THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY. (1981) DIRECTED BY LUCIO FULCI. STARRING KATHERINE MACCOLL, PAOLO MALCO, ANIA PIERONI, DAGMAR LASSANDER, GIOVANNI DE NAVA AND GIOVANNI FREZZA. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
This is my kind of movie. A nice gory
horror film with a fabulous old gothic-style haunted house as the
central character. Oh, and it's situated right next to an old
graveyard, which is presumably haunted as well. And there's a
creepy-little-girl-ghost in it too, who tries to warn the lead little
boy not to go in the house. Naturally,
this does no good because it's his parents' new house and he's got to
go where they go,
haha. Anyway, let's take a closer look at the house by the
cemetery, shall we...?
Okay,
so Dr. and Mrs. Norman Boyle (he's not a medical doctor,
just the academic kind...!) are
moving into the aforementioned haunted house so that Norman can do
some research into why the previous owner went cuckoo-bananas there
and murdered his mistress before killing himself. It's as good
a reason to move into a new gaff as any, I suppose.
Lucy,
Norman's missus, reacts badly to the atmosphere in the house. It
gives her the willies, the heebie-jeebies and every other
rude-sounding feeling you'd care to mention. Little Bob, their son,
doesn't seem to mind it much as he scampers freely around the haunted
graveyard with his new best friend, the creepy-little-ghost-girl,
who's stopped trying to keep Bob away from the house. I suppose
there's not much point now. Not now that he's actually living
in the bloody place...!
Bob is truly
an extraordinary-looking child, which I'm sure the film-makers were
fully aware of when they cast him. He has gorgeous blonde hair and
huge full red lips that would put Mick Jagger to shame. I think he's
even wearing lipstick in a couple of scenes to accentuate his most
startling physical characteristic.
He probably
grew up into a handsome guy, though I'm not going to look him up on
Google Images in case he's balding now with a comb-over and an enormous hipster
beard. Let's all just remember Bob as the chubby little cherub he was
back then, shall we...?
Bob's
babysitter, Anna, is a beautiful young woman but she's as weird as
they come. She seems to
have a 'shining' thing going on with the house. Lucy has a queer feeling about her. But Anna's not the
queerest thing about the new house. That would be the cellar. Well,
you knew it'd either be the cellar or the attic where the creepy s**t
went down, didn't you? Nothing scary or supernatural ever seems to
happen in the sitting-room between the fish-tank and the
vacuum-cleaner...!
I'm sorry to report that the
Boyles' cellar is a veritable hotbed of murderous activity. The viewer knows
that gruesome killings have happened there in the past, but no traces
of these attacks are visible to the new owners. Dad is attacked by a
psychopathic bat when he goes on a wee recce, though,
and this deeply unpleasant incident puts the entire family off the
house.
The bat
attack is surprisingly graphic. The little guy (Well, actually,
he's a flippin' monster!) clamps
his razor-sharp choppers around Dad's mitt and clings on for dear
life. There's a lot of blood but then again, the entire film is a
gore-fest. Did I
mention that it's the third instalment in a trilogy, by the way? The
GATES OF HELL trilogy
also includes CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD and
THE BEYOND.
Anyway, whoever-
or whatever is hiding
out in the Boyles' basement has obviously been squatting there for
some time and he/she/it has a real fondness for stabbing folks dumb
enough to come down to the basement till their blood is flowing in
rivers across the cold stone floor. Ain't that poetic, folks?
Who's
down there? And will the family wise up to the grisly below-stairs
shenanigans before it's too late, by which I mean will they be
slaughtered horribly and their remains made into lampshades, old-lady doilies
and antimacassars? Nah, of course that won't happen. Or will it...?
Heh-heh-heh. I'm just messing with your minds.
There are
some extremely graphic murders in the film, making it a video-nasty
at its time of release. The special effects are terrific, though they
might put you off eating spaghetti bolognese for life, like they did
me! The atmosphere is suitably spooky and the villain, when he/she/it
is revealed, is top-notch.
There are a few minor inconsistencies in the film, which I won't go
into because I want you guys to have the fun of spotting them for
yourselves. It's like the film-makers were going to take things a
certain way and then they forgot to finish the storylines.
It's no
biggie, however. These little imperfections just add to the quaint
charm and fun of one of the goriest, stabbiest and most blood-splattered
horror films you'll ever see. They don't call dear old Lucio Fulci
'the Godfather of Gore' for
nothing, you know.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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