No, not the Fox TV show with Hugh Laurie! House is a horror-comedy, though to be honest, it's really not quite either of those genres. It's more like a horror film that got rewritten so many times so as to inadvertently become a comedy. Though, still not a solid comedy, the script must have been passed back to the team of horror scriptwriters again, because it teeters cumbersomely between scary and funny, to finally become outright absurd.
The director is Steve Miner, who made a couple Friday the 13th movies back in the 80s, and has since kept busy directing numerous TV episodes, but also remains true to his horror roots serving as director on 1998's Halloween H20 (which I never saw) and Lake Placid in 2000 (also which I never saw).
Roger Cobb (William Katt) is a novelist and an army vet who has frightening flashbacks of the Vietnam jungles after he returns to his late aunt's house, which is apparently haunted. I believe he sees her ghost at one point, but I'm not sure because it's jumbled in my memory with images of bloated and bloody Muppet-looking creatures that live in Roger's closet. Extended mano y mano battle scenes between Man and Bloody Muppet-thing ensue for greater portions of the second act, broken up by quiet visits from his next door neighbor Harold, played by George Wendt of Cheers' "Norm!" fame.
And here's the part I remember most because it's just so strange: there's a scene in Harold's house while he's talking on the phone, and the phone is pink. Why is Norm from Cheers talking on a pink phone? It's a subtle pink, a light whitish-soft pink, you might call it baby pink, though paler. My question is, who is the set designer who decided upon this prop option? Of all the fake phones housed in a studio prop department the guy on the House sets picks pink? This makes no sense. I ask again, Why is does he have a pink phone?
This mystery and more remain unsolved by the end of House, including the surprise story where Roger's former army buddy played by Bull from Night Court (Richard Moll) comes back to haunt him as a skeleton corpse.
You've got to see this disaster to believe it.
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