Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And this is Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you
an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This is on
Luccio Folcheese House by the Cemetery about as weird a
movie as you could want. This episode originally published October
twenty ninth, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
It's a movie that literally has it all so dive
right in. It's a great Halloween selection. Here.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
And this is Joe McCormick, and it's October. And though
we cover horror movies a lot on this show, I
guess we have to do some really intense horror this month.
And so what better time to introduce our very first
Luccio Fulci movie on Weird House.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
That's right, Luccio Fulci's nineteen eighty one film, The House
by the Cemetery. This is a just a bloody and
bonker's tale that has multiple elements in it that I
think are worth geeking out over, and it also feels
on some level. It feels like the perfect film too
to discuss this week, because as of this week, Weird
(01:24):
House Cinema has completed its first Journey around the Sun.
We've been doing these episodes for a year now, and
you've been either putting up with them or enjoying them
with us for a year, and so we appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Now, Rob, this movie was your pick, So I assume
this must you must have some kind of personal history
with it. What is your connection to House by the Cemetery.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I think it was the first Fulci film that I
saw that really connected with me. That the first film
where I felt like, I mean, they're even his worst film,
his less celebrated films. Often there's generally something enjoyable in them,
(02:08):
but sometimes if you don't, if you're not really a connoisseur,
it's easy to get caught up on the things that
don't work. And so I think i'd had that experience
with some of his other films, like what New York Ripper?
And is it New York Ripper? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I think so, I've never seen that one.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
In Manhattan Baby, which is a wonderful I love the
title Manhattan Baby because it's kind of implies a certain
unders like a b cinema international idea of what New
York was, and therefore you could just put the word
Manhattan in front of Baby and it takes on sinister qualities.
But those are all films where I think I saw
(02:44):
more of the flaws than the genius, and in this film,
the genius stood out to me. So I was really
excited to revisit it, and I found that in revisiting it,
I got to appreciate all the bonker stuff a lot more.
I feel like my memory had kind of selectively cut
out a lot of the weirder plot holes in this film,
(03:04):
and I mainly remembered like a really great monster. I
remembered some, you know, some weird scenes and some heightened tension,
but ultimately this is just a wonderful weird pick. Well.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
So we've been talking recently a number of times about
specifically about these rubbed the Fur movies, movies that are
more about a vision of audio visual texture than they
are about the narrative contents of the film. And it's
funny that that Folcie never came up when we were
talking about these before, because I think in the most
(03:37):
disgusting possible way. Folci was deeply committed to making rub
the fur type movies cinema as a as a almost
purely esthetic exercise over a narrative one. And so I've
seen a number of Fulcy horror movies and I can't
remember a single one of them for its characters or plot. Instead,
what you what you remember from these movies are and images.
(04:01):
So I tend to think of a Fulci as a
I think of his approach to movie making as kind
of similar to a child creating shoebox dioramas, except of
course they're strewn with ludicrous amounts of blood and gore.
So he has like an extraordinary eye for these memorable
set pieces of weirdness and wet violence. But on the
(04:25):
narrative level, these scenes and the characters in them always
feel just barely held together by the vaguest of narrative logic.
Every ful Chie movie I have ever seen feels like
it takes place in a dream, where in every scene,
you know, it's like that moment in a dream where
some things are going on around you, but you couldn't
necessarily explain how you got there or why.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Now, like a dream, you can, I think, what I do,
or what I've done in the past with fullshoe movies
is afterwards, I kind of reflect on the dream and
sort of ascribe it a structure, you know, And I
feel like you can certainly do that with a film
like this. You can be like, Okay, well, this was
at heart a film about a house that is haunted.
(05:10):
People move into said haunted house, have encounters with the haunt,
and you know, there are consequences for all of that.
I think that's basically the plot, but what we actually
witness on screen is a lot more I don't know, frenzied,
and like you say, it kind of definitely follows the
logic or the lack of logic found in dreams.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Yeah, and like you're saying, I mean, actually, it's kind
of hard to describe because his movies do, in fact
have plots and they have characters. So Housed by the Cemetery,
which we just watched, is a movie that technically has
a story that you could summarize in words. It's more
that it just doesn't really feel that way when you're
(05:53):
watching it. You know, like you could write out a
plot summary and it would more or less make sense.
It's just that seemed to see, and I at least
don't feel the normal levels of narrative logic that you
would in a movie where the plot hangs together like
it should. Instead, once again, what we get is more
like a collection of images, shots, set pieces, and scenes,
(06:17):
as if billowing out of a dream and then kind
of haphazardly strung together along a pretty standard kind of
horror plot arc.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I think one aspect of this, or one reason for this,
is that I don't think full two was ever the
sort of director to let the plot get in the
way of a great shot, right there was something visually
interesting to be done, it seems like he would do
it even if it wasn't really helping out the plot
all that much.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Not even plot, I mean, just to let any kind
of logic or reality get in the way of a
good shot. So say the laws of physics. You know,
he will show some kind of bizarre murder that he
maybe came to him in a dream or whatever, and
it doesn't really matter if this is not how like
fluids flow in the real world, or if this is
you know, it doesn't really gravity would interfere with what
(07:06):
he wants to be showing you. He's just going to
show it.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
You know. Another thing that's kind of interesting about full
Cheesse horror movies is that, though they are classifiable as
horror and they generally have you know, ghosts and zombies,
supernatural horror plot elements, I don't know if they're really
intended to be scary. I never really find them scary.
They're more like disgusting psychedelic art films.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah, this film in particular, Yeah, it feels like it's
trying to be haunting and supernatural. It's it's definitely going
out there to be gory, but really there's only there's
only like one sequence of a child in peril that
felt suspenseful. I don't know, maybe the opening kill sequence
is a little bit suspenseful, even though you don't really
(07:54):
have a firm attachment to any of the characters.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Okay, so what's the elevator pitch on this one? Absurdly
grizzly murders keep happening at the old freud Stein house.
Let's watch what happens when a new family moves in.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Don't you mean oak manor isn't it? Oh yeah, the
realtors keep insisting don't call it the Freudstein House.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
God, I love the cutaways to the real estate office.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Yeah, we got we had a strong real estate agent
subplot in this.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, and the real estate office was strangely political compared
to you know, there was nothing else in the movie
like this. But in the real estate office there are
a bunch of flags. There's like an American flag and
then some other flags. I don't know what they were,
and then there's a might have been state flags or something.
And then there's a framed portrait of John F. Kennedy
and there's a big bust of an eagle. I don't
(08:44):
know why it was so patriotic in there.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Interesting. All right, Well, let's go ahead and hear the
audio for some of the trailer audio. Maybe we'll play
the whole trailer because this was a fun win and
I'll explain why after you hear it. Even where are
you playing for me?
