The Dead Come Home aka Dead Dudes in the Hosue aka House on Tombstone Hill is a pretty standard post-Evil Dead slasher in many ways. Kids arrive at a haunted house, they meet supernatural foes, and then they die. It’s a beautiful formula that works.

And yet, there’s still something that makes it a bit special. There are echoes of Troma’s own Mother’s Day throughout, namely in its villain, an elderly woman. Only this one is dead! But there are also some brilliant practical effect death scenes that make this worth watching.

In a massive home in the countryside, a woman and her daughter spend some time over the corpse of a man on their floor. Forty years later, a group of young people arrive at the house. Mark, the house’s new owner, got it for a steal. In his words, “practically given away.” Maybe it was the 80s, but man – if it’s too good to be true…

After arriving, the kids have a look around. One of them disturbs the grave buried out back, severely pissing off the ghosties within the house.

The kids get to work, but soon after entering the house, they see an older woman. She doesn’t talk to them, but Mark goes to follow her when she shuffles away. And poor Mark, bless, is dead within the first fifteen minutes of run time. The home-owner dream was just not meant to last.

When Mark’s girlfriend goes to look for him, she discovers that he is very much dead, but still running around and being rude. The friends all try and escape the house, only to discover that they can’t get out. Granny and her daughter begin picking them off one-by-one in a pretty fun fashion.

Sure. The plot doesn’t really get more developed than that. But the makers of Dead Dudes in the House were obviously not here to tell a tale with characters we care about. They were here for the blood and gore. And they delivered!

I love a horror movie with too many names. And this one changes depending on the home video release. I have a personal affinity towards Troma’s choice of Dead Dudes in the House. There’s a group of boys (clearly in the early 90s) that don’t even feature in the film. Even Lloyd Kaufman’s description of the film in his book All I Need To Know About Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger isn’t entirely accurate but makes a nod to the unusual cover. “A group of hip-hop teens inhabit a house possessed by the spirits of a murdering, maniacal matriarch and her sexy daughter.”

Hip hop teens? Not here. But I would pay to see that movie too.