Main cast: Keith Coogan (Waters), Michael DeLuise (Sparks), Courtney Gains (Frat Boy), Brian Krause (Tex Crandell), Jason London (Henderson), Meredith Salenger (Mona), Wil Wheaton (Arling), Kevin Dillon (Les Wilton), and John Kassir (The Crypt Keeper)
Director: Bob Gale
House of Horror is the first episode in the entire series to date to kick off with a bunch of men in tighty-whities. Oh don’t be too excited, this isn’t some charming gay pornography as much as it is just some new pledges of the Gamma Delta fraternity getting hazed. Waters, Arling, and Henderson are not having a good time, though, as the pledge master Les Wilton is a sadistic bully who enjoys torturing them. The final test for these three pledges lies in the night ahead: to enter an old, big house said to be haunted by a chainsaw-wielding ghost and reach the attic alive. The Copper House isn’t actually haunted, of course – Les and his techie buddy Sparks have rigged all kinds of traps and tricks in that house to scare three lads.
Meanwhile, the fraternity is visited by Mona, from the newly formed Delta Omega Alpha sorority. She wants a few men to join her and her sisters for a dinner, during which they can discuss, er, partnership opportunities during social events. Les suspects that Mona is pulling a stunt as part of her own sorority hazing, so taunts her by inviting her and her sisters to come watch as the fraternity sends the three lads into the haunted house that night. To his surprise, she accepts.
Thus, everyone bunkers down for a long night ahead. What do you know, the house may just be actually haunted after all…
This is a pretty convoluted episode – but that’s not a bad thing here, as the way these twists end up screwing the despicable Les Wilton so thoroughly is actually very entertaining to watch. The cast here is probably one of the biggest in the series, but most of them are pretty nondescript except for Kevin Dillon, who is deliciously over the top nasty, and Meredith Salenger, whose Mona makes even the most awkward double entendre work with the right amount of sass and seductive attitude. The final twist is just icing on the blood-soaked cake – Les finally gets his dinner date, just not in the way he imagined!
Actually, if I think about it, the plot on the whole has some large lapses in logic, but then again, with a final twist like that, it’s hard to make a case about the episode needing to make sense. Just sit back and have fun as frat boys get killed to the sounds of a chainsaw and ghoulish laughter in the background.