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Stee in this house? What you don't know will hurt you.
Speaker 5 (09:24):
It was to be a getaway dream.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
It's becoming the runaway nightmare. Do you see anything? Some
old steps coming down?
Speaker 5 (09:43):
He has been awaiting the arrival of his new guests.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
One by one.
Speaker 5 (09:49):
They are disappearing, one by bloody one.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
When you move to this house before you get locked
in the fine friends, you may have just Morgan, you're right.
Speaker 5 (10:26):
Due to the graphic nature of this film, no one
under eighteen will.
Speaker 4 (10:33):
Be admitted house by the cemetery.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
All right. So you might have noticed, Well, that's not
a Maybe that's not our typical movie narrator. That's not
that's a slightly different voice of God. Doesn't sound like
a god at all. Maybe a devil is narrating this. Well,
that devil is brother Theodore, the comedian and character actor
that we discussed in the Warhawk Tanzania film The Devil's Express.
You might also know him from the Verbs and the
(11:00):
animated adaptations of The Hobbit in The Last Unicorn. He
was the voice of Gollum in the animated Hobbit film,
and here he is narrating a trailer. I love it.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
In The Devil's Express he was the street preacher who,
in one scene was giving a sermon by the subway
entrance about how all your gods are dead and the
rats are screaming.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
I was looking around trying to figure out what other
trailers he narrated, and I couldn't find evidence of a
lot of them. So I don't know if this was
like just a very brief gig for him, or if
I'm missing a lot of trailers here, But oh, I
wish he had done more. I wish he was still
around to do film trailers. Like any kind of Oscar
bait comes out, I want to hear Brothers Theodore narrated.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
How would he say it featuring the personable Mark Damon.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
It'd be good.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Well, speaking of humans, let's let's get into the humans
involved in bringing this strange film to life first. I
guess we'll begin with the director here, the key individual
we've already we've already brought up already. That's Lucie Fulci,
who lived nineteen twenty seven through nineteen ninety six. So
we've mentioned him multiple times on Weird House Cinema, so
(12:07):
it's it's ultimately nice to finally discuss him in one
of his own films instead of just you know, referring
to people who worked with him. He's best remembered today
for his horror films of the mainly the nineteen eighties era.
I guess it's the big time for him, and he is,
without a doubt, one of the titans of Italian b
cinema from this era. But all this really kicked into
(12:30):
high gear after nineteen seventy nine's Zombie came out. We've
talked about this one before. This was a very prolific
period of his career to produced some of his best
remembered films.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Now this is Zombie with Justin and I instead of
Is this the one that was marketed as an unofficial
sequel to Dawn of the Dead.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yeah, yeah, it was very much cashing in on the
success of that film, and it is also you may
remember us discussing the like some of the bonkers scenes
in this this is another one where he didn't let
the plot get in the way of an interesting scene,
such as the one where what a shark and a
zombie battle each other while a topless scuba diver swims by.
(13:14):
Just you know, completely bonkers and definitely stands out in
one's memory. But he'd been active for a while prior
to to Zombie. He'd been directing full length films for
twenty years at that point, including some horror films such
as nineteen seventy one's A Lizard in a Woman's Skin
nineteen seventy twos, Don't Torture a Duckling. He also did
a nineteen sixty nine Jalla film titled One on Top
(13:37):
of the Other. But he directed a number of different
genre films before the nineteen eighties, including Western spy, thrillers, comedies,
and more. He did an adaptation of Jack London's White Fang.
He also did a fantasy film, nineteen eighty three's Conquest,
which is quite entertaining and weird. Maybe we'll come back
to that one.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Conquest can sometimes be kind of rough because it looks
like it was filmed through cloth. Like it there is
a just an impenetrable haze through the entire movie. It
looks like there was a I don't know, gauze over
the camera lens or something how I think they would
normally describe it. It's just this gray, hazy look that
never ends. But Conquest star so it's like a you know,
(14:17):
it's a one of those barbarian movies, sort of a
cone and ripoff, but it's got a Jorge Rivera from
from where Wolf as the Conan character.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yes, yeah, yeah, it has a number of fun elements
in it. I wonder though, if if you're one of
the things about these films is that is that some
of us saw them years ago with less than on
less than great formats, you know, maybe we even saw
them on VHS. So I wonder if the version of
Conquest you saw was like one of the was like
(14:48):
a more recent restoration of it, or it was like
it was older, because the film we're talking about here
today was recently restored in two K and that was
the version that I watched in preparation for this episode,
and it really did seem a lot clearer than I
remember watching it, you know, like ten or fifteen years
ago the same.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, this one, it looks a lot better now than
the version I saw about fifteen years ago. One more
note about one of the movies you mentioned, I've actually
seen a Lizard in Woman's Skin. That's a fulchy jallo
movie that is very strange. It involves I think it's
one of the number of these Italian jalli that take
(15:29):
place in London, if I remember correctly, and it involves
it involves like a like a party house. There's like
a it's like a total I think the plot is
the main character and her husband live in one part
apartment and then right next door there's a total party
house and she has these like dreams and visions about
weird stuff going on in there. I think it's kind
(15:50):
of there's like, I don't know, naked people and panthers
wandering around and stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Now, if I'm not mistaken, the title on that one
has to do with the success of doc Rio Argento
is the Bird with a Crystal Plumage. And if you
start looking at titles of Jallo films, you'll find that
you have the Bird with a Crystal Plumage come out,
and then various other titles that have a similar structure.
You know, it'll be like, you know, the Rhino with
a diamond toenail, you know, something like that that seems
(16:18):
to get him on the same trend.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Oh man, there's so many Jello movies with great titles,
totally independent. A lot of times I don't even remember
which movie the title goes with. There's one that always
sticks in my mind called Your vice is a locked
Room and only I have the key.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Got to make copies of that key. Well, anyway, back
back to Fulchi he again. He died in nineteen ninety six,
and his output slowed down later in life as he
wrestled with health issues, but his next to last film
was nineteen nineties A Cat in the Brain, which I
have not seen and really didn't know much about it.
(16:57):
I just kind of assumed it was just another standard,
you know, body Fulcy affair, but it apparently stars a
fictionalized version of himself. He plays this fictionalized version of
himself in the film, seeking the aid of a twisted
psychiatrist over his own violent visions. So I watched the
trailer for it, and it looks it looks amazing. It's
(17:18):
a lot of Fulcy ranting, you know, dubbed into English
for the you know, the version we would watch where
he's saying things like the man was all red and
I wanted to kill him, and then you'll, you know,
cut to some sort of a bizarre sequence.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Trying to understand the reception history of Fulci is interesting
because he seems like a figure who simultaneously evokes a
disgust reaction from people, and I think a lot of
people would sort of look down on as a kind
of low brow pervert of gore, somebody who made these
gross movies full of almost hilarious quantities of gratuitous blood
(17:55):
and guts. And yet at the same time, I think
there's a lot of film scholarship on Fulgi. I sense
that he enjoys a kind of special aura of artistic
respect set apart from most other directors of lowbrow B
horror movies of this kind.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, I think part of it may be that he's
important enough and ultimately impressive enough that he stands out,
you know, he kind of emerges out of that world
of Italian B cinema, and therefore he might be the
most notorious name that someone is familiar with from that world.
