House: Two Stories Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		5.0
Overall		3.5

House: Two Stories Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 5, 2017

There’s a virtual embarrassment of riches when it comes to films featuring haunted houses, a subgenre which goes back at least as far as such relatively early efforts as 1921’s The Haunted House, 1925’s The Monster, 1926’s The Bat, 1929’s Seven Footprints to Satan and another film entitled The Haunted House, and 1932’s now iconic The Old Dark House. It’s interesting to note that several of these early offerings blended horror with comedy, and didn’t always feature houses that were “really” haunted. More traditional horror offerings accrued with great regularity over the ensuing decades, with a barely even cursory list including such titles as The Haunting , The Amityville Horror Trilogy, Poltergeist, The Uninvited and The Others . One could probably make at least a passing case that none other than Alfred Hitchcock rejiggered certain haunted house elements for one of his most legendary films, Psycho. Perhaps unsurprisingly (and as should already be obvious, given the aforementioned list of titles), there are a ton of haunted house films with the word “house” in the actual title, including House on Haunted Hill, The Dark House (just one of several haunted house films featuring this title), The House That Screamed and Housebound. Credit writers Fred Dekker and Ethan Wiley, then, with cutting to the veritable chase by naming their goofy horror comedy concoction House, several years before the Hugh Laurie series House M.D. (which often is listed without that “M.D.” appendage) kind of usurped bragging rights for the moniker. The original House became an unexpected hit, leading of course to several sequels, the first of which Arrow has collected with its progenitor in a handsomely packaged new two Blu-ray set which also includes Arrow's typically wide assortment of supplements, which in this case include not just on disc bonus material but a nice hardback book entitled The House Companion.

For reviews of the two films in this set, please click on the following links:

House Blu-ray review

House II: The Second Story Blu-ray review

House: Two Stories Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Video quality of each release is assessed in the above linked reviews.

House: Two Stories Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Audio quality of each release is assessed in the above linked reviews.

House: Two Stories Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Supplementary material on each disc is detailed in the above linked reviews. Additionally, Arrow has (as is its fashion) packaged this set very handsomely, with reversible covers and the really impressive 148 page hardback book entitled The House Companion, which covers the entire franchise (i.e., the sequels beyond the second film), with a glut of archival material that should really delight fans.

House: Two Stories Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I refer you to the video section of the above linked reviews as well as to our forum for some insight into a particular recurring nightmare I've likened to my own personal horror film, but other than the framing issue technical merits are very good to excellent, and this is another extremely handsomely packaged set from Arrow with some excellent supplementary material. Recommended.