Boardinghouse (film)
1982 film
Boardinghouse is a 1982 American supernatural slasher film directed, written by, and starring musician John Wintergate. Its plot follows a group of aspiring actresses and models who begin to die mysteriously in a Los Angeles boarding house, which was once the site of a series of bizarre deaths. It carries the distinction of being the first horror film to be shot-on-video.
The film was released on DVD by Code Red in 2008. In 2015, Slasher//Video issued a two-disc edition of the film on DVD, featuring both the 98-minute theatrical cut, and an unofficial extended 157-minute version deemed the "director's cut." The American Genre Film Archive (AGFA) released the film on Blu-ray in 2021 featuring three cuts of the film: The 88-minute theatrical cut; the 98-minute home video cut, and an alternate cut released in 1984 under the title Psycho Killer.
Plot
On September 18, 1972, Dr. Hoffman and his wife, both of whom specialized in the study of telekinesis and the occult, are found dead in their Mulholland Drive ranch home on the night of their anniversary party. Their deaths, ruled a double suicide, were witnessed by the couple's thirteen-year-old daughter, Debbie, who was institutionalized due to a subsequent nervous breakdown. A couple who subsequently purchase the home also suffer gruesome, unexplained deaths in it, as does the following buyer, Herman Royce.
In 1982, the residence is reopened as a boarding house by Jim Royce, nephew of Herman, who has inherited the home.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Boardinghouse (film)” as 1982 film. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1982 film. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4931417. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1982, 2008, 2015 and 2021.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Boardinghouse (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.