? So they could not only sell it to video stores to fill the need of VHS-hungry patrons, but tour the prints around the country and show the movie theatrically. Let's take a moment to let that sink in. Imagine watching something like Sledgehammer or Cannibal Campout in a first-run theater? How fucking pissed would you be that you spent money on that?!? But, surprisingly, the 35mm print we got to see elevated the image and made it look more like 16mm than crap video, so I was kind of impressed with that.

This is not a good movie, but it gets a 2 coffin count because it is so much fun to watch, despite the fact that nothing makes sense and the film is pretty much silly padding until the big party finale that involves a silly, fog-drenched psychic battle of wills, which is as dumb as it sounds. But for some reason it is very, very watchable. Also, this movie does the right thing by us, the viewers, and packs in a ton of great nudity. You can't go wrong with an excess of boobies! Also, this movie doesn't skimp on the blood and guts, which helps fill in the spaces between the WTF moments. This is one 2 coffin'er that I highly recommend you track down. Will this be your favorite SOV movie? No, but it is a unique experience and a great party movie....also it has tons of boobs, so...

- Jose Prendes