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 The Boyle family moves into a house they call an "old mansion" so that the
father can do some research. They don't know about the "terrible secret living
in their basement." Dr. Freudstein has been living there since 1879 and stays
alive by killing the people in the house and "using their cells to keep his
body going." They close with this: "Gore, horror and great special effects
makes a visit to the House By The Cemetery A KILLING STAY." That's just a
great line. Really, just great. 1981, 84 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
Lucio Fulci, who seems to be most famous for most of his movies having
maggots in them, helmed this film during what most of us in academia refer to
as
his Maggot Period. House By The Cemetery tells the semi-incoherent tale of the
Boyle family who don't have the greatest realtor in the world. Norman Boyle
is a professor of something or other at some college or other in New York City.
He's taken the job of finishing his colleague's research into something I
can't even remember. It might have been suicide or it might have been
something else creepy, but in any event, this job required him and his family
to move to somewhere in New England (that's where most of your creepy houses
are) and do the job there. The guy he's taken over for has committed suicide
and killed his mistress (probably not in that order) and Norm also wants to
look into the suicide. Why do people always want to look into that kind of
stuff in these movies? Maybe he's just nuts, maybe it's exactly as it appears
to be. It doesn't really matter though in this case, because Norm's
investigation consists of hanging out at the library and listening to an audio
tape. Additionally, the murder-suicide stuff is never really tied to together
to the dastardly doings at the house. The movie actually starts off with and a
guy and a girl getting slaughtered in the house, but these two just appeared to
be a couple of horny kids who needed a place to die and picked the house. I
guess they were there because it was between the time the murder-suicide
happened and the time the Boyles rolled into town. Along with Norm, the Boyles consist of a drug-dependent wife and a little
blonde kid with gigantic lips named Bob. The movie was dubbed and once again,
somehow they manage to find voices that sound nothing like a real human being.
Whoever dubbed Bob's part is the worst offender. It's high pitched and
sounds like a very effeminate man. This adds to the creepiness of the whole
affair because, everytime I hear Bob squeal, "Mommy! Mommy! There's something
in the basement!" I imagine that it's a drag queen saying these things. Bobby
is one of those Italian-horror-movie-kids that sees strange things, hears
voices and plays with children who have been dead a century. Bobby sees a girl
in a photograph telling him not to come to the house. He makes friends with
her once his family moves to the house and she periodically tells him not to go
into the house, but he doesn't listen and gets himself trapped in the basement
while his family is hacked up before his eyes, all the while screeching like
someone wore the same pair of pumps to the rally as he did. Anyway, the Boyles
roll into town and of course the only house available is the one the dead guy
inhabited. It's a nice two story, two bath, five bedroom, maniac cannibal in
the
basement affair that rents for only $450 a month. It also sits on five acres of
graves. Shoot! That sounds like a steal to me, where do I sign! While in
town, Bobby sees his girlfriend and they go off and when his parents find him
he's playing with a broken doll. I suppose we're supposed to think that's the
girl, but who knows. In a scene about that time we also get to see a manniquen
lose its head and then blood gushes from it! Then we meet the new babysitter,
Ann, and she's the spitting image of the manniquen. They try to play it up
like she's evil, because most semi-attractive babysitters in these situations
are evil, but she ends up getting her throat slit like everybody else, so all
the time spent with her mysterious looks and non-sequitur responses to the
Boyles' blathering is completely pointless.  As the movie goes along, you really learn to dislike the characters (well all
except Bobby, because you have to admire him for being comfortable with his
desire for gender reassignment) and are all too happy to see them sliced and
diced. The husband and wife
are complete boobs. First of all, the dude playing Norm, (don't really care
what his name is) is just like every other dude in these Italian gutmunchers.
