| Product: |
The House by the Cemetary (DVD) |
| Date: |
09.03.08 (100 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Effectively frightening
Disadvantages: Some poor dubbing and writing
A review of just the film - there are plenty of different DVD releases available, but the one I have is from the cheaper end of the market, and isn't worth reviewing as a DVD.
Another video nasty, an Italian frightener from 1981. The director, Lucio Fulci, directed three or four very good horrors in the early 80s. This ticks most of the boxes, having gore, a menacing atmosphere and some great scares - if it had only made me feel genuinely uneasy it would belong with the true greats of the genre.
A professor of some kind goes to stay in a rural house with his wife and young son, to continue the work of a recently deceased colleague. The house soon proves to be less than friendly, with something very sinister happening in the cellar. Meanwhile, the son, Bobby, is receiving strange warnings from his best friend, a little girl only he can see...
This is all very derivative. The rural location, the seemingly psychic kid and some other stuff I can't tell you about are from The Shining; the family moving into a nasty house with a grisly cellar is from The Amityville Horror. Add to that hints of Lovecraft (the New England setting), Stoker (it's set in a town called Whitby) and Mary Shelley (there's a 'Dr Freudstein' involved) and you have to wonder how Fulci thought he was going to get away with it. But the story is told with enough flair that it doesn't greatly matter where it came from.
This doesn't have the kind of unrestrained splatter Fulci used in Zombie Flesh Eaters, but it does have some remarkably bloody deaths, including a great throat skewering and a more than competent throat slashing. But apart from the film's climax, which has some rather forced 'gross out' stuff in it, the gore doesn't detract from the scary bits.
The scares are very well handled. The house is infested with effectively creepy noises - banging, heavy breathing and children sobbing. It perhaps uses false scares a bit too much (heavy footsteps turning out to belong to someone harmless innocuous, for instance), but there are some really nice, sustained scary bits that will have you on the edge of your seat. There's a sequence involving Bobby and his babysitter in the cellar that's as good as anything of its type that I've seen. The film's climax is a bit too long, and is kicked off by someone doing something so stupid that you'll be shouting in frustration at the lazy plotting, but on the whole the film works well. The ending is unexpected, inexplicable and absolutely insane, but that's a Fulci trademark (see also The Beyond, probably his finest film).
On the other hand, there are a lot of seemingly important plot threads that are undeveloped, and some really blatant red herrings. There's also some of the most shockingly obvious expository dialogue I've ever heard: "You were Peterson's protégé, and also I believe one of his best friends." Why would anyone trust a babysitter who is so obviously sinister? And there's a very poor bat special effect. Sadly these elements just about detract enough to stop this one earning four stars.
The acting is alright, although the cast is mostly Italian and dubbed with varying degrees of skill. The children are particularly bad in this respect, which is a shame - the little girl looks really spooky, but what she says never matches what her mouth's doing. The little boy looks a bit like Klaus Kinski, which is off-putting. His mother never wears a bra and, er, seems to feel the cold, if you get my drift.
The music, by Walter Rizzati, rather than Fulci's usual composer, Fabio Frizzi, and is a little less doom-laden. It's a decent enough Goblin knock-off, even if it goes a bit TV-movie when nothing scary is happening. The film's directed effectively enough, without overdoing it on the zooms and tracking shots. The makeup effects are a bit weak, but have enough novelty to work.
All in all, this one's a lot better than I thought it would be, one of comparatively few video nasties that works on its own terms, just about. There's plenty of blood and scares, but I wouldn't say it was 'nasty' in the way that some Italian horror of its era is. DVDs can be bought through amazon for as little as £2.
Summary: One of the more endearing video nasties
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