Here’s one of the more contentious PR moves in recent memory: Terror Films Releasing CEO Joe Dain taking to Facebook on August 21 to instruct fans on how to post their reactions to the recently released HELL HOUSE LLC: LINEAGE. The advance word on the film hasn’t been too encouraging, something Dain all-but admits to in his posting.
HELL HOUSE LLC LINEAGE (2025) Trailer
Acknowledging in his capitalization-happy post that “Many of you LOVED the film. Many of you have MIXED feelings. And there are those who HATED this installment,” Dain implores people in the latter category to “PLEASE have something more constructive to say rather than calling the film TRASH, GARBAGE or a POS,” and to “leave those reviews on IMDB, Letterboxd or Reddit and leave the GOOD reviews for those who liked the film for Rotten Tomatoes.” If those instructions aren’t followed, we risk not getting another good HELL HOUSE LLC movie, because “in order for there to possibly be another installment like ORIGINS (2023), it requires the support of positive audience scores.”
The online response to this missive was swift and savage, so much so that Dain was inspired to write a second Facebook posting the following day. Acknowledging the furor he’d caused, Dain admitted that the earlier write-up had been a “strategic” PR move designed to counteract the bad reviews he knew were coming (as I said, the advance word hasn’t been glowing).
If that was indeed the case I say bravo, as while Dain’s actions don’t appear to have done much to mitigate the negativity surrounding the film (which currently sits at 54 percent on Rotten Tomatoes’ Popcornmeter and a dismal 23 percent on the Tomatometer), he did at least succeed in accruing a great deal of free publicity. The fact that HELL HOUSE LLC: LINEAGE, the fifth entry in a franchise that has never interested me much (although I do quite like the 2001 HELL HOUSE documentary), even showed up on my radar was due entirely to Dain’s postings; as he stated in the second of them, “there is NO SUCH THING AS BAD PRESS!”
Much of the Reddit chatter that accompanied the initial posting insinuated that this “Absolutely insane PR move” was unprecedented. It wasn’t, as many a filmmaker and/or distributor has over the years attempted to outwit the critics, and gone much further in that endeavor than Mr. Dain did.
Perhaps the most shameless example of this practice occurred back in 1975, when the late Tom Laughlin publicized a re-release of THE TRIAL OF BILLY JACK (1974) with a “Billy Jack Vs. The Critics” essay contest. The gist of the contest, announced via full page ads in various periodicals, was the query “Why is it that critics are so totally out of touch with the audiences they are paid to review for?” Laughlin wound up forking out $100,000 in prizes to multiple recipients (one of whom dismissed the film as “the most abominable product I have consumed in several years”), but that failed to help the fortunes of the rereleased TRIAL OF BILLY JACK. As one theater manager stated, “There was no way to measure the effect of the campaign pro or con, because there weren’t enough people at the theater to ask.”
Some publicity campaigns have gotten especially creative, using negative reviews to their benefit. During the initial theatrical bow of David Lynch’s LOST HIGHWAY (1997), newspaper ads for the film touted “Two Thumbs Down!” by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, which, in a gambit devised by Lynch himself, was followed by the words “Two More Great Reasons to See...” the film in question. Once again, the campaign was of no help at the box office, but I give it a thumbs up (my favorite using-bad-reviews-to-one’s-advantage attempt occurred in the literary world, in the Abacus trade paperback edition of THE WASP FACTORY by Iain Banks, which on the critical blurb page included negative quotes alongside the expected enthusiastic ones).
Less enervating was James Cameron’s attack on LOS ANGELES TIMES critic Kenneth Turan over the latter’s negative review of TITANIC (1997). In a March 28, 1998 letter, Cameron hammered Turan at length, concluding with the line “Forget about Clinton—how do we impeach Kenneth Turan?” Cameron’s assessment of the famously curmudgeonly Turan—“Simmering in his own bile, year after year, he has become further and further removed from the simple joyful experience of movie-watching”—wasn’t inaccurate, but his letter did nothing to help or hinder TITANIC’s fortunes (as by March ‘98 its box office domination was well underway).
Back to the present, and those Joe Dain Facebook posts. How they might affect the box office takings of HELL HOUSE LLC: LINEAGE remains to be seen, but again: Dain unquestionably succeeded in gaining extra publicity for the film, so his actions weren’t entirely unfounded.