But of course, if you if you dig dig a
little deeper into Italian B cinema, you find plenty of
(18:33):
other more notorious names. You know, there are a lot
more arguably unsavory characters than Luccio Fulci.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
I mean, I guess the weird distinction here is that,
I bet at multiple colleges out there in the world,
there are entire courses on Fulci, Like, you know, he's
at that level of subject matter worthy of critical analysis.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
I think, well, let's look at some of the other
other names involved here. We also have Alisa Braganti, who
has a story credit. This is an Italian screenwriter who
wrote on such films as Zombie Manhattan, Baby nineteen ninety,
(19:19):
The Bronx Warriors, A Blade in the Dark, Hands of Steel,
which we've discussed on the show before, and many more.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Hands of Steele was the Italian terminator ripoff that had
the big beefy guy who comes to the desert bar
and then ends up in an arm wrestling scene.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah, an Arizona movie filmed by Italians and also featuring
John Saxon.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Oh Yeah, John Saxon and oh in that movie was
the one where we encountered the worst song of all
time because the lead actress in it sings that pop
single Teddy Bear.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I don't know, I kind of like teddy Bear, tyer
like teddy Bear. Okay, I look back fondly on teddy Bear.
I don't remember it though, I don't remember how it goes. Oh,
let me remind you no no afterwards after Okay. So
the next name worth pointing out Dardano Sachetti, who has
(20:12):
a screenplay credit born nineteen forty four, Italian screenwriter who
worked on the likes with the likes of Lomberto Bava,
Luccio fulci Zo g Castellari, Dario Argento. His first credit
was Argento's The Cat of Nine Tales. He worked with
Fulci quite a bit, including some of his most well
known films, some of the ones we've mentioned here already.
(20:34):
He worked on Lomberto Bava's Monster, Shark and Demons, and
he also worked on nineteen ninety The Bronx Warriors. So
another important name in Italian b cinema. And there's another
screenplay credit to Giorgio Mariuzzo, who also wrote on the
ful Chi films The Beyond and Enigma, as well as
some others.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Now is House by the Cemetery sometimes considered part of a.
I'm afraid I'm getting this wrong with part of A's
sort of conceptual trio of horror films that she did
along with Gates of Hell and The Beyond. Is that right?
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Yes, the so called Gates of Hell trilogy of films.
And I'm personally not sure if I was dubbed a
trilogy by Folk she himself, or if this is something
that commentators and fans have come up with, But at
any rate, yeah, we have these three films, City of
the Living Dead from nineteen eighty and The Beyond and
(21:29):
House by the Cemetery both from nineteen eighty one, and
it is just so happens. We have an actor that
is in all three of these. It is Catherine McCall
or Katrianna McCall, and she plays Lucy Boyle, the wife
in this picture. She was born in nineteen fifty four.
(21:50):
British born ballet dancer turned actor again in all three
of the Gates of Hell films. She also was in
nineteen eighty's Hawk the Slayer, which starred Jack Palance as
well as John Terry Patricia Quinn. And it looks pretty interesting.
I can't remember I've seen it or not. I may
have seen it. She was also in nineteen ninety one's
(22:10):
Afraid of the Dark, which starred James Fox, Paul McGann
and David Thulis.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Right, So I guess if we're getting into the cast,
we should say that there's a main family in this movie,
and Catherine McCall plays the mother and the family. The
father is played by this guy named Paolo Malco.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah, plays doctor Norman Boyle. Malco was born in nineteen
forty seven an Italian actor who was also in Ful Cheese,
New York Ripper, was in Sergio Martinez The Scorpion with
Two Tales. He was in Castellari's Escape the Bronx, as
well as Limberto Baba's Demons three, the Ogre that came
(22:50):
out in nineteen eighty nine, and this one's it's kind
of a weird connection here because the ogre is apparently
very similar to this film, to House by the Semi Terry,
and it is apparently based on Sachetti's original script for
House by the Cemetery. So they went back. This is
according to Lomberto Bava. So basically they're like, well, you know,
(23:13):
full she did some some slightly different things with the script.
Let's go back and we'll just do the script as
it was before full she did what he did with it.
So I don't know. I have not seen Demons three.
I think I've only seen Demons one, so I speak
to it personally.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
I didn't know there was a Demon's three, Demons one
and Demons two. Demons one has a bunch of people
go to a movie theater and they watch a movie
and then Demon's attack. Demons two has a bunch of
people in an apartment building and then Demon's attack. Demons three.
I guess it must be a house. So they're scaling back.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Well, I think it was very much a case of
them making a film called the Ogre again based on
this older script, and then they were like, well, maybe
this will perform better if we just call it Demons three.
Why not are people going to complain that it doesn't
match up? Although well with the plot of Demons Demons
one and two.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
I think Demons too, I don't recall much continuity between them.
In fact, I even seem to recall that there are
actors who are in the first movie playing different characters
in the second Demons movie.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Well, anyway, Malcom as doctor Norman Boyle in this pretty
entertaining and has great hair in most of the scenes.
There are some scenes of him standing on wind swept
streets in New York City and you're like, wow, that's
a good head of hair.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
As Vincent Price would say, his hair is loos urious,
just absolutely wonderful hair. This is hair first casting, to
be sure.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
And you know it runs in the family because his
son in the film, his son Bob, also has an
impressive head of hair.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
This is really the star of the film. Here is Bob.
Years ago, when I first saw this movie, the movie
in general didn't make all that much of an impression
on me, except I remembered Bob. This movie has this weird,
haunting child in it that's maybe actually the scariest thing
in the movie, but also the funniest because he's named Bob,
(25:07):
and characters are constantly yelling out Bob.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
Yes, Bob, an adult's name that is here given to
a child, a child that is also the child. His
voice is dubbed into English and performed by an adult
woman doing a child's voice, so that adds this extra
level of the uncanny to it. And also the actor
(25:31):
playing Bob, Giovanni Freza, who was born in nineteen seventy two,
just a very cute child, just objectively extremely cute child
who just comes off like a cheruld, like an actual
angelic being that seems to glow on the screen and
in a way that just feels unnatural, just unnaturally cute.
