THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY: A Last Hurrah For Idiosyncratic Italian Horror Elegance
If you're a Lucio Fulci fan, there's a strange poignancyto watching The House By The Cemeterytoday. This film found him in the middle of what was arguably the last era ofhis career, a time where his projects had enough space - both artistically andfinancially - to fully accommodate his idiosyncratic artistry. There was acreative freedom that he would not enjoy in the latter half of the '80s. To hiscredit, he takes full advantage of that freedom here and the result is suffusedwith the uniquely personal approach to the shock-horror he was known for.
The premise of The House By The Cemetery plays like a mash-up of The Amityville Horror with any number of gothic horror tales, including some overt nods to Henry James. Dr. Norman Boyle (Paolo Malco) travels to a strange house in Connecticut to continue a research project after a colleague commits suicide. He also takes his high-strung wife Lucy (Catriona MacColl) and young son Bob (Giovanni Frezza).
Norman discovers his colleague's research was leading todark truths about the house and its prior occupant, one Dr. Freudstein, whoperformed experiments that could be considered atrocities. Strange, violentthings begin to happen around the house - and Bob makes friends with a strangelittle girl named Mae (Silvia Collatina) who warns him to leave before it istoo late...
The House By The Cemetery is considered by Fulci fans to be part of the unofficial "Gates Of Hell Trilogy" alongside City Of The Living Dead and The Beyond, with all three films blending shocks, surrealism and nods to gothic horror literature. It fits into that category but offers more of a "chamber piece" approach to this style: the action occurs mostly around the house and the script focuses on how the house's evil vibes affect its new inhabitants. A particularly interesting hook is the way a lot of the story is aligned with the perception of young Bob, who is more open to the otherworldly than his parents but too naive to foresee its dangers.
That said, The HouseBy The Cemetery is every bit as comfortable with grue as its fellow GatesOf Hell compatriots. Fulci and his collaborators are careful to pace theatmospheric storyline with lashings of bloodshed: there's a quick but memorablyvicious knife kill that starts the film off as well as a brutal murder with afireplace poker, a couple of epic throat slashings, a surprise bat attack (!)and a point-of-view shot that travels through Dr. Freudstein's lab to revealall the carnage wrought by his experiments. The film's third act isparticularly grim, with Fulci unloading both barrels on all his characters asthe house's darkness steps forward to claim all the innocents in a cruel,blood-drenched manner.
These shocks are balanced out by suspense setpieces,like a nail-biter where Freudstein presses a helpless Bob's head against theother side of a door as his father tries to break it down with an ax, as wellas surreal tableaus like a mannequin whose head suddenly falls off to unleash aspurt of gore. Such moments remind theviewer that Fulci's directorial range extended beyond choreographing splattereffects.
This combination of the atmospheric and the ferociousworks thanks to Fulci's distinctive directorial touch, which treats thesequalities as two sides of the same coin. With veteran collaborators likecinematographer Sergio Salvati and editor Vincenzo Tomassi, the directorcreates an artfully rendered setting for all his mayhem: like the film'shaunted house, it conducts its dark business with a style and a sense ofprecision that is all business. They also create a mournful vibe that fits thestory's mood of impending doom, with the lyrical but intensely sad score fromWalter Rizzati being a major player in setting that mood.
TheHouse By The Cemetery further benefits from a solid cast: Malcoand MacColl make likeable leads who try their best to prevail despite thesupernatural forces hemming them in. MacColl in particular is interesting,playing a kind of fragile, psychologically damaged heroine (shades of gothichorror) different from the stronger women she played in her other Fulci films.Texture is provided via supporting turns from Dagmar Lassander as a realtoreager to offload the haunted house and Ania Pieroni as a mysterious babysitter.
That said, the acting component of the film really belongs to Frezza and Collatina as the kids at the heart of the film. You could argue that The House By The Cemetery is Fulci's twisted horror version of a kid's film: despite putting these two young protagonists through their paces, his sympathy as a storyteller seems to lie with them. They're the last to be heard by the other characters, both lacking agency for different reasons as they struggle to confront the house's horrors on their own diminished terms. Frezza's work sometimes gets goofed on in the English language version for its odd dubbing but he and his more ethereal counterpart Collatina really carry the film, particularly in its unexpectedly affecting final moments.
To sum up, The HouseBy The Cemetery is one of Fulci's best films from his golden early '80sera, one that has acquired a nostalgic sadness in subsequent years that is inkeeping with the film's sorrowful tone because it represents the end of an era.The second half of the '80s would offer lesser scripts, smaller budgets andcircumstances (namely health issues) that would all keep Fulci from achievingthe heights of his "Gates Of Hell Trilogy" era. Thus, The House By The Cemetery is specialbecause it's a kind of last hurrah for this kind of heightened aesthetic in hisapproach to horror.
Blu-Ray Notes: The House By The Cemetery has enjoyed releases from more than one company during the high-def era but the best version to date in blu-ray form is the recent reissue from Blue Underground. It's a two blu-ray/one CD set that offers an elegant 4K restoration of the film plus a full disc of extras including interviews with key personnel and an analysis of the film by Fulci expert Stephen Thrower. It also throws in a deluxe CD of the film's score.