The House by the Cemetery (1981)

Tagline: “Can anyone survive the demented, marauding zombies in…”
Duration: 86 minutes

Film Quality: 4/5
Gore Content: 4.5/5
Entertainment Value:4/5
Originality: 4/5

Introduction

Following ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’, ‘City of the Living Dead’ and ‘The Beyond’, Lucio Fulci was developing a bit of a reputation amongst gorehounds. Whether or not this sat well with the Italian director, who had carved out a decent career in the giallo and western genres, was another matter but it was clear that fans were screaming for more. Just five months after ‘The Beyond’ he brought out the film that would end what became known as ‘The Gates of Hell’ trilogy (one of the quickest trilogies ever released…just 15 months separated this from ‘City’) that combined the unusual approach to space and time he gave to ‘The Beyond’ with the Lovecraftian atmosphere of ‘City’.

In a nutshell

Dr Norman Boyle moves his family to a house in New Whitby to pick up on the research of a former colleague who murdered his mistress before killing himself. His son, Bob, begins to pick up on warnings from a mysterious little girl called Mae that he should not stay at the house. Meanwhile a series of murders and disappearances suggest a monstrous presence in their basement…who is Dr Freudstein and just what is he doing behind that locked door?

So what’s good about it?

From the opening scene to the final moments there is an eerie, otherworldly atmosphere that is brought to the fore expertly by Walter Rizatti’s superb score. His main theme that plays over the opening titles wouldn’t sound out of place in a documentary about old, haunted churches and immediately lets us know that what we have here is not a zombie film but something more akin to a haunted house movie. The rest of the score features understated guitars, sinister chords and manipulated, distorted sounds designed to disorientate and confuse; we can’t really tell where the threat might be coming from…is it the little girl, the babysitter, something more sinister that may or not be supernatural?

De Rossi’s effects are once again excellent and VERY gory. In ‘The Beyond’ his effects were very much a mix of the sudden and brief, I’m thinking of the skewered eyeball, the hole in the head, short but sweet alongside the ‘watch this’ long and lingering shots! ‘The Beyond’ starts with a very long scene of a warlock crucified and melted with acid, here it opens with a very short and sudden shot of a woman attacked with a knife that enters the back of her head and comes out of her mouth. It’s an odd beginning as, although this is a very gory film, the emphasis is on tension and atmosphere but here it’s almost as if we join the scene halfway through! We’re treated to some seriously nasty stuff, most notably the poker attack on the estate agent which is genuinely shocking.

This is probably the most serious of the trilogy and has further literary influences. Whereas ‘City’ and ‘The Beyond’ were very Lovecraftian in their exectution, despite similar flourishes this one has more in common with Henry James, in particular ‘The Turn of the Screw’ in the way that it approaches the movie in the manner of a haunted house film. Fulci included a quote, allegedly from James, “No one will ever know whether the children are monsters or the monsters are children, or at least that’s what it says at the end of the film with the quote being made up by Fulci. The ending does recall ‘The Turn of the Screw’ which sees the story’s ghost disappear with the death of the child…here the child disappears with the possible death of the ghost, Mae.

It’s a very strange film in tone and execution and may appear that it doesn’t know what it wants to be. Is it a gory fright flick or a frightening gore movie? I really did enjoy it but it’s hard to pinpoint precisely why. It seems at times to be a bit of a scattergun of random unrelated scenes and characters who at times seem to know each other very well and then act like complete strangers. This does continue a theme of Fulci’s trilogy playing with cause and effect, perhaps it doesn’t work quite so well here because it’s on a smaller scale with fewer characters and played a little more straight. Either way, like a Knickerbocker Glory or an Eton Mess, it works despite itself and rounds off the trilogy on a high.

That voice really irritated Dr Freudstein!

What about the bad?

I’m not sure how it comes across in its original Italian dialogue (I really must watch it in Italian with English subs) but the dubbing of Bob is annoying, bordering on a deal breaker for the entire film! I can’t work out if it’s a man trying to be a boy, a very young boy with the sound slowed down to make him sound a little older, I really don’t know. It sounds like some of those old Japanese cartoons redubbed for the English market like ‘The Mysterious Cities of Gold’ but without the humourous visuals. The rest of the dubbing is pretty good, they even dub Bob’s screams!!!