(25:54):
This kid.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
The glowing quality also, like you say, it, takes after
his dad in this film luxury hair, like glowing hair.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah, just basically platinum. Now. The child actor here, Giovanni Frezo,
pops up in an excellent assortment of Italian genre pictures
from this time period, including Manhattan Baby, the excellent Warriors
of the Wasteland, A Blade in the Dark, and the
first Demons movie. Demons came out in nineteen eighty five,
and that was his last acting role. He grew up,
(26:24):
apparently to become a product development director, and I think
still works and resides in the United States. I looked
up some footage of him from a I think from
a DVD or Blu Ray extra, and I'm pleased to
see that he did not turn into like a terrifying
klaus Kinsky looking adult duode, because there's something about like,
he's so innocent and you know, and cute in this film.
(26:48):
You're like, you can easily imagine it twisted into the
grotesque and the cruel instead of growing up into what
seems like probably a normal adult.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
But you can confirm normal adult.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I mean, I don't know the guy, but you look
at a picture of him, you're like, oh, that's a
that's a grown human being, normally looking adult. Yes, yeah, okay,
I mean product development sounds normal enough, So I.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Think that could be the stands out there that can
be final processing.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
All right, So that is the family that's our central
trio here, But then you could basically look at the
rest of the cast is by dividing them into like ghosts, monsters,
and victims. So the main ghost is May May, the
ghost girl played by Sylvia Colatina born nineteen seventy two.
(27:38):
And she's the interesting thing. And I guess this makes
sense because of the raid at which girls and boys mature.
But she's actually the same age as the actor playing
Bob in this. She was also a child actor, active
only from nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty four, but
with fewer credits. She acted in Sergio Martinez The Great
Alligator in nineteen seventy nine, a movie that has a
(28:00):
story credit by George Eastman, and then she was also
in ful Che's Murder Rock Dancing Death in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
I did not know Sergio Martino had an alligator movie.
I got to look into that.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Penned by George Eastman.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Well, I mean perfect Italian Crocodilian movies can be quite
have you ever seen I forget the director's name. There
are a couple of Italian horror films called Killer Crocodile
and Killer Crocodile Too. I don't think i've seen that
were they're just they're extremely bad, but very funny.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Well, as for our ghost here, may I feel like
called Attina's really good in this. You know, it's hard
to judge a child actor, particularly if they're dubbed probably
by like a different person, But I don't know. There's
a certain quality to her delivery here where I totally
buy her sense of like occasional detachment but also kind
(28:52):
of like shocked outrage at the danger that is lurking
on the screen.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah, she has a lot of like look into the camera,
wide eyed and gasp kind of moments.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
Yeah. The next character is kind of perplexing because depending
on where you are in the film, it's hard to
tell where she falls into these divisions of victims and
ghosts and monsters. This is the character of an the Babysitter,
played by Ania Perni. She was born in nineteen fifty seven,
an Italian actor. She also appeared in Daria Argenta's Tenebre
(29:24):
and Inferno, in which she apparently plays the mother of Tears.
She's fun in this as a mysterious character who does
a lot of suspicious staring, a lot of silent staring.
And I have to say this new two K release,
this new two K Master of House by the cemetery.
It reveals every follicle in her lush, loupine eyebrows. It's
(29:47):
pretty great.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
I was going to point out those eyebrows. So if
Paulo Malco, if he was hair first casting, I think
this actress was eyebrow first casting. It's all about the
eyebrows here.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah. I mean she has really tense eyes as well,
but luscious eyebrows. You've never seen eyebrows like these before.
And she a lot of the scenes again getting back
to like fulchi, never letting the plot get in the
way of a good scene. I think a lot of
his direction was like, yes, stare hauntingly into the camera,
keep doing it. Okay, good, that's great. Now we'll move
(30:21):
on to.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
The next sent You almost wonder if a lot of
scenes in this movie could have been done with the
actor is not even knowing yet what they were going
to be looking at. It's just we get a lot
of footage of the actor going like oh, and then
later we figure out what the image is that they're seeing.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
Yeah, or sometimes we don't exactly Yeah, one more actor
to highlight that. We may come back to one or
two more when we get into the plot. But we
also have this realder character. We have multiple realder characters,
but the main one is Laura, played by the actor
Dagmar Alassander. She was born nineteen forty three, a checkborn
(30:56):
actor who pops up in a lot of Italian films.
And I don't know, perhaps she's just more memorable because
of her name, you know, Dagmar Lassiter. Lasseners tends to
stand out in the credits of a film. Her credits
include Mario Bava's Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Lumberto Bava's Devilfish,
and also Fool Cheese the Black Cat. Also a picture
(31:17):
unrelated to these filmmakers titled were Wolf Woman.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
So she plays a character in this named well, you said, Laura,
missus Gidtleson, right, Yeah, yeah, missus Gidtleson. She's the real
estate agent. And there's a great scene where she is
trying to back out of the driveway of the titular house,
the house by the cemetery, and she like drives over
a tombstone and just like swears at it. She's just
(31:44):
like a damn tombstones.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
She's fun. All right. Well, let's get to the music,
because the music on this film is definitely worth highlighting
this is a this is a fun score. You know,
it's a little bit Uh, it's a little bit, a
little bit funky. Uh, definitely synthy and apparently highly influential.
(32:10):
I saw it pointed out that the muse some of
the music that was used or created for Garth Marenghi's
Dark Place years later. It's kind of like like a
direct reference to the score to this film.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
That makes so much sense. And a lot of what's
funny about Garth Maringhi's Dark Place is just slightly tweaking
things that are already true about House by the Cemetery,
like some of the kind of the vibe in the
dialogue scenes with these long pauses between lines and awkward staring.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah. Absolutely, In fact.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
I even thought of Garth Murringay's Dark Place. And there's
one part of the movie where where Paolo starts listening
to a tape by the old doctor that starts talking
about blood, blood, blood, and I wanted to complete it
with and bits of bits of sick.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah. I had the same thought. That's a great sequence too,
by the way, Yeah, listening to that and it aren't
we get it represented with visuals of blood flowing over
a tombstone.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Yes, yes, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
So the individuals responsible for this music primarily Walter Rizzodi.
I'm not sure when this Italian composer was born or
if he's still with us. I couldn't find any dates
on him, but he seems to have been primarily active
from nineteen sixty six through nineteen ninety three. His notable
scores include this one, nineteen ninety The Bronx Warriors, as
(33:32):
well as some various action films. I think this is
the main standout, but you also have Alexander Blanksteiner on
this with an additional music credit. You might remember him
as the guy who gave us that fabulously funky disco
score for Cannibal Apocalypse. He has composition credit on five
of the scorer's tracks. So it all comes together again
(33:52):
into just a very fun score that is, you know,
occasionally definitely gets into this kind of cheesy groove that
that only works with this film, but I think is
overall pretty excellent and has some wonderful moments of horror.