He's got this longish feathered hair and and a full beard that's very
nicely groomed. He's also a skinny little runt that you just know is going to
get dominated by whatever is hiding in the cellar. The wife constantly whines
about living there and has to pop all these pills just to live with Norm and
her special "son." The Boyles suffer a vicious bat attack when they go down in
the basement. First it attacks the wife, then it latches onto Norm's hand and
won't let go until he repeatedly stabs it with a pair of scissors sending blood
splattering everywhere. Oh, a memo to renters and prospective homeowners
alike: if the house you're looking at has the basement door boarded up like
it's the farmhouse from Night of the Living Dead, you might want to have the
realtor show you a few other places, because I wouldn't move
into no house that had entire floors barricaded for reasons unknown, especially
when your house is camped on top of a cemetery! After the bat attack, the
Boyles go back to their realtor and say that "maybe this isn't the place for
us, maybe you have something a little more homey, without the killer bats." We
find out that this is the old Freudstein place and that Dr. Freudstein is one
of those turn of the century doctors who got himself run after doing
unspeakable experiments or overbilling on medicare or something. The little
girl Bobby thinks he's dating also tells him that Mrs. Freudstein is not buried
in the grave in the cemetery. Norm finds out that Dr. Freudstein isn't buried
where he's supposed to be either. Then the wife finds a tomb hidden in the
middle of the living room floor (it was under a rug! Most of us would've
missed that!) Norm's response is that all these houses have indoor tombs in
the living room, because in the winter the ground would freeze. That was a
real
compelling explanation considering the fact that they lived right next to a
regular
cemetery! So, for some reason they decide they need a different house, but
stay there until a new one is located (haven't they ever heard of a Motel 6?) Their realtor goes out to the old Freudstein house when no one is home
(probably checking to see if the Boyles are getting any of their security
deposit back) and
gets herself killed. A hand busts out of the tomb through the floor and grabs
her. Then she gets stabbed and her jugular is punctured in a scene that
lovingly depicts the blood gushing in all directions. Then next morning Ann is
there cleaning up in the kitchen, presumably the after effect of the bat
incident. I don't know who was cleaning the living room or who patched the
floor, but the Boyles didn't seem to mind the mess, so why should we?
Well, it turns out that Dr. Freudstein is alive and not so well and living in
the basement like some grown up Star Trek fan at his parents' house. He
slaughters anyone that is stupid enough to hang out in a basement in a house by
a cemetery and somehow uses their sliced up corpses to keep himself alive. So
basically, this guy is not much of a problem, unless you happen to be in the
basement. If you don't decide to make a tour stop in his basement, you will be
fine. Ann goes into the basement. Her head gets chopped off (just like the
mannequin!). Then in what must be one of the dumbest moments in Boyle history,
the entire
Boyle family gets themselves trapped in the basement! I was giddy with
excitement as I had been waiting for over an hour to see the entire family
wiped
out. It almost happened, too. Norm tried to go toe to toe with Freudstein and
actually chopped off his hand, but the good Doc was just too much and ripped
his throat out. The mother and Bobby run up the stairs to where the lid of the
tomb was cracked, but Freudstein grabs mommy and pulls her by the leg back down
the stairs. Fulci knew what the audience wanted so we got to see her head
smack each stair as she was pulled down. Then she was chopped. Freudstein
then goes after Bobby, but he squeezes through the opening and is helped to
safety by his girlfriend.  Once Bobby is pulled to safety, we see that we are in the Freudstein home as it
was a hundred years ago. The girl's mother turns out to be Mrs. Freudstein and
then they all go walking off down the lane outside the house. A quote by Henry
James comes on the screen and it's something like, " are children monsters or
are monsters children" or some such malarkey. I always admire a director who
attaches a meaningless quote from someone with talent onto the end of one
their crud-pile movies. Maybe I'll do that with this review to give it a
little cachet. Anyway, the ending of course makes no sense and most of the
things that happened in the movie didn't really add up. The whole professor
killing his mistress thing for instance. What was that about? And how come
the townspeople kept saying that Norm had previously visited the town with his
daughter (maybe they meant Bobby)? Am I to assume that Freudstein and Norm had
some connection or were the same person? The end doesn't bear that out. It
was never mentioned again and Norm bought the farm just like everyone else.
The thing with the babysitter and the mannequin was meaningless. Was it a
preminition? Whose was it? Why weren't there anymore? Maybe Lucio was trying
to be artsy with stuff like that, but it didn't come off that way. It was just
another gore scene, inserted for no reason than to jar the viewer. That's
okay, but don't let it muddle the story (such as it is). The plot seemed to be
a rough draft with things brought up and forgotten and never tied together.
This is somewhat maddening since you're paying attention to all this because
you think he's weaving some devious plot twists when in reality he doesn't
really know what he's up to. You end up feeling cheated and unfulfilled by it.
The ending slaughter scene was well played and the tension ratcheted up as
each family member bought it, leaving you to wonder how Bobby would escape. Of
course his escape made as much sense as most of the other details in the movie.
Overall, there were a couple of good moments were you could feel you heart rate
quicken (as you prayed the wife would die a horrifying death), and you did get
a pretty decent payoff, gore-wise at the end, but the stupidity of the
characters (everybody gets trapped in the basement at once?) and the muddled
plot, keep this one from really being anything other than passable. It's a
Diamond DVD and $6.99 from Amazon so you're not risking a heck of a lot by
trying it
out.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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