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House by Cemetery (1981)

The House Outside the Cemetery
Zombie Hell House
Quella Villa Accanto al Cimiterio


Cast:

Catriona MacColl is Lucy Boyle
Paolo Malco is Dr. Norman Boyle
Ania Pieroni is Ann, the babysitter
Giovanni "I'm the creepy kid from Warriors of the Wasteland" Frezza is Bob Boyle
Silvia Collatina is Mae Freudstein
Dagmar Lassander is Laura Gittleson


What the box says:

When the Boyle family moves into a mansion near a cemetery, strange things start to happen. They hear horrible noises. They find a headstone in the living room. They can't open the basement door. Too late, they learn that a maggot-speing zombie doctor is living downstairs, and he needs fresh body parts to stay alive.


Plot:

A girl can’t find her boyfriend in a cemetery. She does eventually find his body before being stabbed.


Dr., I'm having a sharp stabbing pain in my mouth...
The killer drags her body away.

In New York City, a small blonde boy, Bob, is getting a psychic warning not to go.


Can you tell me this kid isn't the embodiment of pure evil?
Lucy, his mom, is packing up what they’ll take on their vacation in New England. Lucy, Norman, and Bob finally get to New Whitby to stop by the real estate office to get the key for their summer house.

Later, Norman patches a few things up around the house before starting his research when the Ann, the creepy babysitter-nanny, arrives. Norman starts his research when a noise distracts him. Ann is trying to open the basement door.

In town, Norman stops by the library for Doctor Peterson’s notes. Peterson was researching the same thing as Norman before killing himself. Norman finds notes about Mary Freudstein’s husband, a doctor.

In the woods, Bob is running around and discovers the headstone of Mary Freudstein.

The house becomes creepy, making strange noises that freak Lucy. Norman finds the distraught Lucy and consoles her. They finally find how to open the basement door when Ann and Bob return. In the basement, bats attack Lucy and Norman.

Lucy and Norman decide they want another house maybe one that’s not got bats. The real estate lady stops by to them what she’s found but falls into the floor. Suddenly, the Point-of-view killer stabs her.

The next day, Norman heads back to the library for more research. He’s following the work of Peterson who was researching Dr. Freudstein, a crazed surgeon from 100 years ago. He listens to some tapes of Peterson who is getting more hysterical and sounding more insane.


This mix-tape has Survivor and Van Halen...
However, Norman still destroys the tape.

Bob is playing in the woods with Mary who warns him not to go back to the house. Later, Bob is back at the house to play with his remote control car. Ann is looking for Bob but heads into the basement and is locked downstairs. The POV killer heads for Ann. Bob starts looking for Ann but is too slow to save her.

Bob heads into the basement and can’t find anything at first. He does find Ann’s severed head which promptly warps the 5 year old kid. Freaking out, he does barely get out of the basement.

Lucy returns to the house and finds a hysterical Bob who tells her about Ann’s head, etc… Checking the basement, Lucy doesn’t see anything in the TOO DARK TO SEE scene and unaware of the pair of floating eyes.


Never has there been any special effect as great as this one...
They head upstairs.

Norman goes to a nearby cemetery but can’t find Freudstein’s gravesite.

That night, Bob looks for Ann in the basement but gets trapped. His screams alert Lucy who can’t unlock the door. Something is in the basement with Bob. Suddenly, Norman arrives and slowly axes the door open. He explains to Lucy that Peterson discovered that Freudstein killed the people.

Zombie-mummified Freudstein is after Bob who finds the bodies.

Norman gets the door broken. Apparently, Freudstein needs fresh bodies to stay alive. Norman rushes Freudstein who promptly rips out his throat.

Lucy grabs Bob, and they try to escape as Freudstein chases them. It grabs Lucy. Screaming Bob is trying to crawl through a hole in the ceiling. Mary is waiting for him.


Khannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!
Her mother reveals she is a Freudstein. The woman and the kids walk away from the mansion.

Does this quote make a single bit of sense?


What I say:

The late 70s and early 1980s saw Italy milking out every movie genre from Conan the Barbarian, George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, to the post-apocalyptic Road Warrior. The horror genre hadn't became its own mockery that it soon would be with all the slasher movies.

Normally, when people mention B-movie directors, Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, John Carpenter, Ed Wood, etc... will get mentioned. I have a confession to make this is the first Fulci movie I've reviewed on my site. Lucio Fulci is one of the most famous horror directors from Italy. With movies like Beyond, Zombi 2, and Zombi 3, he won't be mistaken for doing anything like Dario Argento's Suspiria.

With this movie being so heavily dubbed, I'm not sure what got lost in the translation but quite a bit had to be lost. I may be giving it more a benefit of a doubt than it deserves. The movie has plenty of things that just pop up and are never brought up again. Travelling to a small town and resesearching whether or not a surgeon 100 years earlier was performing strange medical experiments is a sign that a college may be trying to just spend money out of their budget. Ann seems to act awfully suspicious. Most horror movies of this time that have a creepy nanny.

The kid, Bob, is known for being annoying in Demons and Warriors of the Wasteland. Well, most kids in horror movies aren't exactly shining examples of unannoyingness. He didn't seem as annoying as say the boy in Kubrick's Shining.

The House by the Cemetery seems to have most of elements of horror movies: psychic kid, haunted house with the Amityville Horror with a dash of ghost. A sprinkling of Freudstein? Freudenstein? Doesn't that sound a bit familiar? A bit like Frankenstein. A teaspoon of zombie, too.

One thing that is known about small towns, there are are hardly any real secrets. Don't small towns have a hard time keeping secrets? Any town with a guy in a rented house and was researching the town's history and hangs himself would have the entire town talking about it. Just typical small town gossip is one thing but knowing some college researcher investigating some old town secret and wind up hanging himself would be the thing most small town residents would definitely not forgot.

PS: The quote in that above screen capture isn't actually by Henry James


3 NINJAS

Quotable Dialogue

"I don't want to be put on restriction again."
"Parents never listen."
"That Freudstein house...."
"Blood...Blood..."
"I hear it everywhere."
"Ann, Mommy says you're not dead."


Morals of the Story

Mannequinns are intimidating.
Mannequinns have blood.
Old houses have crying children instead of creaky boards.
100 year old coffins regularly make pounding noises.
Houses typically have coffins buried in them.
Bats have iron jaws.
Maggots are in zombie intestines.


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