Synth organ I thought we might have a taste of
it right here.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Yes, I love the synth pipe organs, and I also
at a couple of points. I was hearing a plinking
walk down that reminds me of the melody from Banana
Rama's Cruel Summer.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
I think I know which part you're talking about. I
need to go back and listen to that though, And
speaking of going back and listening to it, I should
point out that that there have been some excellent re
releases of this score. I don't I can't really speak
to its digital availability on streaming sites, but you've had
some fabulous vinyl additions put out by both Death Waltz Records,
which you know excels at this sort of thing, as
(34:55):
well as Burning Witch Records. So if you're if you're
into the into the vinyl uh, and you're into scores
like this, definitely check those out. So though, oh wait,
those were the humans. But there's also one non human
credit I need to give, and that's the house itself.
This is one of those those fabulous movies where we
have a central haunted house or haunted location, and that
at location actually exists in the real world and you
(35:17):
can you can technically go and see it. I mean,
you know, of ob obey local laws as far as
approaching it. But the house here is the The Freudstein House
is actually the Bailey Ellis House, located on the Ellis
Estate in the coastal Massachusetts town of Let's see, I'm
not I'm sure. I'm going to busher the name of
(35:38):
this skitchuwat.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
No idea s c I t U a t E
situate sketchy Watts.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Done in any rate. It's about thirty miles southeast of Boston,
and according to Atlas Obscura, it's currently owned by the
Sketchwat Arts Association, and if you go to their website
you can see recent photos of it. The website states
quote the Ellis House is a unique Gothic Romanesque mansion
and home to the SAA's indoor classes and workshops. It
(36:07):
also provides studio space for half a dozen artists. So hey,
oh oh, go there, sign up to create your own
entry for the night gallery. Uh this, Yeah, this house
is still standing and there and there's there's still wonderfully
creative things going on inside it.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
I will drop everything in my life and go to
Massachusetts to become a part of doctor Freudstein's art collective.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Uh. And, by the way, this house was also used
in Umberto Lindsay's ghost house, so you get to double
dip by visiting this place.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
It's a really good house, I will say.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, it's it's a handsome house, and they fix it
up nicely for the film because they're just they're they're
just uh, headstones everywhere, just all through the yard and
then also in the surrounding woods.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
All right, Now, here's the part of the episode where
we would normally start getting into a full plot breakdown.
I don't know if that's quite the terminology to use here.
I think what happens is we are going to be
able to describe a bunch of scenes that happened in
the movie. But I don't know if we can really
explain the plot.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Right, I mean, I still have there's still things I
do not understand, and I've I've seen this film more
than I've seen some truly, you know, you know, subjectively
great works of art. I've also, especially on this last viewing,
I really tried to understand everything. You know. It was
like I was gonna be quizzed on it. Can I
really speak to what's happening in this movie? And I
(37:40):
really can't explain some of the choices and elements here,
though I will try.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
We will at least try to describe a number of
the dioramas that ful She creates in the shoe box
of this film. Yes, so from the very opening, I
gotta say, especially with this restoration, it looks great. The
house is beautifully framed on the opening shot with the
you know it's it's got the dark in the background,
with tombstones and dead limbs in the foreground. I assume
(38:07):
I could. I can't remember if you mentioned this a
minute ago. Is there actually a cemetery by the house
or with the tombstones added for the film?
Speaker 1 (38:16):
I think the tombstones were added for the film. I'm
not one clear on that, but but I didn't I
didn't see anybody pointing out, you know, there being an
actual cemetery surrounding this house.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
Okay, well we see it in the opening frame like this,
this this beautiful old house with the darkness behind it
and the tombstones and the dead trees with bare limbs
in the foreground. And this, of course is setting up
a classic horror movie style opening in which some people
are in a place they're not supposed to be and
they're probably about to meet an ill end.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Right, It's it's ultimately a familiar scene I feel like
I've seen and other films. A woman is dressing and
then she starts looking around the house for her boyfriend,
assuming he's preyanking her by suddenly disappearing. And then, you know,
so she wanders around being like, oh, what is his name?
Is it Mike?
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Steve?
Speaker 1 (39:07):
It's Steve. She's like, Steve, are you there, Steve? Steve,
stop kidding around, Steve. And then, of course what happens.
She discovers Steve. Steve is dead. He's been nailed at
the backside of a door with a pair of surgical scissors,
and his brain has been surgically or through blunt trauma exposed.
And then an unseen killer stabs her through the back
(39:28):
of the head with a kitchen knife so that the blade,
the end of the blade, emerges out of her mouth,
and then she falls to the floor dead, and then
a pair of well a pair of hands, one of
which appears human and one of which appears to be
a monster hand drags her away into the cellar.
Speaker 2 (39:44):
So a standard B horror opening, but there's a lot
stylistically about it that's just very elegant and very much
a cut above what you would see in movies like
this normally. So one thing I wanted to draw attention
to is a wonderful shot where while she is wandering
around calling out to Steve, saying like, Steve, are you
trying to scare me? I don't think it's funny, But
(40:05):
she's coming down a hallway that is lit from behind,
and in the foreground we are looking through the gaps
in an iron spiral staircase that's just covered in cobwebs,
and it's a gorgeous shot.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Yeah, yeah, And a great shot of this seemingly endless
sellar in this house. I mean, it's supposed to be
a haunted house, so it makes sense that maybe the
seller doesn't obey the laws of reality and space and time.
But yeah, it seems enormous, and it seems like there
are corners of it that haven't been explored in like
(40:39):
a century and a half. I ultimately love the unreality
of this cellar.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
But then after the opening murders, you get some music,
of course, this electronic organ fugue. You get the title
it says House by the Cemetery, and then there's an
interesting compositional shift coming up, so you see the same
house and a girl standing in the window looking out
making kind of a scary screaming face, which then cross
(41:07):
fades to a black and white photograph hanging on a
wall of that house with the girl looking out the
window with the screaming face. Then you see a title
that says New York pulls back. The wall is in
a modern apartment, modern at the time the film was made.
And then sitting there staring at the photo is a
profoundly uncanny blonde child. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Bob.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
I want to come back to that ghost girl for
a second, because yes, she's haunting in the photo, but
the face she's making it could be interpreted as fear.
But it's also the kind of face that a child
like this would make when somebody does a cannon ball
into a swimming pool and a kool Aid commercial. You
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Wow, Yeah, yeah, that's radical.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
And it is radical. But yes, now we meet Bob,
and we say we meet the whole family. Yeah, there's
doctor Norman Boyle, there's his wife, Lucy Boyle. There is
adorable Bob, who we've already described disturbingly cherubic and speaks
in the dubbed voice of an adult woman doing a
kid's voice, so uncanny. Yeah, and in there, yeah, a
(42:13):
lot of thought of scenes too, of Bob playing just
way too diligently with his toys. I'm like, who has
ever given a remote control car to a child and
seeing them and get that this much usage out of it?
