Director
Lucio Fulci
Cast
Bob Boyle - Giovanni Frezza
Dr. Norman Boyle - Paolo Malco
Lucy Boyle - Katherine MacColl
Dr. Freudstein - Giovanni De Nava
Mae - Silvia Collatina
Thanks to the streaming service Shudder bringing me a vast library of horror/thriller titles, I've been introduced to Italian Director Lucio Fulci and his "Gates of Hell" trilogy.
Looking into his movie House by the Cemetery a little more after watching it, I didn't realize it's the third movie in a three-movie series. This includes City of the Living Dead and The Beyond - both I believe are available on Shudder, and will be watched (by me, of course) in the near future.
The title caught my eye. "House by the Cemetery!" Was that the best title writers could come up with? It seems like a very generic title for a horror movie. It would be just as "frightening" to title it The Dark and Stormy Night or just The Scary Movie. Of course, I'm just nitpicking. Seriously, the title is no reflection on the movie's performance.
About 10 minutes into this movie, I caught faint whiffs of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining which was released the previous year.
I don't know for sure, but I'd bet my entire movie collection, and a few action figures, that there was some loose inspiration pulled from Kubrick's movie.
In The House by the Cemetery, there's a little boy who has some sort of remote viewing, or ESP, mind power and who's visited by a little girl from time to time, a father who's preoccupied with his research work, a big fancy place where people were previously murdered (not nearly as big as the Overlook Hotel, but still fancy and dark) and a worrisome mother who tends to fret and scream a lot (for good reason, of course.) If you haven't seen The Shining, these are elements both movies have in common.
Meanwhile, in New York City, a little blond haired, blue eyed boy named Bob Boyle (Giovanni Frezza) and his parents, Norman (Paolo Malco) and Lucy (Catriona MacColl) are planning on moving into the same house, called Oak Mansion.
The previous owner, Dr. Peterson, was also Norman's ex-colleague. Peterson supposedly murdered the girl he was having an affair with, and then committed suicide in that house.
Norman is moving in to that same house in order to conduct research on old houses.
As the family is getting ready to move, Lucy shows Bob a picture of the house. The boy notices a young girl staring out of the window in the picture. She disappears when he points her out to his mom.
As they travel to the town of New Whitby, Boston, where Oak Mansion is located, Bob's parents leave him in the car as they make a stop to collect the keys to the mansion. While he's waiting, he sees the same little girl, Mae (Silvia Collatina), from the picture, standing across the street. She communicates to him with the shinin...oops, I mean, telepathically warning him not go into Oak Mansion.
But, the family moves into the old place, which needs work inside.
As the family is getting used to their new home, a girl named Ann (Ania Pieroni) shows up claiming she's the babysitter that the real estate agent the family had picked up the house keys from had promised to find for their son. They welcome her in, though she acts hesitant a little too often.
I get the impression there's some sort of attraction or...something...between her and Norman.
As the family settles in, Lucy finds a grave marker with the name Jacob Tess Freudstein in the floor covered under a rug, right in the middle of the house. That's stranger than the basement door being nailed shut.
Norman plays it off as normal claiming old houses often have indoor graves because harsh long winters made it difficult to bury the dead back in the day.
Mae continues to visit Bob, and shows him a grave site of a Mary Freudstein in the cemetery near the house. She tells him that Mary isn't really buried there.
When Norman successfully attempts to open the basement door and goes down to see what's hidden below the house, he's attacked by a bat. The bat bites his hand and won't let go. He ends up stabbing it into a bloody mess- literally.
The scene is both horrific and laughable. Watching a grown man repeatedly fight and stab a bat latched to his hand is hilarious. Bravo performance to Norman and the fake bat!
After the incident which freaks out Norman, his attention goes from researching old homes to researching Freudstein.
He learns that Freudstein killed his family - his wife and young daughter - over 100 years ago in that home. But that's not his most horrific aspect of Freudstein.
Things really begin to escalate as whatever or whomever is in the basement begins to emerge.
The gore level and freakiness of this picture is pretty high.
One scene has the unseen being living in the house cut Ann's throat not once but several times until it's severed.
The climax at the end of the movie begins with Bob getting locked in the basement. He starts noticing eyes staring at him from the dark recesses. The image of those eyes still manages to hold up as an unsettling scene.
The end manages to maintain just enough intensity and nightmarish trauma that kept me glued to the screen. The effects are dated, but that's not the movie's fault.
Despite the bad voice dubbing, and the similarities with The Shining, this movie still satisfied my horror fandom. It tries to tell a compelling story, but more originality and less borrowed material would have made it better. It's not the greatest horror movie, but it still has a sinister atmosphere and enough gore to make it a slasher classic
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