Review of The House by the Lake (1976) by Ben R — 18 Apr 2013

This was a somewhat decent but lacking home invasion/rape revenge movie, that was kinda lacking that key ingredient....Rape. I'm not saying that's something I need in my movies, but when its advertised as a rape revenge and the most the female character gets is felt up under the shirt....it kinda takes the danger and suspense outta a film like this. This was a good example of mid 70s Canucksploitation that showed off a decent concept that was muddled down with over acting and overly long silly scenes that go nowhere. The main female lead DIane played by Brenda Vaccaro(who is mainly a comedy/musical actress) did a pretty good job as the tough,glamorous city chick. When her character is out cruising the country side with her male dentist friend in his corvette, a group of local dirt bags decide to chase them and throw bottles at their car. When Diane drives them off the road, they swear revenge on the two of them.

Her male dentist friend brings Diane up to his house by the lake, where he plans on seducing her with lies and liquor...but Diane figures this out and isn't having it. After a brief kinda silly argument, their relationship is strained to say the least. The five dirt bag friends led by Dan Stroud who plays Lep, find a local gas station where the two drunk attendants blab about who the dentist is and where his house is.

The rest goes from there but you can guess what happens when they invade the home, I thought I could have guessed but wasn't even close. To say I was alittle let down by the actual home invasion would be an understatement. First of all the five guys just spend more time talking and being abnoxious than actual physical or sexual assault. There are a couple sexual type assaults but they are very tame in comparison to movies such as Last house on the left or House on the edge of the park. The dentist friend gets his ass handed to him more than a couple times with beatings, and having his home destroyed.

The actual action and major violence takes such a long time to actually happen, so in the half hour before you just get super annoyed with the thugs and just hope for them to die, so you don't have to listen to their retardly awful jokes about farting and what not.

Diane does a great ass kicking job when she finally does fight back and shows you that a tough, city raised broad can do more than a pussy, candy ass, ivy league educated man, who knows nothing about fending for himself.

I sound alittle hard about this movie but it was a decent watch for what it was, but don't expect anything like the rape revenge/home invasion classics like straw dogs,last house,or house on the edge of the park. Its also has a really short running time which is good, because I couldn't deal with the "Thug" characters for another half hour. This is a pretty good weekend watch if you can catch it online or something but I wouldn't go out of my way to track it down if you're a fan of these type of movies.