AKA: The House Outside the Cemetery, Quella Villa accanto al Cimitero.

Tag Line : Can anyone survive the demented, marauding zombies....

College Professor Dr Norman Boyle (Paolo Malco) is asked to take over a research project on suicide, after the previous researcher had (ironically) committed suicide himself after murdering his mistress.

So, Dr Boyle goes and hires out the old New-England house that his predecessor was staying at and moves his wife Lucy (Katherine MacColl) and young son Bob (Giovanni Frezza) in with him, whilst he conducts his research. Of course it isn't too long before they realise that something is amiss in the old house.

A young female ghost tries to warn their young son Bob that they should not go there as, many years ago, the house used to belong to a Dr Freudstein (no, not Frankenstein), who used to conduct bizarre genetic experiments in the cellar, and something nasty still happens to be lurking around down there. Of course, young Bob is unable to convince them and so in they move!

Consequently, they get set upon by giant plastic looking bats, the baby sitter gets her throat slashed and is then decapitated, the estate agent gets stabbed with a poker and others get axed, hacked and strung up, before Dr Boyle and his family confront the demented creature at the films climax. This turns out to be Dr Freudstein himself, who's still alive after all these years and eager to kill people, so he can harvest their body parts for himself.

Borrowing a few idea's from "The Shining", with the young boy receiving ghostly messages, overall this isn't a particularly bad movie. But, being your typical Fulci pic, parts are so bizarrely surreal they don't seem to make much sense, such as when the store window dummies start dripping blood. Also, with the films low-budget, some of the effect  really make you want to cringe, such as the killer bat attack which was clearly a fake plastic toy dangling on a string in front of the camera (aaargh, awful!).

The film isn't helped by the poor dubbing, which is terribly distracting, but then that's true of most Italian horror movies. If your a fan of Fulci's zombie films, you'll probably love it, but if you detest low-budget horror your best avoiding it.

Overall Marks: 5/10.

Other Information.

• Paolo Malco also starred in Fulci's "New York Ripper". Katherine MacColl went onto star in Fulci's "City of the Living Dead" and "The Beyond". Carlo De Mejo, who played the part of Mr Wheatley, also starred in "City of the Living Dead" and look out for director Lucio Fulci himself, making one of his typical unbilled appearances, playing the part of Professor Muller.

• The film's original shooting title was "Freudstein".

• The cosmetic effects were by Giannetto De Rossi, who also worked on Fulci's "Zombie Flesh-Eaters", "The Beyond" and "City of the Living Dead". Fabrizio De Angelis also produced Fulci's "The Beyond" and "Zombie Flesh-Eaters"

• The old US video release from Vestron, from the 1980s, had two reels of footage out of order. Which made the story even more confusing as characters who'd already been killed turned up later alive and well.

• The quote at the end of the film "No one will ever know whether children are monsters or monsters are children" is attributed to a person named Henry James, however it was actually made up by director Lucio Fulci.

• The UK Cinema release in 1982 suffered 6 cuts totalling 34s, by the BBFC. This same version was later released onto video by "Vampix", but found its way onto the Govenments "Video Nasties" hit list of 1984 and so was prosecuted and banned. A more heavily edited version was later released, minus 4m:11s of BBFC cuts, by Elephant video and then Vipco. However this was replaced in 2001 with the less heavily edited cinema version.Apparently the BBFC did want to pass the 2001 release uncut, but they were forced to make cuts as the film had another conviction for being obscene a few years ago, after some poor sod got busted dealing in uncut imports.

• The film was finally passed uncut on UK DVD in 2009.

• US DVD releases from Anchor Bay and Blue Underground contained an additional deleted scene, which follows on from the bat attack in the cellar, in with Catherine MacColl's character says she wants to leave. Snippets of this appear in the films theatrical trailer.

Cast & Crew.

Cover Gallery.

Theatrical trailer. (2.69MB)

Buy the UK DVD (uncut).

Buy the US DVD (uncut).

Notes on affiliate sites.
 

Other Lucio Fulci zombie films.

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