This has the look and feel of a student project

I was watching this movie last night and something occurred to me. This movie seems like it could have been a student project.

I once had a film production class and our final project was to make a short film. We had to shoot it on 16mm film and make sure it contained at least one zoom, one pan, one profile shot, one long shot, one handheld shot, one instance of dubbing, three central characters, etc.

From the amateurish looks of Horror House on Highway Five, it appears that this could have been the case, especially since it was supposedly made in 1985 and was clearly shot on 16mm film (why not shoot on video in 1985?). I wonder if this was a class project for Richard Casey, and he took it upon himself to go the extra mile and make a feature-length film.