(1982, Jap, 75 min) Dir Kan Tan.
In the early eighties Kan Tan, director of the mostly offensive and fairly popular Apartment Lust and Zoom Lens series, found himself regarded as nothing more than an also ran. His scheme was to channel his unpleasantness into what he imagined would be his definitive filmic statement before taking his own life and fortunately for him his plot backfired – the vile and shoddy Rancid House found itself an audience and not just locally either. An aspirant British distributor called Phil Roget caught the film on a stopover from the Philippines and immediately negotiated the rights for the burgeoning UK video market where the gross schlock of Lucio Fulci et al was going over a storm. Unfortunately for Roget his title was released in 1984 just as the Video Recordings Act was kicked into play and was immediately banned. Once the laws were relaxed in the early 2000’s it was finally released but without much fanfare. If your idea of a good time is to watch a trio of schoolgirls try to survive a night in a house with scabbed walls and a basement full of pus where they can’t sleep for five minutes without being hosed with maggots or assaulted by invisible molesters and flying razor blades then be sure to check out the shoddily transferred copy currently being plied under the Electric Video Company name – all Tan’s attempts at depravity are hilariously undercut by his own ineptitude to create a film of unmissable craptitude.
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