House By The Cemetery (1981)

This one here has all the qualities of a classic Fulci film: odd characters that do even odder things, a hazy “plot”, lots of eyeball close-ups, and, of course, plenty of in your face blood and guts. A family of three has moved into the “Freudstein” house next to an old cemetery. Freudstein, I take it, was one of those mad scientist types who found the secret to eternal life. Apparently, all you have to do is replenish your body cells with that of another persons and bang! Eternal life is yours. Now, how this actually happens is never explained (is it ever?) but no matter. Unknown to the new family Freudstein still lives in the basement of the house, offing various fools who enter and I guess basically just chilling in his basement abode. Now why the family never smells any of the dead corpses or even Freudstein himself is beyond me, but everyone knows you don’t watch a Fulci film for realism. You of course watch em’ to see people killed in various gruesome ways, and with that, this film delivers. Plenty of throat slashings, neck rippings, beheadings, bat attacks, and other pleasantries are here in abundance. Also as usual for old Lucio, he serves up a nice gothic atmosphere on the usual small ass budget. The scenes of Freudstein lurking around the basement were pretty cool and the films climax was nicely edited and put together. On another note, I typically hate child actors, but I will say the kid that played the little boy “Bob” was pretty good. Sure his head is huge, he looks weird as shit and his dubbing is terrible, but he did pretty good. Wonder what that dude is up to now? All in all, it’s fun stuff on the cheap, and a must for all euro-horror fans.