Plot Summary

After their teenage son is killed in a car crash, Paul (Andrew Sensenig) and Anne (Barbara Crampton) move to the quiet New York countryside to start a new life for themselves. But the grieving couple instead becomes prey to a family of vengeful spirits which reside in their new home, and before long they discover that the seemingly peaceful town they’ve moved into is hiding a terrifying secret. Now they must find a way to both overcome their sorrow and fight back against both the living and the dead as the malicious ghosts threaten to pull their souls – and the soul of their lost son – into hell with them.

Memorable Lines

Jacob Lewis: [possessed by the spirit of Lassander Dagmar] You’re gonna listen to that old bastard? We were good people! This town murdered my family – sacrificed them to the gods they dug up when they built this place! Oh, nobody knew what was under this house until it was too late!

****

Dave McCabe: It’s been 30 years since we’ve had fresh souls in the Dagmar house…
Paul Sacchetti: I think we can call it the Sacchetti house now.
Dave McCabe: Oh, it’s still Dagmar’s house.

****

Dave McCabe: Old Dagmar has been runnin’ the parlor no more than a couple months when, well wouldn’t you know, word got out that he’d been selling the bodies and burying empty coffins. People were saying he was, uh, selling the corpses to the university over in Essex County. Some even said he was selling to the Orientals over in Boston… turnin’ ’em into chop suey. The town ran him, his wife, and their little girl out on a rail. Was just the saddest thing. They moved to Providence, but his family just couldn’t stand the sight of him. Old Dagmar drank himself to death no more than a year later. They say he was no more than a shell of a man at the end.

****

Paul Sacchetti: [driving to the house] Probably another hour or so. Everything should be there. The movers were working all week, putting all the rooms together.
Anne Sacchetti: How did they know where to hang the photos?
Paul Sacchetti: I told them. If something’s in the wrong place, we’ll fix it.
Anne Sacchetti: We’ll fix it…

****

Thoughts from the HauntedHouses.com team

Horror fans will be like kids in a candy store with Ted Geoghegan’s retro haunted-house thriller, which features a cast of genre veterans and nostalgically recalls such cult classics as The House by the Cemetery and many others. Admittedly this low-budget debut has its problems, and the special effects are strictly cheesy, but it has enough genuine scares to make it very enjoyable. Special praise is due Geoghegan for casting 79-year-old Monte Markham in a role in which the veteran character actor truly sinks his teeth.

The storyline doesn’t win any points for originality, but does it matter? WASH follows middle-aged couple Paul (Andrew Sensenig) and Anne (Barbara Crampton, of Re-Animator fame), still mourning the death of their son Bobby in a car accident, as they move into a century-old house in a remote New England burg.

Big mistake, as any horror enthusiast will tell you. The couple are soon greeted by creepy neighbors Dave (Markham) and Cat (Connie Neer), who tell them the house used to belong to a family of morticians who earned the wrath of the townsfolk after they were caught burying empty coffins and selling the cadavers. Shortly before they leave, Cat hammers the message home by stealthily handing Paul a note reading, “This house needs families. Get out.”

But as things start going bump both day and night, grieving Anne is convinced that the house is haunted by the ghost of their late son.

As the mysterious events pile up, the couple call in their friends Jacob (veteran horror filmmaker Larry Fessenden), an aging pothead, and his New Age wife, May (Lisa Marie, who played Vampira in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood), who supposedly has psychic powers.

Also turning up are Jacob and May’s son (Michael Patrick), Bobby’s former college roommate, and his girlfriend (Kelsea Dakota), who don’t last long since they become the house’s first victims.

“That house probably has more demons than the Book of Revelations,” Dave says at one point, and they turn up very soon thereafter, in the form of some very ill-tempered charred corpses.

Although the film takes its time getting started, the scares pick up after an ill-advised seance that goes catastrophically wrong. By the time the final act arrives the gore hits full force — modern horror fans rejoice!

VISIT GREAT HAUNTED HOTELS