The House by the Cemetery (2010)

You won't be disappointed!

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

"The House by the Cemetery" is directed by famed splatter master Lucio Fulci, and it pretty much reverts to Lucio's type. Which of course is often enough for fan's of Fulci's work. Plot is irrelevant, but basically a family moves into a creepy house in New England and discover a flesh eating ghoul is in residence down in the basement. The ghoul needs to continue its bizarre medical habits to remain, well, a ghoul! Cue screams, serious bloody gore, bad dubbing and incoherent narrative. Visually, as you would expect from Fulci and cinematographer Sergio Salvati, it has inspired moments, the whole irreverence of it draped in Grand Guignol textures. The ghouls lair is a place of nightmares, while the appearance of a scary bat and doll further add to the weirdness. Yet it undoubtedly is a hack job by Fulci, where he clutches from some famous American horror movies and just inserts a bloody killing at regular intervals. The whole film serves only to shed some blood for the gore hounds delight, regardless of if it actually matters to what was left on the writing table.The film tries to weave a web of unease and mystery around the secret in the cellar, and for a while it really works. The camera work and the general look of the locations is pretty good, with a sense of brooding Gothic mystery hanging over the poor family. The house itself looks particularly impressive in most of the external shots. However the story rapidly unravels as the film proceeds to throw countless red herrings into the mix and then either completely abandons them (people claiming to have seen Norman at the house in the past, the things that Bob's mysterious playmate Mae tells him about the house's former occupants), or blatantly contradicts itself (most notably the Boyles babysitter, Ann, who's behavior suddenly swings from one style to the total opposites with no explanation). But if you can put the irregularities of the script to one side, you should enjoy the ride on a purely shallow level. Lots of scenes are drenched in great atmosphere, such as those involving the enigmatic Mae, and especially the last portion of the film when we get to see exactly what has been going on in the depths of the cellar. If you like cheesy and quite gory/violent horror films then you will like this.Overall rating: 6 out of 10.

Dr. Norman Boyle takes over the research of colleague Dr. Petersen, who committed suicide after killing his mistress. Norman heads to Boston with his wife Lucy and son Bob, to live in an isolated house in the woods that belonged to Dr. Petersen. Bob befriends a girl called Mae that only he can see, and she warns him that the house is sinister. His parents hire babysitter Ann and strange things begin to happen in the house.Any horror film from the eighties that had the word House in the title, more or less consisted of the same thing.And now while this film isn't anything new or original, Fulci has crafted a little gem of a movie, full of wondrous images and a strange sense of dread throughout the film.But underneath all the imagery and atmosphere, it is just a video nasty, chock full of gore and blood spattering.The acting is poor, but you don't really watch these films for performances, you watch them because its a piece of exploitation, and for what it is, its successful.Just nothing out of the ordinary.

When a New York family moves to a small town where they found the perfect place to stay, it's a nice looking mansion. However the child has a special psychic gift of seeing a girl that warns him not to move into the house but he didn't listen, the house had terrible things that occurred once by a sick mad doctor named Freudstein who conducted horrible atrocious experiments on people. Now the family has moved in, weird supernatural occurrences keep popping up and the guests are starting to disappear one by one in a bloody way. Ghastly, spooky and gory as hell haunted house/zombie thriller from Italy's horror maestro Lucio Fulci is one of his greatest hits yet! it's also his scariest besides "The Beyond". Sure the plot lacks coherence but the dark atmosphere, a pulse pounding score, and graphic sequences of violence & gore such as skull-stabbing and a demonic bat being mutilated by scissors. The film contains that H.P. Lovecraft-like feel that Fulci would sometimes throw into his supernatural movies as this movie is a prime example, it mixes both the haunted house and zombie movie genre into one movie and it's a clever idea. Lucio Fulci makes a nice cameo appearance in this movie so look for him, this is one of my all time favorite horror movies and a must see for fans of the genre but not for the squeamish or those easily frightened. My rating: 8/10 Similar movies recommended: "The Shining", "Pet Semetary", "House (1986)", "The Others", "City of the Living Dead", "Re-Animator", "Poltergeist", "Dawn of the Dead (1978)", "Making Contact (a.k.a. Joey)", "The Ring (Japanese and American)", "The Amityville Horror (1979)", "Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror", "Versus", "Demons 1 & 2", "Cemetery Man", "House on Haunted Hill (1958 and 1999)", "The Orphanage", "The Devil's Backbone", "Burnt Offerings", "Phantasm", "Suspiria", "Phenomena", "Inferno", "Night of the Living Dead (1968)", "Day of the Dead", "Blood Diner", "Maniac", "The New York Ripper", "The Innocents", "Silent Hill", "Bride of Re-Animator", "Beyond Re-Animator", "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (a.k.a. Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue)", "Hellraiser 1 & 2", "Beyond The Door", "Shock", "Tenebre", "An American Werewolf in London", "From Beyond", "Dead Alive (a.k.a. Braindead)", "Evil Dead 1 & 2", "The Sentinel (1976)", "Final Destination Series", "The Changeling", "The Legend of Hell House", "House of 1000 Corpses", "Mirrors (2008)", "1408", "The Grudge", "Ju-On: The Grudge", "A Nightmare on Elm Street", "Event Horizon", "Stir of Echoes", "Cannibal Apocalypse", "Return of the Living Dead 3", "Beetlejuice", "In The Mouth of Madness", "The Toxic Avenger", "The Gate", "The Fog (1980)" and "The Beyond".

The House by the Cemetery is directed by famed splatter meister Lucio Fulci, and it pretty much reverts to Lucio's type. Which of course is often enough for fan's of Fulci's work. Plot is irrelevant, but basically a family moves into a creepy house in New England and discover a flesh eating ghoul is in residence down in the basement. The ghoul needs to continue its bizarre medical habits to remain, well, a ghoul! Cue screams, serious bloody gore, bad dubbing and incoherent narrative.Visually, as you would expect from Fulci and cinematographer Sergio Salvati, it has inspired moments, the whole irreverence of it draped in Grand Guignol textures. The ghouls lair is a place of nightmares, while the appearance of a scary bat and doll further add to the weirdness. Yet it undoubtedly is a hack job by Fulci, where he clutches from some famous American horror movies and just inserts a bloody killing at regular intervals. The whole film serves only to shed some blood for the gore hounds delight, regardless of if it actually matters to what was left on the writing table.Its reputation, certainly in Britain in the 1980s when it was ridiculously banned during the even more ridiculous Video Nasty craze, is that of a blood thirsty cult movie unfairly held from interested eyes. The banner proudly proclaiming that the work of an Italian horror visionary was being stymied, that's unfair for anyone looking at it now because it's more funny than scary. Had I saw it as a early teenager back then? I'm sure I would have felt disturbed to my guts, though I do believe that even then I could spot a messy hack job when I saw one! This has some skills, but it's not great and really only for Fulci and pulp splatter completists only. 5/10