| Product: |
The House by the Cemetary (DVD) |
| Date: |
31.01.05 (76 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: A few good bits, Good for a laugh
Disadvantages: Bad dubbing, Not scary, That supid kid
Well, come on. If you decide to live in an old abandoned house by a mass cemetery surrounding the place then you’re bound to be asking for trouble. House by the Cemetery certainly adheres to that forgone conclusion to become another zombie flick from Lucio Fulci. This film is loosely linked to three other zombie flicks in the series, Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond and City of the Living Dead and is no relation to House on the Edge of the Park. They don’t carry on in terms of story but all have the same basic elements lent to one another. Despite it being released theatrically in Britain it still got dubbed as a ‘video nasty’ and therefore got hold of some notoriety when it was finally released on video albeit with some cuts. So does it measure up to the violence of its predecessors or has the zombie lost its bite?
House by the Cemetery tells the familiar tale of a young family moving in to a stupidly oversized house in the middle of some small town. Norman (Palol Marco) is investigating the sudden suicide of his work partner who apparently went berserk living in the house that Norman is about to take his wife Lucy (Catriona MacColl) and his annoying son Bob (Giovanni Frezza), so much for good parenting. Things start looking shady early on when Bob sees a girl who tells him not to go into the house but seeing as adults never listen to children in horror movies they move in anyway. They soon settle in (albeit with minimal furniture) and get themselves a babysitter but they also get more than they bargained for. The house used to be used to perform illegal experiments on people by the resident mad scientist that used to live there. Unfortunately for the Boyles it seems that the mad scientist is still there and while he’s not quite alive he’s certainly kicking. It seems that living by a cemetery wasn’t such a good idea in the first place.
The film starts off fairly promisingly. We get to see a young girl looking for her boyfriend around the old house no doubt they couldn’t find a decent bed in any of their own homes so decided to have sex in a dusty, spooky house because that’s what young people like to do. Unfortunately for her and the boyfriend because they appear in the opening shot of a horror flick then neither of them aren’t going to come out alive and she is soon dragged down the cellar of the house leaving a icky trail of blood behind. It isn’t long for the film takes a downward turn and seems to leave behind its intention on being a bloody zombie flick you might expect and try to weave an intricate and complex plot about the mysteries of the house. HBTC seems to be more story-led than other Fulci’s films. Indeed from the opening until at least over halfway into the film there’s next to no killings or proper scares. Fulci lets the house do the talking instead of buckets of fake blood. It’s a shame then that the story isn’t exactly that novel or carried off well at all and you’ll be wondering if the trade off was worthwhile.
While the film is trying to give the viewer a lot to think about it’s actually just raising a whole lot of questions. Unfortunately by the end of the film most of the questions are left unanswered. For example it is eluded at certain stages of the film that Norman has been in the town before but it’s never expanded upon. Norman and the babysitter also seem to do fretting glances to each other but again there doesn’t seem any reason to this because by the end the film doesn’t let you know if they did know each other from a past event or not. There are countless scenes that are shown in the movie that you would think would have something to do with the plot but they just seem to be added in for the sake of it without wanting to link in to anything or finish the film off. It comes across as annoying that the film isn’t fulfilling itself as a one with a competent story or a gorey one that you would expect from the director. Then there are many times when the film stretches the realms of believability even for a horror film. When someone wanders into your house late at night and gets brutally murdered during a course of ten minutes I’d hear it. I’d also question why the hell there was blood on the floor and the babysitter is mopping it up but not so in this film it was brushed aside like it was an everyday occurrence.
So if there are no mass amounts of dead bodies does the film successfully scare? We all know a film doesn’t need blood and guts to be foreboding as not seeing things can be just as, if not more, effective but the film doesn’t exactly achieve this. As the film flits and bumps between scenes that sometimes convey no meaning and some that do its hard to get a sense of any sort of foreboding atmosphere in the house because there are few times it lasts long enough. The trips down to the cellar are fairly well directed but it doesn’t take much for a dark cellar to provoke some sort of scares. There does seem to be a total overuse of close up of eyes, obviously Fulci thinks they’ll convey a bigger meaning than the whole face but it just looks silly when they linger on wide-open eyes for about twenty seconds a piece like some bad Western. Despite there not being as many deaths as in other zombie features the deaths themselves are still somewhat gorey. The first deaths we see and suitably icky and then we have a very long, drawn out death scene involving an unfortunate woman and a seeping gravestone and this is a scene that also had a few minutes cut to get the 18 certificate. The final ten minutes or so is when the gore really does intensify though still doesn’t quite match some other films in terms of shock or sickness.
As ever in these types of films the cast isn’t a strong point for the film but things get especially bad in this film. The stand out problem is the kid who plays Bob. Lets try and put aside the fact that the boy actually looks like a girl thanks to his stupid haircut. What makes his performance woefully painful is the fact his voice is dubbed very, very badly. Not only does it not match up with the movement of his lips but also his voice is actually dubbed by an adult mimicking a child’s voice. The result is terrible, it is high pitched, annoying and not surprisingly artificial meaning that you really do hope he’s the first to get mutilated or at least gagged. His little friend Mae (Silvia Collatina) also shares his fate of bad dubbing and also shares his talent for wanting you to see her dead. When a film weighs quite heavily on the children it would be nice to see some semi-competent ones taking the roles. The adults don’t fair much better and this time they don’t have the excuse of someone else doing their voices. MacColl seems to think every line uttered is an effort on her voice box. She’ll speak too fast, or too quietly or too apathetic at times and all the time doing frantic eye movements and little gasps so she’s another one to add to the body pile. Malco does little other than walk around with a stern look on his face or pretend to do work and act shifty to confuse the viewer as to what his motives are. To be fair he’s probably the best of a very bad bunch but when you put it in that context then its best left unsaid.
House by the Cemetery seems to be a bit out of place in belonging to the zombie genre and indeed out of place with the directors other works. Forgoing fun gore for a slack story doesn’t suit it well. That said the film isn’t totally without merit. When it does shrug off the pretence it’s trying to act semi-seriously and give viewers what they want it is competent. There are some memorable scenes in the film that will stick in your mind for a fair while and it is a shame these are few and far between. This certainly isn’t the most entertaining zombie flick you are likely to see and if you want some raw carnage stick to the likes of Zombie Flesh Eaters and as a horror film it misses the mark when it tries to act like a mystery and messes up. Watch it for those few good bits and also just to balk at the sheer lack of quality of the dubbing but don’t expect to be scared, shocked or thrilled.
HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY IS
Filled with annoying people
Overly complex
Run down
HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY IS NOT
Filled with zombies
Or much blood
Or scares
Summary:
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