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House By The Cemetery

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    Ian Jane
    Administrator

  • House By The Cemetery



    Released by:
    Blue Underground
    Released on:
    October 25, 2011.
    Director:
    Lucio Fulci
    Cast: Catriona MacColl, Paolo Malco, Ania Pieroni, Giovanni Frezza

    Year: 1981

    Purchase From Amazon


    The Movie:

    WARNING: Some of the screen caps in this review contain spoilers, though feel free to clickon them to go to large size Blu-ray screen caps.

    Directed by Lucio Fulci, 1981's House By The Cemetery takes the zombie movies he'd previously exploited so effectively with Zombie, City Of The Living Dead and The Beyond and gives mixes up the walking corpse thing with some cool gothic styled haunted house storytelling.





    The plot revolves around the Boyle family - Lucy (Catriona MacColl), her husband Norman (Paolo Malco) and their son Bob (Giovanni Frezza) - who leave their apartment in New York City to move into a spacious old house in calm, quiet small town New England. Excited to leave the hustle and bustle of the big city behind, things should be on the up and up for the three, right? Right! Except that once they move in, things start to get… weird. Bob starts seeing things, mainly a young girl who tells him to stay away from the house. The very reason for their move in the first place is odd. See, Norman, a doctor, is taking over the research for a colleague of his named Dr. Peterson, who committed suicide before he was able to finish it and it just so happens that Peterson offed himself in the very house where the Boyles are now living.





    After they move in, Bob sees that same girl he saw earlier, the one who warned him. It turns out her name is Mae (Silvia Collatina) and she's evidently been expecting him despite her previous warning. As Norman digs into his research, he uncovers the story of one Dr. Freudstein, a surgeon who operated decades ago and who had some very unorthodox methods. The more Norman uncovers about the house and it's past, the more he starts to wonder if the strange stories Bob's been telling them are true or not and if there is in fact something very evil afoot.





    Not the gorefest that some of his earlier zombie movies were (though far from bloodless as the screen caps obviously show!), House By The Cemetery more than makes up for that with loads of great, creepy atmosphere. This is a film that makes great use of shadow and light, making the eerie old house as important to the story as any of the human characters. The make-up effects used in the movie are as effective as anything else in the film's Fulci made around this time, with the Freudstein face standing the test of time as a fairly iconic image and, hey, there are some neat mechanical bats here to geek out over too.


    In terms of the cast, much has been made as to the awfulness of the child actors in this movie, Giovanni Frezza in particular. In Frezza's defense, it's the English dubbing that makes his performance as wonky as it is more so than anything he's directly responsible for. Catriona MacColl, a Fulci veteran at this point, is great as the female lead while Paolo Malco is a strong leading man, dashing and smart as he is. Dagmar Lassander has a nice supporting role here too.






    The film might be slower and far less shocking than some of Fulci's more revered films, but House By The Cemetery makes up for that by focusing on atmosphere. It's one of his best looking movies wrapped up in a solid score from composer Walter Rizzati and a film well worth revisiting.

    Video/Audio/Extras:


    Blue Underground's 2.35.1 widescreen AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer is definitely an improvement over the previous DVD release but suffers from some obvious noise reduction which results in some waxy looking skin tones. On top of that, there's some mosquito noise present throughout and a tendency for 'grain' to cling to foreground objects. Some have noted this as a common problem with recent Blue Underground transfers, it was quite noticeable on
    The 10th Victim but less noticeable to this reviewer's eyes on Zombie and Torso. With this release, however, it's hard not to notice it. Does the good outweigh the bad? Yes, the image is beautiful in terms of color reproduction and it's got great black levels and there's nary a nick or scratch in site. It's very clean in that regard and there are no compression artifacts to note. Detail is definitely increased over DVD issues, but there are bound to be some who are disappointed with the picture quality here, particularly those who have taken issue with past transfers from the company.





    There are no problems to report with the audio, however, with an English language 2.0 DTS-HD track faring quite well and offering up crisp, clear dialogue and a great sounding score. There are no problems at all with hiss or distortion to complain about and everything comes through properly balanced. An optional Dolby Digital Mono track is provided in Italian, with optional subtitles available in English SDH, French and Spanish.


