Tom Noonan

I almost had a heart attack when I first saw the VHS promo copy of The House of the Devil that some of my horror brethren were teasing everyone with online. Genius idea! VHS junkies like myself are elated over Amazon's release of a VHS and DVD bundle for the film which you can purchase here.

In further anticipation for Devil's February 2 DVD and Blu-ray release, marketing folks have constructed this nifty little flyer, which mimics the one Mr. Ulman (Tom Noonan) posts on a college campus. He eventually lures Sam (Jocelin Donahue) into his home for a babysitting job which turns into a creepy, satanic free-for-all. The film also stars AJ Bowen (The Signal), Greta Gerwig (Baghead), Dee Wallace (The Howling) and cult legend Mary Woronov.

When you dial the number on the flyer (1-866-666-8968) you're greeted by the smooth and eerie sounds of Tom Noonan as Mr. Ulman directing you to take further action for more information. This doesn't help my Tom Noonan crush-obsession because I've already dialed the number a bazillion times today.

Peter Hall has all the DVD/Blu-ray details over here and you can also check out my review for the film, which if you haven't seen it yet, I urge you to do so immediately.

Flyer courtesy of Shock Till You Drop

I can be impatient about things sometimes, and that was certainly the case with The House of the Devil. From the moment I saw those magnificent posters it was love. As soon as the Video on Demand version was available I downloaded it and happily handed over my ten bucks. Chances are I'll be seeing it again in the theater this Friday, October 30 when it opens.

In preparation for the festivities Magnolia Pictures is conducting a live Twitter chat with The House of the Devil director Ti West. You can join the chat this Thursday, October 29 from 11-12 PM PST. Type #DEVILHOUSE in the search bar and hit enter to follow the conversation. Insert the #DEVILHOUSE tag in your question for Ti to make sure it stays on thread. Perhaps I'll ask if it's normal to want spankings from Tom Noonan dressed as Francis Dollarhyde. Sorry.

Twitter has been a very successful marketing tool for many flicks, including the recent indie haunt Paranormal Activity. It's nice to see Ti's indie spirit supported by Magnolia after the Cabin Fever 2 debacle. IFC.com is currently premiering West's new web series Dead & Lonely, which tells the tale of two lonely singles looking for love. However, one of them is a vampire. You can check out my interview with West about the series here.

Follow Horror Squad on Twitter to find out if we asking anything embarrassing this Thursday. Or just because you like us.

Time for some rumor control. Contrary to what one would assume watching The House of the Devil, writer-director Ti West does not have the power to bend time and space to his will. Ti West is not a time lord, he is a mere mortal like the rest of us, he just happens to have the ability to make a film that lives and breathes as if it fell out of a wormhole from 1983. Plenty of horror directors attempt the throwback film, but few pull it off and even fewer pull it off as convincingly as West has with The House of the Devil.

Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) is an impossibly cute college gal dying to escape her slovenly roommate. In order to afford the too-good-to-be-true rent on an apartment she's just discovered, Samantha has to, against her better judgment, answer a Babysitter Wanted flier pinned to the ad board on campus. The man on the phone (Tom Noonan) is a little creepy and a little too eager to find a babysitter on the night of a rare full lunar eclipse, but that's just something Samantha is going to have to put up with if she wants to move out. So the ill-fated coed asks her best friend to drive her out to the isolated house in the woods, where things eventually prove to be even worse than Samantha imagined.

What follows is a remarkably restrained, expertly-maintained atmosphere of tension and dread that is in no rush to evolve from its controlled burn to full-on Satanic panic. And if there's anything that House of the Devil has going against itself, it's the fact that very little happens for long stretches of the film. Granted, this is liable to only be a problem for those who like their horror movies fast, quick and drenched in red, but for those among us who can appreciate a 95-minute film that remains wholly fascinating without exploiting any of the aforementioned qualities, House of the Devil is a near-perfect film.