I was not familiar with this 2014 horror movie titled "The Ladies of the House" from writers Justina Walford and John Stuart Wildman before now in 2020, when I was given the chance to sit down and watch it. Needless to say that with it being a horror movie, of course I sat down to watch it.

Well, turns out that there was very, very little worthwhile to be seen in the movie. First of all, the movie was lacking an interesting storyline and plot. It just felt like a movie that was made up on the go, and there was no red thread throughout the course of the movie. It actually felt like director John Stuart Wildman was just making up things to put in the movie as they filmed it.

I was by no means entertained by "The Ladies of the House". Well, that is not entirely true, because the movie does have a small amount of mayhem, blood and gore in it. However, it is nowhere near sufficient to make up for everything the movie was lacking.

The acting in the movie felt bland, as if the performers themselves weren't really buying into the script - or lack thereof - and having mundane and pointless characters to work with.

My rating of "The Ladies of the House" lands on a generous two out of ten stars, and that is purely and solely because of the gore and blood in the movie. If you enjoy horror movies, do yourself a favor and give "The Ladies of the House" a wide berth. It simply isn't worth the time, money or effort.

Three guys—Jacob (Gabriel Horn),his simple brother Kai (Rj Hanson) and pal Derek (Samrat Chakrabarti)—leave the strip joint where they have been celebrating Kai's birthday and decide to follow one of the strippers, Ginger (Michelle Sinclair),back to her home in the hope of partying in private. Amazingly, Ginger agrees, inviting the guys (along with their bottle of tequila) into the house.

The merriment takes a downward turn during a drunken game of 'dare' when Kai assaults Ginger: weapons are drawn and both Kai and Ginger are shot, Kai in the shoulder, the stripper taking a slug in the belly. When Ginger's stripper house-mates, lesbians Lin and Getty (Farah White and Melodie Sisk) and young protégé Crystal, suddenly arrive home, the men panic and hide; their evening goes from bad to worse when it transpires that the ladies of the house are cannibals and intend to have Ginger's attackers for dinner.

Taking obvious inspiration from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (TCM's iconic shot of a sliding door slamming shut is mimicked here),with echoes of Wes Craven's The People Under The Stairs, Ladies of the House might seem derivative in many ways, but proves to be an impressive debut from writer/director John Stuart Wildman nonetheless. The film owes much of its success to the well defined characters, a testament not only to Wildman's writing, but also the skill of the cast, whose nuanced performances ensure that the film's more cartoonish aspects never verge on the downright ridiculous.

Inspired production design also helps to lend this film a unique atmosphere: the girls' style is a colourful mish-mash of '50s-themed pin-up kitsch and rockabilly, a garish look that lends itself perfectly to the tawdry subject matter, their home an eclectic collection of weird kitsch ephemera, the origins of which would most likely tell many an unsettling story.

With its obvious exploitational elements, The Ladies of the House doesn't shy away from the nudity and gore either: there's a rather graphic lesbian sex scene between Lin and Getty (as Derek hides under their bed!),while the film's more splattery moments include a brutal scene of butchery and the macabre sight of a mutilated corpse presented as a guest at the girls' dinner table.

A suitably downbeat ending sees the only survivor of the strippers' wrath dreaming of escape, while in reality resigned to his fate as Crystal's plaything.

7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.

Three guys decide to get their way with a stripper. Things go bad and they get invited to dinner. This is a variation of the normal looking family cannibal theme. "Parents," "Blood Diner," "Hansel & Gretel,""Motel Hell," "Eating Raoul," "Flesh Eating Mothers," "Microwave Massacre," "Fresh Meat" "Delta Delta Die, " and "Cannibal Hookers" were superior films in the normal looking cannibal genre.

The acting was okay considering the theme. The characters were not that great. The plot moved remarkably slow. Four strippers and no real nudity outside of butts and side breast. That amounts to false advertising. Even in the strip club they had their clothes on.

Guide: F-word. Sex. Nudity?