It's really not fair.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Well this movie. Also, I'm not sure if it understands
that remote control cars don't work in the woods where
the ground is covered in leaves and is not flat.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Oh, but so here's a question I have. Is Bob
like Danny Torrance like, is he psychic or is just
the ghost girl picking him as a regular, non psychic
person to send messages to.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
I don't know. I mean, I may only speaks to Bob, right,
Bob seems to be the only one who can see her,
So it's here she can speak to him because he's
a child, or he's a special child. But I have
a suspicion that the idea is that children are weird
and can see ghosts.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
Okay, Okay, so it's it's not him in particular, He's
just a child and the child, the child's mind is
open to the spirit world in a way that the
adult's mind is closed.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
I guess so, but ultimately that's just how I choose
to interpret it. And there's I'm not sure where ful
she actually stood on this.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Well, immediately what happens here is that Lucy the mother
comes in. It is like hey, Bob, and Bob's like, well,
I'm hearing voices talking to me out of this photograph
and she's just like oh haha, And he's like, Mommy,
why does that girl in the photograph keep telling us
we shouldn't go to the house. And the mom can't
see the girl in the window in the photo, so
(43:49):
she just kind of shrugs it off. But then we
see a kind of alternate reality where may the ghost
girl and I guess her mom are standing in the
woods somewhere. I guess they are standing among the tombstones
and the cemetery outside the house. And we're told that
this is in New Whitby, Boston.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yeah, yeah, this film most of these scenes were filmed
in Massachusetts, take place in Massachusetts, and this is ultimately
a Massachusetts film, maybe our first I'm not sure if
we've I can't remember if any of the previous films
we've watched have been set or filmed there.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
I believe this film is sort of trying to tap
into some Miskatonic magic.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
Yeah, yeah, I think so, But that doesn't mean we
don't have a brief stop over in New York City.
On the streets of New York, Doctor Norman Boyle is
seen chatting with Professor Mueller, who is played by the
director Luccio Folci, and they're discussing Boyle's research. He is
about to move his entire family out of the city
into rural Massachusetts so that he can continue the suicide
(44:48):
research that his colleague, doctor Peterson, was doing right before
said colleague murdered his mistress and committed suicide himself. Now,
what sort of research could this possibly have been? What
breakthroughs was he making? I have no idea, and there's
not a lot of of There are not really any
answers to be found in the film.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
What a setup. And yeah, this scene on the sidewalk
is hilarious, and I think maybe it's supposed to be.
I don't think this is unintentional because Fulchi is talking
to this lead actor here with you know, the glorious
head of hair, and Fullchi's I guess playing playing an
older colleague who's got this ridiculous huge red bow tie
and these thick glasses and uh. And as he's talking
(45:30):
to Ta Paolo, here to what's a Norman Boyle, he says,
and there he was researching suicide times. We have to
live in taxi. He just nails a taxi, hops in
and takes off.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
That's just that's just New York living. Yeah, you gotta
you gotta keep moving otherwise the Manhattan babies will catch
up with you.
Speaker 2 (45:50):
So next the family is driving out to the house.
And this is one of the parts where I heard
that that that walk down melody that sounds like a
music version of Cruels Summer. But this is also the
part where the dad says. The dad is talking about
how if it weren't for so and so, I don't
remember who he's talking about, we wouldn't have a house
to live in where we're going, we'd have to live
in a tent. And Bob yells, I wish.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
Well, that's pretty authentic. That's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
There's a scene that comes up in a minute here
that is great. That has May the ghost girl, who
by the way, doesn't look like a she just looks
like a normal person, just like a kid. Yeah, not like,
you know, translucent or anything. So it's just like a
kid is out on a street. I think this is
supposed to be in Boston or this town outside of
(46:38):
Boston that they're going to, and she is staring into
the window of a storefront that has mannikins dressed up
in I guess the clothes the store is selling. And
so one of these mannequins looks like a very evil
Denise Richards type face, and it's wearing one of the
what do you call those frilly white collars, kind of
like Doiley's.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
Yeah, kind of like like a like a witch costume.
I guess it looks.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
At sort of. But then it's like May hallucinates the
the mannequin getting decapitated and it bleeds everywhere. So this
is a mannequin, but it's full of blood and organs
and stuff. The head falls off and it's just splatter
for a moment, and then somehow this leads into the
meeting of May and Bob, which is very funny as well.
(47:26):
Like Bob shows up in town his parents going to
talk to the realtors, and he's just sitting in the car,
I think, playing with the toy, and then suddenly they're
like psychic mind melding.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Yeah, Like she's a block or two away, and they're
just chatting with each other like they're right next to
each other through their brains.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Oh oh, and somehow this sequence ends with Bob like
sitting in a park cradling this gigantic, horrible doll.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
Yeah, this giant garbage doll that he's been given. I
guess by May. He's like, Mom, we're taking this home, right,
and they're like, yeah, yeah, load it up, load up
your garbage doll.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
But so from here we get the family moving into
the new house, and there's a lot of great photography.
We get to see them interacting with the realtors. This
is where there's that funny scene where MSUs Giddleson drives
over a tombstone and then yells at it, and Lucy
the mother, has this strange freak out about the doll
that Bob found. It's like, but it's after they get
(48:24):
back to the house, so I didn't really understand that
he brings this disgusting doll home. And then it's sitting
there in the house and she sees it and she's like,
does the little whip zoom on her eyes? This movie
loves whip zooms. By the way, did you notice.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
That now that you pointed out, Yeah, there's a lot,
a lot of whip zooming going.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
On sometimes in situations where it wouldn't seem to make
total sense, like it will happen in cases where somebody
is having a horrible vision, but it also sometimes just
happens in the middle of a conversation.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Yeah. Now, this is the point in the film where
we introduce one of my favorite characters. And we've already
talked a little bit about her the actor playing her,
But Anne and the babysitter with the magnificent eyebrows shows up,
and apparently we're supposed to connect her to the mannequin
that we saw, the mannequin that's head fell off in
(49:14):
the window is supposed to look like this actor, even
though she really doesn't. And I got more caught up
on the fact that she looks like a particular former
First Lady of the United States. But I'm supposed to
be Anne. It's supposed to be Anne. Apparently I didn't
notice that, but yeah, you're right. But yeah, well I
was thinking Denise Richards. But either way, yeah, it doesn't
(49:36):
exactly look like Ann. I guess it has long brown
hair and in intense eyebrows, So there you go. But anyway,
when Anne shows up, she's just a lady in their house.