    The first featurette in the extras section is Meet The Boyles (14:12), an interview with
    Catriona MacColl and Paolo Malco. MacColl notes that her relationship with Fulci became more consolidated after working together three times while Malco talks about how his relationship with MacColl blossomed into friendship during the shoot. He also notes that he always thought of Fulci as a sex comedy director before making this movie. The pair also discusses Fulci's take on working with child actors, his treatment of the adult actors on set, what it was like shooting on location in the house itself, the toils and tribulations of working with mechanical bats and more.





    Children Of The Night (12:13) is an interview with now grown child stars Giovanni Frezza and Silvia Collatina in which Collatina describes Fulci as sweet but demanding (Frezza shares a different side of the story towards the end of the interview), noting that she was frightened of him, and in which Frezza starts his interview off by apologizing for the 'dumb voices in the movie' referring of course to the notoriously awful English dubbing applied overtop of his character, Bob. From there they share their experiences from the shoot, discuss how they got involved with the picture, and what it was like for Collatina to play two roles - Mae and the hand of Dr. Freudstein! Both interviewees look back on the movie pretty fondly and talk about their experiences pretty fondly, even when the gory effects are brought up.






    Tales Of Laura Gittleson (8:51) lets Dagmar Lassander get in front of the camera to talk about her work in the film who starts off by stating that she doesn't think these Italian horror films are as popular in Italy as they are in other countries. From there she talks about hearing of the Christian re-edit of the film that was going around in certain circles (sadly she doesn't go into much detail here), she discusses her part and her relationship with the director, the violence in the movie and more. She also talks about how she got into movies in the first place and what it was like working on Bava's Hatchet For The Honeymoon.



    Carlo De Mejo shows up in a featurette entitled My Time With Terror (9:16) where he starts things off by discussing how he was born in Italy and studied acting there before going to New York for three years. He discusses how his mother was an actress in film and on stage and how he owes his career to her, and then he talks about how he got into movies working with Passolini before discussing his work on House By The Cemetery and some other Italian horror films that he was involved in during the seventies and eighties with the likes of Fulci, Fragrasso, Mattei and others. From here he shares some stories from the set, like what it's like to work with maggots and Rice Crispies, and then shares his thoughts on Fulci himself. Some footage from his appearance at a HorrorHound Convention shows up towards the end.



    Up next is A Haunted House Story (14:02) which interviews co-writers Dardano Sachetti and Elisa Briganti about the time they spent writing this film. Apparently the idea came from an interest in child psychology and a childhood visit to a creepy cellar, at which point a story was written around those concepts. From there they discuss the concept of a crossroads, how things can get out of hand when a child's imagination takes over and more. This is probably the most revelatory of the interviews, as it does a great job of getting inside the writers' heads. Of course there's also talk of working with the director and what not here, but the core of the piece is about the themes and ideas that are explored in the movie.





    The last featurette is To Build A Better Death Trap (21:32), which interviews cinematographer Sergio Salvati, special make-up effects artist Maruizio Trani, special effects artist Gino de Rossi and actor Giovanni Nava. There's a lot of ground covered in this featurette, from what was shot on location to what was shot on a studio set, what it was like working with Fulci on this particular film, how various murder and gore set pieces were handled, more discussion of mechanical bats, how to best shoot a scene where an actress gets a poker in her eye and how sometimes you just have to take a role to feed yourself even if it means having a mask glued onto your face.










    Rounding out the extras are a single deleted scene (0:59 - Bat Attack Aftermath! Presented without sound this is a quick bit in the kitchen of the house after the bat attack), the U.S. Trailer (1:48), an International Trailer (3:24), a TV spot, and a poster and still gallery (2:21). Menus and chapter stops are also included and all of the extras are in high definition except for the deleted scene and TV spot.


    The Final Word:


    It's a shame that the transfer didn't turn out to be as perfect as the rest of this disc, but overall this is a good upgrade over the previous DVD releases that have been available in the past. If you're a glass half empty type of person, you'll probably get hung up on the obvious problems that the transfer has, if you're a glass half full person, you'll dig on the lossless audio, the improvements that the transfer does make, and the excellent new extra features. As to the movie itself? House By The Cemetery isn't Fulci at his best but it's a pretty great mix of zombie action and haunted house high jinks with a fine cast, great effects work and some excellent atmosphere.












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