The House by the Cemetery
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- Release Date: August 14, 1981
- Directed by: Lucio Fulci
- Written by: Elisa Briganti, Dardano Sacchetti, Giorgio Mariuzzo and Lucio Fulci
- Runtime: 1 hour 26 minutes
- Series: Gates of Hell Trilogy
The House by the Cemetery is the concluding chapter in Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell trilogy, and with this final chapter, he decided to change up the formula a little bit. While City of the Living Dead and The Beyond were both supernatural twists on the zombie film subgenre, this one sets itself apart from its predecessors by being more of a haunted house / slasher film hybrid. There are no zombies in the traditional sense, no evil book, and not even a gateway to Hell in the story. Really, its only connection to the previous entries is that Fulci continued to be inspired by the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, wanting to tell a story that felt like it could fit into Lovecraft's universe. Despite being pretty disconnected from the other two films, it's still a pretty enjoyable ride on its own.
The movie focuses on a family who moves into a run-down house that apparently has a horrific history. Not only were its original inhabitants murdered in the past, but multiple murders have occurred there in the years since then. The family eventually has to deal with not only supernatural occurrences happening around the house, but also a monstrous threat that lurks in the locked-up cellar. When I showed this movie to a friend of mine, he described it as "Amityville on crack," and I think that's a pretty accurate description. The first big chunk of the movie feels more like a haunted house movie, with the family's young son seeing the ghost of the original family's daughter, and the house shaking and making sounds at times. There's also an unknown evil in the house's basement, and a tomb in the house that bleeds at one point. Whenever I watch this movie, I sometimes find myself zoning out a little bit during this haunted house portion. However, when the threat in the basement begins to make itself known, the movie morphs into a slasher film and really kicks into gear. The death scenes in the rest of the film still exhibit Fulci's high quality of bloodshed and gore; from one woman getting massacred with a fire poker, to another one's throat being cut repeatedly before being decapitated. The shots don't linger on the gore as long as they did in The Beyond, but the violence is still very entertaining to watch, and shows off more of the Italian special effects that I love so much. I don't even want to spoil what exactly is in the basement, because after the buildup of the rest of the movie, I think the payoff is pretty satisfying. While not quite as eye-catching as the zombies in the previous films, the final threat here is still unique and genuinely creepy in a couple of shots.
If there is one criticism I have about the movie, it's that it doesn't have the same surreal qualities that the previous films had. In City of the Living Dead and The Beyond, you could never really tell when zombies or another awful threat would appear in another room or outside a window to ambush the characters, and that made the movies pretty unpredictable. Here, most of the danger comes from the house's creepy basement. While what occurs down there and the threat itself are both horrific, they're mostly stuck in that location, and that just doesn't deliver the same sense of danger. However, the movie's story does succeed in feeling like it could occur in the Lovecraft universe. From the creepy old house with a secret beneath it, to tombs being an entry point for an unknown evil, and even the unseen threat slowly causing a character to lose their mind, many of the classic tropes are present here. It may not explain all of the exact details of how certain parts of the story work, but neither did Lovecraft's best work. Sometimes the details don't matter much if the experience works as a whole, and if Fulci wanted to make a loving tribute, I think he succeeded pretty well.
While The House by the Cemetery may be my least favorite of the Gates of Hell films just because it's do different from the others, that in no way means that it's bad. It still delivers the mood, gore and creepy imagery that made the other films so enjoyable, but with a much different packaging. I do respect Fulci for not just repeating the same Hell/zombie theme yet again, and for making an original tribute to the types of stories that he loved. He capped the trilogy off on a pretty high note, and ended up delivering one of the best little series in the classic era of Italian horror films.