Suddenly they're unpacking or something, and suddenly a person's there
and they're like huh, and she says, miss Gettleman sent me,
I'm Anne, the babysitter, and then just zoom whip zoom, zoom,
(49:57):
cut zoom. So this is just instantly just so insane,
because I mean, in what universe does a realitter provide
your babysitter? In which case does a babysitter just sort
of appear without you know, there're no credentials, Like the
parents weren't involved in this at all. They just suddenly
they have this strange woman in their house babysitting for them.
(50:17):
And then various other questions come up regarding Anne and
this whole babysitting arrangement and her relationship with any other
entity in the film. It's bonkers.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
For a moment one Anne appears to be up to
no good like, so from here the family starts going
about their business and Norman is I think trying to
discover what the scholar who lived in this house before
him was up to, like what he had found out
and what had led him to do these horrible things.
And meanwhile, there's like a scene where Lucy is walking
(50:48):
around at night having heard strange sounds in the house
and she just like comes up on Anne, who is
trying to pry her way into the boarded up basement
with a shovel. She give gives her the most evil
just hyena eyes.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
So Anne lives in the house with them, right, she's
like a living yeah, babysitter, Like basically she's a nanny,
even though they don't really use the word that's that's
apparently what they mean nanny. But but then at the
same time, like the relationship is so weird. There's a
point later on where Anne disappears from the film for
good and the mom comes home finds that Anne is no, no,
(51:27):
no longer around. It's just bob by himself, and she
just dismisses it. She's like, oh, I guess Anne went
home to see her parents. They're like there's no communication
with the babysitter slash nanny. It's just like, oh, well,
she's done. She wandered off. That's fine, that's what babysitters do.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
That is the end of Anne the the O pair.
Speaker 1 (51:45):
And yet there's still more questions about Ann. We'll get
to as we proceed.
Speaker 2 (51:49):
So where is it? After this? We follow Norman for
a bit because he's trying to figure out what was
going on with doctor Peterson's research, and he goes to
some place as a library. I guess it's supposed to
be a university, Like, is this Miskatonic University or something?
Speaker 1 (52:03):
Yeah, I think we're getting kind of kind of vibe.
You know, this is the this is the Arkham Horror
section of the movie where he's going and researching the
strange research of his predecessor.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
Yeah, And so he meets a scholar there, a scholar
who's got like this awesome looking beard, and the scholars like,
you've been here before with your daughter, and Norman is like, nope,
I've never been here before and I don't have a daughter.
And does that ever come up again? I don't recall
that connecting to anything.
Speaker 1 (52:34):
Yeah, I didn't really understand that, Like what are they
At first? I was like, they just mistook Bob for
a girl, which, you know, it's The misgendering of children
happens all the time, sure, you know, with with when
you're when you're a parent, or when you're you're talking
to parents. So I thought, well, maybe that's it. But no,
but I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
He'd never been there.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
But then who was it? But we get to meet
the librarian in this Yes, right, the librarian was It
was a lot of fun. It's a small role, but
it's played by this guy. Uh Dimpolo sachar Rola ska
Rolla perhaps playing the librarian. Uh yeah, and he's I
really like this guy. He has some real Ronald Lacy energy.
(53:15):
You know, he's got kind of a you know, a
devious babyface.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
Yes, yes, yes, he reminds me a little bit of
Dylan Baker, you know.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
The actor. Yeah, yeah, but either.
Speaker 2 (53:25):
Way, he's a stupendous baby faced Renfield, boiling over with
nervous laughter. I loved his scenes.
Speaker 1 (53:33):
Yeah, and he ultimately doesn't play a particularly devious character.
He doesn't. You know, this is not a character that
turns out later to be a ghost or a cult
member or anything weird like that. He just is this
this slightly suspicious librarian, and it's he's a fun screen
presence apparently shows up in a number of number of
other Italian B movies of this this time period, just
(53:54):
a bookish weirdo.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
There's also an awesome scene later on in the movie
where he's wearing a green sweater. It looks like it's
made of felt. So he comes in, he's like a
walking pool table. I loved it.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Yeah, yeah, And it actually got some fun dialogue in
that part because it's it's like he's coming off a
little passive aggressive. He's like, I was just checking on
the room because the library he's closed on Sundays. And meanwhile,
our hero I was like, I'm here to research.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
Yeah, have you seen my hair? Do you know who
I am?
Speaker 1 (54:26):
Look? How handsome I am? How dare you question my
presence here.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
There's a scene somewhere after this that's really funny where
Bob is out in the woods with his remote control
race car again like you can't really play with a
remote control car in the woods, and he's wandering around
and he finds a tombstone for somebody named Mary Freudstein,
and then he immediately has this incomprehensible encounter with the
ghost girl May, where May says she says a line
(54:54):
like it's only it's all a lie. She's not really
buried there. Oh, I know, she's not really buried there.
I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1 (55:04):
Yeah, I don't know either, because she's she's a ghost.
But I guess I don't know where she's buried if
she's not buried here.
Speaker 2 (55:10):
So this is all while Norman in his library is
learning about the sort of unsavory history of a doctor,
Jacob Freudstein, who I think at one point lived in
the house that they're staying in now. So this is
not the guy who was there before them, but the
guy who was there before that.
Speaker 1 (55:28):
Guy, right, And this is when we find out that
this isn't just a house by the cemetery, it is
perhaps a house on the cemetery, or more specifically, the
cemetery is also inside the house.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
The cemetery is coming from inside the house. And the
scene that sets that up, by the way, begins with
an absolutely gorgeous framing. So, like, this house has these
stained glass windows with these like green and yellow and
purple flower shapes that are that are framed. It's this
blue stained glass. It's just wonderful. And this is the
(56:04):
framing for when Lucy's like washing the floor and she
pulls aside a rug and discovers under the rug there's
just a tomb. There's like a gravestone inside the house.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
And we'll we'll later find out that in kind of
Scooby Doo fashion, this tombstone is also a secret door,
like a trapdoor that gives you entryway into the cellar. Yeah,
and in addition to the door that nobody can open
yet that clearly goes to.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
The cellar, right yeah, yeah, yeah, And like in this scene,
there's a bunch of grunts and jostling and whatnot coming
from the basement, so it sort of indicates the trapdoor thing.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
Yeah, there are a lot of haunted sounds in this house,
Like there's creaking, there's progressively grunting, and also like ghost
baby weeping. There's a lot of a lot going on
in this house from an auditory point of view here.
Speaker 2 (57:01):
So Lucy is not happy about this, and she screams,
but eventually she and Norman are discussing it and Lucy's like, wow,
it's weird that there's a tomb inside the house, and
Norman says, it's just something you'll have to get used
to this ain't New York.
