The House by the Cemetary, 1981.
Directed by Lucio Fulci.
Starring Catriona MacColl, Paolo Malco, Ania Pieroni, and Giovanni Frezza.
SYNOPSIS:
Dr Norman Boyle moves his family to Boston to take up the research into the mysterious Freudenstein house being conducted by a colleague who seemingly went mad and murdered his mistress before hanging himself. However, as the Boyle family settle into their new and creepy surroundings it soon becomes clear that there is a horrifying secret in the houses dark basement that is the cause of much bloodshed.
It’s that time of the month where I continue my unofficial tradition of taking a look at the work of cult Italian director Lucio Fulci, a man who directed many a gruesome film in which he demonstrated his utter hatred for the human eye.
We return to his unofficial “Gates of Hell” trilogy for today’s review and after looking at City of the Living Dead and The Beyond in previous years (not to mention Zombie Flesh Eaters) we find ourselves at the end of the road with The House by the Cemetery, a film that despite a valiant attempt by Fulci to move away from the zombie-filled shenanigans of his earlier efforts, doesn’t quite match up to its more entertaining predecessors.
In the films I’ve spotlighted over the years, Fulci has had a good track record when it comes to creating a great horror atmosphere through his visual style and his use of music. The House by the Cemetery keeps this trend going, albeit with much more mixed results.
The visuals are suitably spooky with some excellent lighting and shadows to make the darkness really loom over the characters, with it feeling like all manner of horrors could be lurking within them. Although Fulci does often let his love of dramatic zooms into peoples eyes get the better of him, with the zooms coming in so thick and fast you feel like you’re about to crash into some poor sods face. If you really want to have some fun, take a shot every time it zooms in on an actors face, you’ll be very merry very quickly.
What is rather lacking is the film’s musical score which, given the great work of past Fulci efforts, makes this film even more disappointing. Gone is Fulci’s regular composer Fabio Frizzi for this outing and in his place we have Walter Rizzati whose work is not a patch on the brilliance of Frizzi’s more colourful and creepy themes.
It also has a strange habit of cutting out suddenly when the horror and murder get really intense, a bit like the composer ran out of the recording studio, too scared to continue. However, I will give credit to Rizzati for composing an honestly cool opening theme that sets the tone right. Although it does sound less like I’m about to watch a horror film and more like I’m about to play a Castlevania knock off.
The film’s monster, the decaying Dr Freudstein (who I imagine assembled his mother from dead body parts because of an Odepius complex) is a curious thing with the beast managing to simultaneously be a massively overhyped let down of a villain, while also still managing to be genuinely creepy.
Freudstein is at his creepiest when he’s just a pair of decayed hands or he’s off-screen and all you can hear is a mixture between his groans and childlike crying that is honestly rather unsettling when you’re unaware of what he actually is. Although these very same factors are also what makes his final reveal as just another decaying Jason style zombie slasher killer all the more disappointing.
Perhaps creepiest of all though is a pair of demonic yellow eyes that stare out from the darkness of the basement. What makes them all the more frightening is that they don’t seem like they belong to Freudstein.
Even more oddly enough and even creepier than that, yes even more than a decaying monster and his possible demonic roommate, is the Boyles young son, the oddly named Bob. I already said it once this month, but I’ll say it again, but there is just something very weird about calling a young child Bob.
Even more wrong and even more unsettling is the dubbing of Bob in which the very young (I’d reckon about 8 years old) Giovanni Frezza is dubbed by what sounds like a 35-year-old doing a very creepy impression of a child’s voice. The mismatch between actor and dubbed voice is probably one of the most bizarre and unnatural things I’ve ever heard in one of these films and it’s something that leaves you feeling deeply queasy. A child just shouldn’t sound like that. Or be called Bob.
The rest of the acting is par for the course with these films, with the heavy use of dubbing on the obviously Italian actors making it a tad difficult to rate their performances. Rest assured though, the rest of the dubbing isn’t nearly as creepy as Bob’s.
Oddly for a Fulci film, The House by the Cemetery is rather restrained affair when it comes to its violence, albeit only somewhat. Instead of displaying his usual hatred of the human eye via sharp points and finger gouging, Fulci instead (and literally) goes for the jugular. A lot. It’s perhaps only a mild exaggeration (okay a big one) to say that this film has more necks being cut and stabbed than Sweeney Todd’s barbershop.
While Fulci does hold back somewhat, the film still gives us more than enough gushing fake blood to keep any gorehound satisfied, with some excellent and grotesque sound design only adding to the overall impact. Although one instance involving a bat being killed is so overly gruesome and blood-soaked that it looks like it would be more at home in a spoof of a Fulci film.
Sadly though, despite its suitably creepy visuals and decent gore effects, The House by the Cemetery is easily the weakest of the Fulci films I’ve reviewed so far. The film moves along at a pace leaves the film in danger of being overtaken by a snail and it isn’t helped by the often confusing sometimes supernatural, sometimes not, story that feels like a mixture of other films that really shouldn’t be mixed. In short, while it does have some terrific spooky qualities The House by the Cemetery is one for the die-hard Fulci fans only.
Scare Rating: ? ? ?
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Graeme Robertson
