I thought about making the subtitle for this a third riff on landing in hot water with a local board of tourism. I opted not to because, for one - if you’ve seen this before this, you’ll get why I chose this name. The other reason - pattern breaking is a big part of this entry.
First let me lead this off by falling on my proverbial sword for you all not once, but twice over errors I made in my previous entries. First up - in discussing Fulci’s collaborators over the course of this trilogy, I named one person in error. Composer Fabio Frizzi provided the scores for City of the Living Dead and The Beyond, but the score to The House by the Cemetery was provided by Walter Rizzati and Alessando Blonksteiner. Second, though much less of a faux-pas by comparison - at the start of this, I had stated the entire trilogy of these movies could be streamed on Tubi. Once again, that only applies to CotLD and TB, but don’t be discouraged - The House by the Cemetery can be streamed for free from RedBox of all places as of this writing (with ads, but you’d get the same deal with Tubi, so there’s that.)
Okay, so now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s go into The House by the Cemetery, and my reasons for using this particular subtitle.
Overall, I like this movie. I want to get that out of the way up front. It’s a fun riff on a haunted house film, it has some properly grisly Fulci-style kills, and it offers a different take on the zombie type from the previous entries.
The last point is where I get stuck on it - looking at these movies as a trilogy, one can see the connective tissue between City of the Living Dead and The Beyond. By comparison, The House by the Cemetery feels like a hard shift from the earlier films. It’s not that there aren’t connections - as previously established, Fulci is again working with Sacchetti and MacColl in their respective roles of director, writer, and actress. Also, Fulci and Sacchetti are making a story inspired by the work of H.P. Lovecraft, though this marks where things start to break off.
In the prior movies, the Lovecraft influence skewed toward broader (or as it tends to be generally coined cosmic) horror - the version of Hell presented is seen as a supernatural corruption that is opened and poured forth into our world, growing in scope and power. Here, the angle is a story that could exist within the universe of Lovecraft’s work, but not of the same type as the others. In this case, that takes the form of a doctor whose quest for immortality leads him to ends that can be described as, in the least spoilery terms, the ghoulish. It’s an interesting concept, and as the zombie aspect goes, it makes a fun spin. But again, it feels somewhat out of step with what came before, both in terms of the nature of the horror and the much smaller scale this movie plays at.
It's a minor quibble, but I'll say it - it seems weird
to call a child 'Bob.' Bobby, sure. Robert, yeah.
Bob just feels like of those names you have to age into.
Speaking of smaller, we go to the subject of our title and the other big difference of this movie - its protagonist. MacColl completes her run in this movie, but unlike the last two, she feels more like a supporting role. Instead, the lion’s share of the focus goes to Giovanni Frezza (with a voice dubbed by Lyle Stetler that feels eerily out of place on the young actor) as MacColl’s son, Bob. I feel a little bit like a jerk coming down on this character since he IS a kid, and at least appearance-wise, Frezza is making a game attempt with the role. Having said that, for being the focus of much of the movie, Bob is sort of ineffectual in the larger movie. He’s set up at first as being akin to Danny Torrance in The Shining, being treated to visions that foreshadow the coming horror, but ultimately all he can really do is try to warn people who still wind up dead anyway. I place the fault on this more on the script than the child himself, but when he’s that big a part of the movie, it is a hard problem to look past.
Ultimately, I’m of two minds on this movie. On its own, it’s still a fun time. It hits the notes I come to Fulci for - good atmosphere, solid score (it’s no Frizzi, but it works) and that sweet, sweet carnage. Its biggest faults lie in its role as the final part of the ostensible Gates of Hell trilogy, where it lacks the gates, the Hell, and honestly, just the highs of its predecessors.
Also, after a series called The Gates of Hell literally ends
its second movie with its leads going to Hell,
this ending just feels underwhelming.
Again though, it’s a brisk 90 minutes and well worth seeking out.
I needed this right about now. It’s been a weird year and I’ve been wanting to get back into this. November is probably off the table as that will be a busy month, but we’ll see how things shake out in December.
In the meantime, a Happy Halloween till you all, and if nothing else, I’ll see you all next October!.
