House By the Cemetery [Blu-ray]

Lucio Fulci. If you're a diehard gore/horror/grindhouse/exploitation/cult movie fan, this man's name and legacy is instantly recognizable. From such classics as Zombie, The Beyond, City of the Living Dead, The New York Ripper and this,
The House By the Cemetery, you know what you are getting:all-out gore,violently creative and graphic deaths,zombies,laughably bad dialogue, some of the worst editing ever and to-be-expected awful English dubbing(considering these are Italian films).

This one is no exception,delivering all the goods as expected. A NY moves into a New England house,with a sordid past. Not surprisingly,that past has never left.Macabre and frightening things soon happen. WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS We get not only some really good gore,such as a bloody killing with a poker,a struggle with a bat,very bloody throat slashing/decapitation,and ultimately severed limbs and guts all about during a flashback, but this has a genuine creepy and frightening atmosphere, which you will not get most of the time in this genre. Classic horror film and haunted house flick musical score. The editing is as problematic as ever, like the rest of Fulci's catalog;pointless cuts and uneven structure. To the point of irritating. Dialogue and acting are(again like all of other Fulci's films)so bad it's hilarious, but who watches these movies for that anyway??? Only the editing is the flaw that bothers me.

Once again, Blue Underground has a done a terrific job on this BD release. Presented in it's original aspect ratio of 2.35:1,anamorphic, with an English DTS-HD 2.0 track as well as the original Italian mono, with English subtitles. Audio is clear and sharp, no problems. Picture is as vivid as you can hope for an aged,obscure title like this. Just the right amount of film grain, I did not notice any problems with DNR or compression. Colors are sharped then they've ever been. In fact, I doubt this movie has ever looked better.

Boasts a whole truckload of extras,with all but two(TV spot and poster/still gallery)being in HD. There is a deleted scene without sound, pretty much an extension of the bat-attack aftermath. The first interview with the lovely and still beautiful to-this-day Catriona MacColl and Paolo Malco is fun watch as they give their recollections and commentary. The other interviews I have yet to watch, but I'm sure they are all worth the time.

A solid release of another solid Fulci classic, this one is not to be missed for Fulci fans, gorehounds, and horror fans in general.

Was it wrong that I was pulling for the annoying kid to remain trapped in the basement? Basements are inherently scary places. Allow the Godfather (and, occasionally, Maestro) of Gore, Lucio Fulci, to illustrate why. THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY came out in 1981 but it hasn't lost its vitality or its ability to generate them shudders and spine-tingling chills. Here, Fulci's affinity for the lurid is on full exhibition. But when is it never?

THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY opens with a shot of Daniela Doria who you may remember as having literally puked out her guts in CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD. This time something else comes tearing out of her mouth, namely a sharp blade which had entered by way of the back of her skull. Poor Daniela Doria, the eternal victim on celluloid. The camera then shifts to the Boyle family as they relocate from New York City to a forbidding oak mansion in New England. Not that this was a deal breaker, but there's a macabre history attached to the Boyle's new home, what with its most recent resident having hung himself. And when Lucy Boyle (gorgeous Catriona MacColl) makes mention of the graveyard next door and that strange tombstone in the hallway, her husband (Paolo Malco) brushes away her concerns. "This ain't New York," he scoffs. No, not even a terrifyingly tenacious bat can dissuade this guy. Maybe someone should've paid heed to the freaky little psychic girl who keeps warning people not to go into the house.

This has been repeated ad nauseam: Lucio Fulci is an exciting but flawed filmmaker. Caught between either coherence or sensationalism, he always went with the flash and the show, sacrificing script and internal logic. Once again, here's a film that finds Fulci champing at the bits, eager to get to the scary set pieces. Ghoulish innuendo and creaky noises and the establishing of plot points can only sate him for so long. Gorehounds will be well pleased with Fulci yet again. He treats us to gruesome decapitations and prolonged scenes of graphic stabby stabby. Fun fact: A blade can be cruel to human skin. Somewhere, the creators of SAW may have gone "Hmmmm..."

The acting is negligible, although credit Catriona MacColl for playing "Lucy Boyle" with such nerve-jangling fragility. The English dub is mostly passable. The one exception is the dubious dubbing of the little Boyle boy which is so aggravating that even the actor who played the boy is compelled to apologize in the DVD bonus interview, assuring his fans that that wasn't his voice ("Sorry, sorry, don't hate me for that.").

THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY is part ghost story, part slasher flick. Fulci makes good use of the haunted house score and ominous camera compositions to build up unbearable tension. The big bad, when finally revealed, is worth the wait as he looks absolutely menacing. And, of course, he lurks in the basement. Basements (and cellars) are, to reiterate, scary places. They're meant not as much to store fine wine but rather to provide a venue to conduct terrifying, inhumane experiments. It's the sort of place in which a fella can comfortably say things like: "He needs human victims... to renew his cells. It's how he stays alive." The ending is typical Lucio Fulci, meaning that it is dark and bleak and unsettling. It puts the punctuation on a nifty little horror cult classic.

This is the Special Edition DVD. Note that you can set up the audio either in English or Italian (although the boy is less grating on the ears in Italian), with sub-titles available in English, French, or Spanish. The bonus features are:

- "Meet the Boyles" - Interviews with actors Catriona MacColl (still gorgeous) and Paolo Malco (14 minutes)
- "Children of the Night" - Interviews with actors Giovanni Frezza and Silvia Collatina, who played the kids in the film (12 minutes)
- "Tales of Laura Gittleson" - Interview with actor Dagmar Lassander (9 minutes)
- "My Time with Terror" - Interview with actor Carlo De Mejo (9 minutes)
- Deleted Scene - Bat Attack Aftermath (without audio and lasting about 30 seconds)
- International and U.S. Trailers
- TV Spot
- Poster & Still Gallery

Very affective, atmospheric, tense, lots of blood and gore, not for the faint of heart. I just watched it and I don't think I'll get much sleep tonight.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 13 reviews  4.5 out of 5 stars