House by the Cemetery
Director– Lucio Fulci
Starring – Catriona MacColl, Paolo Malco
Country of Origin - Italy
Distributor - Blue Underground
Number of Discs - 3
Reviewed by - Scott MacDonald
Date- 01/13/2020
House by the Cemetery is an insanely important film for me. I still remember buying Zombie from a Suncoast Video (remember those)? I would use websites like House of Horrors, and magazines like Fangoria to get any information I could on Italian horror, but sometimes it was just the mere act of stumbling on to a film that brought it to attention.
My first viewing of the film occurred during Spring 2000 when I was working at a Blockbuster Video, and lamenting that their selection was pure crap. They had a very limited selection of decent horror films, and I had seen most of them already. The rest of the store was also pretty barebones, so of the 5 films I could borrow a week, there was not much I wanted. However, within the first few weeks I was stocking the shelves, and on a lower shelf in the horror section was this Blockbuster's lone Fulci tape, a faded VHS copy of House by the Cemetery.
The cover featured Doctor Freudstein right on the cover in front of the titular house. The look of this "Zombie", got me excited that I just stumbled on the next Zombie. The next day after school I drove over to my girlfriend's house on Holmes Beach to watch it with a group of friends. I had a reputation for forcing my friends and girlfriends through the Italian and Spanish horror films I was discovering at the time, and this was no different. However, House by the Cemetery more so than the Beyond, City of the Living Dead (Gates of Hell), and Zombie felt different, from my teenage mind it felt like Fulci was trying to channel Kubrick's version of the Shining (A film I've never been a fan of). It was slower, and the violence was more spread-out than totally in your face. Then there was the dubbing, every time Bob opened his mouth we all laughed.
But like the other Fulci films I had been consuming this one stuck. I borrowed it every few weeks to get my Fulci fix, because there was no other copy I could get without driving to Ybor and buying a copy from Stephen Biro/Video Mayhem. When I got a DVD player for Christmas that year one of my first stops was again Suncoast Video where I was able to acquire a gray market "Diamond" DVD of the film alongside the American version of The Beyond (Seven Doors of Death). I have not been without a copy since and have owned it multiple times on DVD and now for the 2nd time on Blu-ray.
House by the Cemetery follows the Boyle family, Norman (Paolo Malco), Lucy (Catriona MacColl), and Bob (Giovanni Frezza). Norman's colleague Doctor Petersen has just killed himself, and his mistress, and now Norman takes on the task of finishing up Petersen's work in New England. The family rent a house that was previously occupied by the Freudstein family, and mysterious murders and events begin to occur to them and around them.
House by the Cemetery has imperfections, but in spite of any and all of those, I've come to view the film as an oddly perfect horror film. The splatter which was Fulci's most well-known, and advertised asset at this point was over the top, gruesome, and a blast to watch. The score by Walter Rizzati subbing for an absent Fabio Frizzi is chilling, and atmospheric, and conveys the tone of the film perfectly. Which is another thing, the other Fulci films from the "Gates" trilogy are also atmospheric, but this one has a chilling strange atmosphere that trumps them all. It delivers scares and suspenseful moments (try not to be on edge during the final basement sequence with Freudstein!).
Blue Underground presents House by the Cemetery in a 2:40:1 1080p AVC encoded transfer preserving the OAR of the film. This transfer from a new 4k scan looks amazing. The textures and grain structure look more film like and natural over the prior BU edition's transfer of the film. Black levels are inky, and deep, flesh tones are accurate, detail is excellent, and colors though muted are nicely reproduced. That being said I had almost zero complaints with the last transfer from BU, so while this is obviously an improvement over the prior edition, that one still looked pretty great.
Audio is handled by a 5.1 HD audio track in English and a DTS-HD 1.0 in Italian, both tracks sound quite solid, with crisp and clear audio that is well balanced. Extras include a commentary by Troy Howarth, interviews with the cast and crew, some archival, some new. We get additional interviews with Catriona MacColl, Stephen Thrower, and Giorgia Mariuzzo. There are deleted scenes, trailers, TV spots, and galleries. The 3rd disc in the set includes a soundtrack CD, and to add to all this are liner notes by Michael Gingold.
