"She'll love you to death" when you visit GRANDMOTHER'S HOUSE, on Blu-ray from 88 Films.

After the death of their father, orphans David (Eric Foster, CRY WILDERNESS) and Lynn (Kim Valentine, THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN) are bussed off to live with their grandparents Sally (Ida Lee, GUNCRAZY) and Spike (Len Lesser, TRUCK STOP WOMEN) who live in a Victorian house in the middle of a sprawling orchard in a town where the height of excitement is either the summer swim meets or rubbernecking whenever the police fish tourist bodies out of the creeks. More disturbed than his sister by the loss of his father, David feels uneasy with his grandparents' hospitality and has a nightmare in which he witnesses them murder a mysterious woman (Brinke Stevens, NIGHTMARE SISTERS) he saw on the road, and local kid Raymond Sackett (Craig Yerman) does not put him at ease as he babbles on about a string of strange deaths in the vicinity of the farm. While Lynn suffers the attentions of dorky wannabe greaser Kenny (Michael Robinson), David continues to see the woman around town and the orchard to the point that he is not quite sure he is really seeing his grandparents actually murdering her and disposing of her body; that is, until he finds himself in a deadly game of hide and seek with a shotgun toting Spike.

Not the slasher suggested by the title, GRANDMOTHER'S HOUSE is quite a singular genre effort for the eighties, seeming at first to appeal to a younger audience with its teenage protagonist before taking a series of quite unexpected and increasingly twisted turns before a surprisingly dark ending. Despite a creepy old house setting, much of the film's suspense and horror takes place in sunny exteriors including the orange groves and Redland, California's striking palm tree-lined roads and mossy creeks. The violence is more suggested than shown but the film is quite ambitious in its staging of action sequences including a foot versus pickup truck chase through the orchards and an explosive climax. Young leads Foster and Valentine are likeable while character actor Lesser's grandfather character is more akin to his BLOOD AND LACE handyman than his better-known role as SEINFELD's cheery and dotty Uncle Leo (and don't forget that we're on the same stomping grounds as Don Jones' SCHOOLGIRLS IN CHAINS). Director Peter Rader followed GRANDMOTHER'S HOUSE with only the subsequent Mastorakis production HIRED TO KILL and the Disney TV movie ESCAPE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN, his claim to fame being the original script for Kevin Costner's multi-million dollar flop WATERWORLD (which he had first taken to Roger Corman).

Released direct to video as GRANDMA'S HOUSE via Academy Home Entertainment and laserdisc from Image Entertainment, GRANDMOTHER'S HOUSE had its original title restored when it was released on DVD in 1999 from Simitar Entertainment utilizing the fullscreen tape master. Like several of Mastorakis' other films, the film as remastered in 2003 and released by Image Entertainment with an anamorphic transfer and a documentary featurette. Recently, the film received a 4K remaster along with most of Mastorakis' catalogue and made its Blu-ray debut stateside from Vinegar Syndrome. 88 Films utilizes the same master derived from the original camera negative, and the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray looks flawless starting with the bold colors of the opening credits opticals, the rustic textures of the Redlands locations, well-exposed night scenes and dark interiors, and the capable follow focus of the many Steadicam shots. Whereas the Vinegar Syndrome release featured a lossless 5.1 remix and the original Ultra Stereo matrixed stereo mix in lossy Dolby Digital 2.0, 88 Films features both tracks in DTS-HD Master Audio, with the surrounds giving the busy synth music of CARNOSAUR composers Nigel Holton and Clive Wright along with some pyrotechnic directional sound effects depth and a bit of spread. Optional English HoH subtitles are provided.

The extras package is virtually identical to the Vinegar Syndrome edition, starting off with "The Mysterious Woman" (13:04), an interview with actress Stevens who was still playing teenage characters in her thirties and saw the film as a change, going from coed to psycho even though Mastorakis and Rader thought she was too young and had her go through four callbacks before casting her. She recalls the experience being fun in spite of some mishaps on the set, including one of her own injuries when she had to do her own stunts rather than be doubled by stuntman Tim Trella (RUSH HOUR) in a dress. In "Back to Grandmother's House" (16:11), director Rader recalls starting in music videos and meeting cinematographer Peter Jensen (NIGHT VISITOR) when he needed a Steadicam operator and found him on the roster of Cinema Products where his uncle worked as an engineer. Jensen had a gothic horror script called THE COLD ROOM – not to be confused with the 1984 TV movie adaptation of the Jeffrey Caine novel – and they self-financed a concept trailer of the film to market it before they approached Mastorakis (Jensen having previously shot the director's comedy GLITCH!). He recalls learning as much from working with Jensen as from Mastorakis who put him in charge of the film's post-production as well, insisting that a director needed to know all aspects of the film.