{"id":3705,"date":"2024-08-28T22:08:49","date_gmt":"2024-08-28T22:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=3705"},"modified":"2024-10-14T14:48:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T18:48:15","slug":"the-house-by-the-cemetery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/28\/the-house-by-the-cemetery\/","title":{"rendered":"The House by the Cemetery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The House by the Cemetery <\/strong>(1981)\u00a0\u00a0 Almi Pictures\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 87 minutes\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA Rating (plentiful bloody graphic violence and gore, brief nudity)\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lucio Fulci\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lucio Fulci, Giorgio Mariuzzo and Dardano Sacchetti\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Walter Rizzati\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Sergio Salvati\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 12, 1984 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Katherine MacColl, Paolo Malco, Ania Pieroni, Giovanni Frezza, Silvia Collatina, Dagmar Lassander, Giovanni De Nava, Daniela Dora, Giampaolo Saccarola, Carlo De Mejo, John Olsen.\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Body Count: 6 (including a bat)<\/p>\n

Rating:<\/strong>\u00a0****<\/p>\n

\u00a0Lucio Fulci’s Italian-made shockfest\u00a0The House by the Cemetery\u00a0<\/strong>is the\u00a0third installment of his \u201cGates of Hell\u201d trilogy that began with\u00a0City of the Living Dead and continued with The Beyond. They all involve a series of gruesome murders in some cursed place after a doorway to Hell has been opened. The thing about Fulci is he doesn’t spell things out for the audience. He sits back and lets them try to make sense of it all. Not that his movies make a lot of sense to begin with.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Additionally, Fulci\u2019s movies tend to be extremely gory. When they get released in the US, they’re either heavily edited or released uncut with a “No One Under 17 Admitted” policy in place.\u00a0The House by the Cemetery<\/strong>\u00a0is the first Fulci movie I saw. I went on a Saturday afternoon in October \u201984 and could barely contain my excitement at the prospect of seeing a horror flick with a \u201cNo One Under 17 Admitted\u201d policy. I knew I was in for a total gorefest. It didn\u2019t disappoint. It\u2019s bloody as hell!<\/p>\n

\u00a0The House by the Cemetery<\/strong>\u00a0opens with a young woman (Dora)\u00a0getting stabbed through the back of the head by an unseen person after finding her murdered lover in a dusty, abandoned house next to a cemetery (hence the title) in New England. Right away, we know somebody or something doesn\u2019t like intruders. That\u2019s too bad for Dr. Norman Boyle (Malco, The New York Ripper) who moves into the house with his mentally unbalanced wife Lucy (MacColl, The Beyond) and young son Bob (Frezza, Manhattan Baby). He\u2019s there to continue the work of a colleague who was researching old houses. He lived in the house before killing his mistress and taking his own life.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Things get weird before they even leave New York. Bob claims that a young girl (Collatina, The Great Alligator) he sees in a picture of the house warned him to stay away. Naturally, Mom doesn\u2019t believe him. Life gets even stranger when they move in. Bob meets the girl from the picture. It turns out they can communicate telepathically. The real estate agent (Lassander, Hatchet for the Honeymoon) who set them up in \u201cOak Mansion\u201d sends a babysitter Ann (Pieroni, Tenebrae) to help out. She\u2019s a weird one. She doesn\u2019t say a lot; she mostly stares, especially when Lucy speaks to her. The basement door has been nailed shut for some reason. Could it be because that\u2019s where the house\u2019s dark secret resides? Oh, let\u2019s not forget the tombstone inside the house.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It belongs to a Jacob Freudstein, a deranged doctor from the turn of the century who was the subject of private research by his late colleague. His license was revoked because of his bizarre, gruesome human experiments. As Norman delves deeper into Freudstein, things get more and more out of control inside the house due to the unknown occupant residing in the basement. I wonder who that occupant could be.<\/p>\n

\u00a0People die gruesomely in The House by the Cemetery<\/strong>, but that\u2019s a given. The kill scenes are good and gory. A woman is stabbed in the torso and throat by a fireplace poker. Somebody is slowly decapitated with a knife. This is followed by the head rolling down the basement stairs. A guy has his throat ripped open. As for the bat, Norman stabs it to death after it attacks him. I didn\u2019t know those little creatures contained so much blood.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The House by the Cemetery<\/strong>\u00a0is anything but your typical assembly-line horror movie. It has a peculiar rhythm all its own. Its creepy vibe is palpable. So what if Fulci doesn\u2019t tie all the narrative threads together at the end. Early on, somebody claims to recognize Norman from a previous visit to the small town with his daughter. It wasn\u2019t him, of course. The director never follows up on this. Like I said, the movie doesn\u2019t make a lot of sense. It\u2019s still great though. The final scene is simply brilliant.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The eerie music score by Walter Rizzati gives The House by the Cemetery<\/strong>\u00a0a distinctive Italian giallo flavor. The set design by Massimo Lentini- inside the house, in particular- is perfectly chilling. Maurizio Trani does fine work on the makeup and gore effects. The cinematography (Sergio Salvati) and editing (Vincenzo Tomassi) work in conjunction to make the viewer feel like they\u2019re inside a nightmare. There’s a cool sequence where the camera slowly pans over bloody body parts strewn about the basement as the anguished and pained screams of children are heard.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 Some of the dialogue is ridiculous. My favorite line is when Bob goes looking for the late Ann in the basement. He shouts down the stairs, \u201cAnn?! Mommy says you\u2019re not dead! Is that true?\u201d Speaking of him, it\u2019s obvious his dialogue was dubbed by some other kid. The dubbing is typically bad in Italian-made horror movies and The House by the Cemetery<\/strong>\u00a0is no exception. It\u2019s part of the experience.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Fulci knows how to put a creepy movie together. He\u2019s also not afraid to bring on the splatter. His scary movies are transcendent. Nobody makes them like he did. I only hope that some misguided filmmaker doesn\u2019t try and remake The House by the Cemetery<\/strong> (or ANY of his films).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The House by the Cemetery (1981)\u00a0\u00a0 Almi Pictures\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 87 minutes\u00a0\u00a0 No MPAA Rating (plentiful bloody graphic violence and gore, brief nudity)\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lucio Fulci\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lucio Fulci, Giorgio Mariuzzo and Dardano Sacchetti\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Walter Rizzati\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Sergio Salvati\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 12, 1984 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Katherine MacColl, Paolo Malco, Ania Pieroni, Giovanni Frezza, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scary-gory-wild-i-love-it"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/The-House-by-the-Cemetery-P.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3705"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5444,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3705\/revisions\/5444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}