31 Days of Horror 2021 Day 19 House by the Cemetery

 

TITLE-The House by the Cemetery

SOURCE-Joe Bob's Last Drive In airing on Shudder

Some how this Lucio Fulci classic escaped me. Never found the VHS for rent or for sale. Never saw the DVD for sale. And after a bit I just forgot about it.

Skip ahead to near the end of winter in 2004. My wallet was flush with cash from my recent income tax return. After stopping at a near by Mom&Pop electronics store,bought a 42 inch Samsung Plasma tv,I went across the street to the local mall. Figuring I would buy a few DVDs to watch on my new TV. At a FYE I saw they were having a big sale. Spend 40 bucks and get 2 free DVDs out of their clearance bin. After grabbing a few wrestling DVDs and a couple of comedies I was over the 40 buck threshold. Went to dig into the clearance bin and saw.

I knew that Horror Rises from the Tomb was a Paul Naschy film. And after seeing Fury of the Wolfman and Werewolf vs the Vampire Women I was interested in seeing more of his films. I had no clue what the other 3 films on this set was. Plus since it was 2 discs,flippers with one movie per side,FYE counted it as 2 DVDs. I thought Fuck it! It's a Paul Naschy film I had never seen so I picked it as my free DVDs.

After I got home and hooked up the new TV,this set got place on the ever growing "To Be Watched"pile. And there it sat for a few years. When I moved again in early 2007 we went a few days without cable. So that To Be Watched pile shrunk some. This is when I learned that Zombie Hell House was just a retitled version of Fulci's The House by the Cemetery. 

From what I can find online Zombie Hell House is a UK retitling of the film. I'm guessing Brentwood,who put out the Horror Rises from the Graves set,just assumed this edit of the film was Public domain and released it.

After watching House by the Cemetery I saw why it was loved and hated. You start off right with a nice kill

With a knife to the back of a lady's skull. I wasn't prepared for the next scene though. We got another place. And are introduced to Bob....

As soon as he appeared on the screen I realized two things. First I had seen this same actor before in Warriors of the Wasteland,a great Mad Max Italian ripoff with Fred Williamson and George Eastman. And secondly once Bob spoke  I saw why everybody I knew that saw this film talked about how bad the dubbing for Bob was. He sounds like a 40 year old woman trying to do a young male kid's voice. It is so bad that the actor that plays Bob has at conventions and in interviews apologized for the dubbing.

Bob and his family move into the house where we saw the woman get knife to the skull. And shit just gets weirder. For example a bat comes into the house and attacks them. The dad manages to kill it in a fairly bloody way.

It being a Fulci movie I expected gore. And I'm a bit use to Italian horror films not always making lots of sense. This film has piles of stuff that just doesn't fit or make sense. Like when the mother comes into a room,sees the nanny cleaning blood off the floor. And after being told the nanny had just made coffee the Mom never mentions the big blood stain!

From what I have read an early home video release of this film got a couple of the film reels out of order. So you would see people die,then later on they were back alive. Which I'm sure back in the day people just chalked up to Italian horror not always making sense.

This isn't top tier Fulci horror. But it isn't his worse. The best way to watch this is with a group. And never ever try to figure out what the fuck is going on. Treat it like a nightmare and allow the dream logic to just flow.

The House by the Cemetery gets a C+.