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HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, a lesson in DIY transplants from Lucio Fulci
 

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HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK

 
 		  
HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY 
aka Quella Villa Accanto al Cimitero (It.); Fulvia Film, Italy, 1982; 86 min. 
 
The fourth of Fulci’s celebrated quartet of horror from the early eighties eschews the drive of his previous outings in favour of more Bava-esque visual poetry. Admittedly the least of the four (so much so that the earlier Zombie Flesheaters (1979), City of the Living Dead (1980) and The Beyond (1981) are often grouped together as something of a trilogy), House by the Cemetery nevertheless remains an interesting example of Fulci’s distinctive brand of gory gothic.
    Like its immediate precursors City of the Living Dead and The Beyond (and a number of other spaghetti horrors of the period), House is set in a Lovecraftian America, this time New England. Borrowing from The Amityville Horror (1979) and Mario Bava’s Shock (1977), the plot concerns the move of a family into a large house with a sinister past. Matters look increasingly grim for the family with the discovery of the hideous Dr Freudstein, a misshapen scientist who has lived in the basement since the nineteenth century by a continuous process of substituting his own defunct internal organs with those of series of unwilling donors. Once again, Fulci chooses not to get bogged down in complicated plotting, and concentrates instead on simply bridging together his visceral set-pieces, this time with some beautifully mounted scenes featuring the family’s little boy and his mysterious playmate.
    As John Martin observes “it’s a mark of just how red hot Fulci is when he is hot ... that aficionados hold him in such high regard, because against the several classics in this guy’s lengthy filmography must be stacked at least forty worthless turds.” This “red hot” period, which began with the exciting Zombie Flesheaters cooled considerably after this film when, turning his back on the giallo-gothic subgenre he had done so much to shape, he chose as his next project the repulsive and unimaginative The New York Ripper (1982).
 
Dir. Lucio Fulci; Prod. Fabrizio de Angelis; Scr. Giorgio Mariuzzo, Dandano Sacchetti; Star. Katherine MacColl, Giovanni de Nava; With Silvia Collatina, Daniele Doria, Giovanni Frezza, Dagmar Lassander, Carlo de Mejo, Anja Pieroni 

UK Vid. Guild Home Video, QRT. 85 min (unrated), Beta, VHS & V2000; Videomedia, QRT. 85 min (unrated), Beta, VHS & V2000; Elephant Video, QRT. 76 min (BBFC: 18), VHS only.
The late Lucio Fulci
(1927-1996)
 
 
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