Dario Argento has always faced the ‘misogyny’ charge and I think it’s worth saying here that the female characters in ‘House’ get a very raw deal. I think only two male characters bite the bullet and none of them are terrorised to the extent of the women. The boyfriend in the opening scene is killed before the film starts and only briefly shown whilst Norman has his throat ripped out after a half-hearted attempt to stop Freudstein. Our ladies though are dealt with much more harshly! Decapitated, poked full of holes, stabbed through the back of the head and dragged violently down the stairs before having her head crushed against the concrete floor. I’m not saying that Fulci is a misogynist but if that kind of criticism can be levelled at Argento then this film is guilty of the same trick.

Any themes?

Could all of this be a projection of Bob’s nightmarish fears? That final, fabricated Henry James quote “No one will ever know whether the children are monsters or the monsters are children” does rather suggest that the children are the supernatural force. Certainly Mae is not ‘human’ in the sense of being alive, only Bob can see her, even in the window in the painting, and Bob is the only character who enters the titular house and survives the film’s running time. Is Freudstein a manifestation of his fears and desires to punish his parents for moving him halfway across the country and the only friend he can find is a ghost? He is there to see the mannequin fall through the shop window and decapitate itself in a morbid example of foreshadowing from Fulci.

You also have Dr Freudstein’s cries which sound more childlike than adult. Is Freudstein himself now a monstrous child, unable to die but also unable to live and reverting back to his childlike, almost feral bass instincts to consume and survive with little regard for the provision of adults?

The fact that Bob is dragged back into the house’s past keeps up the theme of the trilogy where places and time have no respect for cause and effect. Mae comes to the present to warn Bob who is taken back to her present in order to survive. Is Bob is also a ghost whose presence in the house has brought Mae back from the grave to secure her family’s future? If that’s the case then the Freudstein family and its legacy is completely reliant on two ’monstrous’ children.

Release History

Fulci’s film was given an absolute pounding by the BBFC. The original cinema run in the UK was missing nearly a minute and half of gore, mostly from the very gory murder of the estate agent and the decapitation of Ann, and it was this version that was released on VHS by Vampix in 1983 and promptly banned. Elephant Video picked it up in 1988 but really needn’t have bothered, butchering it in a manner that would have made de Rossi weep in his sleep with a total of 5m37s missing. The whole of the poker murder was missing, and the subsequent dragging away of the body, the opening murder, the unconvincing killing of a bat, the famous shot of the disembowelled man (who was he anyway?) in the cellar and pretty much anything that was red!

When VIPCO got their grubby little hands on it in 1993 they put out a version that was pre-cut and missing a whopping 6m19s. It is possible that this was done to make those original cuts less jarring but even though, there was no attempt seemingly made to release a more complete version which again begs the question…why bother? VIPCO did redeem themselves slightly in 2001 when they put out a DVD missing just 33 seconds (part of the poker death and throat slicing) to take into account the recent prosecutions (ridiculous law!!!) Arrow finally released an uncut version in the UK in 2012.

Hats off to the US though…apparently one of the original prints was shown out of sequence so that two reels didn’t play in order. It made the sometimes tricky cause and effect elements of the film and characterisation even more difficult to follow. Some characters they’d just seen killed are walking around right as rain later on but, being a Fulci film, some didn’t question it and passed it off as a quirk of the trilogy!

Cultural Impact

Concluded the unofficial ‘Gate of Hell’ trilogy. Fulci has always been unfairly compared to Dario Argento and this could be seen as Fulci’s answer to his countryman’s ‘Three Mothers’ trilogy. Taken film by film I don’t think there’s much argument that ‘Suspiria’ and ‘Inferno’ are superior films but as a trilogy, ‘The Third Mother’ lets Argento’s trilogy down. This may be controversial to some (I’m more of an Argento fan myself) but you could argue that Fulci’s trilogy is the more complete and ultimately satisfying when viewed as a ‘trilogy’. Three very good and individual films, linked by theme whist not by character.

Final thoughts

Often overlooked in favour of ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’ or ‘The Beyond’, I have a real affection for ‘House by the Cemetery’. It has lots of atmosphere, plenty of gruesome special effects and a stunningly eerie soundtrack. It’s also the most frightening of the ‘Gates’ trilogy, placing a very young (albeit annoying, even more annoying than your own) child right at the centre of the gory mayhem. A minor classic from Fulci.

You’ll like this if you enjoyed…

‘Inferno’, ‘City of the Living Dead’, ‘The Beyond’, ‘The Innocents’

Related reviews

Zombie Flesh Eaters - click here
The Beyond - click here