Speaker 1 (57:17):
Yeah, it's implied like this is just what they do
out here. Yeah, And I remember thinking, is it is
this ever a thing? I don't think I've ever visited
a historic home where they're like, and now you'll notice
there's a gravestone in the middle of the house. This
is what they did.
Speaker 2 (57:31):
I'm open minded, but a little doubtful on that. I
don't know. Listeners right in do houses in New England
all have bodies buried in the floors? Oh and another thing,
by the way, that was right in the middle of
the sequence, there's a part where Norman is standing in
the kitchen and it's one of those things where I
think we've talked about how a great thing with some
(57:52):
of these Italian horror directors is they really know how
to put a colorful item or two in the middle
of an otherwise color drab shot to just really make
it pop and add some contrast. And in one of
these shots, the colorful item in the foreground is this
big red box of something called fiddle fattle. It looks
(58:12):
like it's a I don't know, it looks like crackerjacks
or something. It might be caramel popcorn.
Speaker 1 (58:17):
Yeah. Watching this scene, I also I thought back to
our recent viewing of Mario Bava's Black Sabbath and was
thinking about, Yeah, how he'll put just some sort of item,
it doesn't even matter what it is, in the center,
and the color will just suck you in. This doesn't
quite pull that off, but you can see that Fulci
was going to the same sort of effect.
Speaker 2 (58:45):
But I guess this is all leading up to one
of the finest sequences in the entire film, which is
the bat scene. Oh God, the bat scene is so good,
and it comes from the first time the family actually
decides to venture into the base. So earlier, Anne was
trying to pry her way into the basement in the
middle of the night. Nobody ever explained that. I don't
(59:06):
know why. She doesn't explain why. I don't think the
movie addresses why she was trying to pry in, But
if it does, that I missed it. But eventually the
whole family goes in, and there's this great scene of Norman,
the dad, trying to unlock the door to the basement
by prying at the key with the sharp edge of
(59:27):
a kitchen knife. So he's got a kitchen kick like
wedged in it, blade out like blade poking into the
metal of the key and just twisting and twist, wrenching
it over to turn the lock.
Speaker 1 (59:40):
One of several scenes where people were open it, trying
to open or are opening doors using knives in the
most unsafe manner possible. In a way, it's very effective
because you can't help but cringe watching them do this.
Speaker 2 (59:54):
Fulci Actually, scenes from this movie could be used as
a video version of the Don't Do What Donnie Don't
Does book about knife safety.
Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
Yeah, it's basically it's shake hands with danger, but generally
but I guess the thing is you keep expecting that
knife to slip in there to be a real bloody
gore effect, and then there's not. But then what happens
instead is, yeah, they open the door successfully with their knife,
and then they start heading down there to check it out.
I think Dad's in front right with the flashlight and
(01:00:22):
all yeah, yeah, And then in swoops the bat, the bat,
and this is a great scene because the bat latches
onto Norman's hand and then he still has a knife,
so he stabs it like a million times, like backing
up out of the cellar into the kitchen, just still
stabbing at this bat. It's a fix to his hand,
(01:00:43):
producing about six bats worth of blood in the process,
and just getting it everywhere.
Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
A flinging bat, blood on everyone in the room, and
it's just stuck on his hand like a leach, like
it's just all you can't pull it off, and he's
just stabbing and stabbing and getting blood on his whole family,
and it's absolutely ludicrous. This scene is everything. By the way,
I got to say, it compares quite favorably to another
(01:01:12):
bat attack film from an Italian horror movie. Do you
remember the bat scene in Suspiria? I do not very funny,
but underwhelming compared to this one. So whereas this bat
attack is just the paragon of excess, the bat attack
in Suspiria is where Jessica Harper is in her room
at the school and suddenly she gets creeped out by
(01:01:34):
It's just like a ball of black socks with wings.
It's not a good.
Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
Bat one to ten on the bat believability scale. What
do you give the Suspiria beat.
Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
The Suspiria bat would be like a two or three.
This one. I don't know if believability is the word,
but it so overwhelms the senses that one need not
believe either way. Is just there. It's just in.
Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
You, all right, So I'm gonna mark you down for
a five.
Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
But the other thing is this scene reminded me of
The Simpsons where Homer gets his hand stuck in the toaster. Yeah,
and it still has his hand stuck in the toaster.
Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
Dad, it's in there again, all right.
Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
So event eventually the bat is vanquished. And at that point,
I think everybody's had enough of the seller and they
have agreed not to go back in there for the time.
Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
P Well, and we're to understand that after the scene
the family expresses their desire to leave the house, because
the next one is at the real estate office. You've
got the real ittors, the two realtors sitting there and
they're just talking about how, oh yeah, everybody always wants
out of this house. Why won't people just stay in
the house.
Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
And this is great because we don't get enough scenes
of realtors talking to real litters in our movies, particularly
on a haunted house films. You know, maybe the owners
of the renters are talking with the realtor, but but
not this kind of inside realortor talk you get.
Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
So one of the real ittors is the one we've
already met, miss Gidtleson Gitttleston.
Speaker 1 (01:03:02):
In one played by Dagmar Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
And then the other one is this guy who I
don't know if he has a name, but he has
a powerful aura of sleeves.
Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
And then so after this, I don't know if this
has any causal relationship to anything else in the movie,
but we get at least one scene of like the
ghost people in their own environment, like May and her
mom just in a house, hanging out, and May is
depicted as dwelling within a gin pop of a supermax
(01:03:34):
prison for dolls. It's, you know, just dolls everywhere, crammed in.
Speaker 5 (01:03:39):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
You imagine that the dolls are like, you know, shoving
each other for more personal space, and they have some
kind of conversation here in the house. And I think
this is implied to be the same house, but like
not in a different reality version of the house.
Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
Yeah, And I'm not sure where to fall on this,
like this room and also so to a large extent,
the seller are these places that are that physically exist
and are closed off from the rest of the house,
like the main I presume rental house. I forget if
they were supposed to purchase this house or surely they're renting.
You don't don't just buy a haunted house you want
(01:04:17):
to rent. But I don't know if these are rooms
that physically exist or if they are essentially ghost rooms
and ghost domains. And ultimately, the house by the Cemetery
is kind of like the House of Leaves and it
doesn't obey, you know, the typical laws of time and space.
Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
Mmm, that's a nice comparison, except I would say House
of Leaves is somehow less confusing than House for Cemetery.
So from here the movie kind of ramps up more
into into attack mode. So multiple characters are going to
get slaughtered by the monster. Here there's a scene where
the real estate agent Ms. Gidtlson just kind of pops
(01:04:53):
into the house to wander around. There's some beautiful, eerie
shots of the house, like that same window, the bay
of windows with the stained glass and all that, and
there are these lamps, these globe shaped lamps beside them.
Is wonderful, wonderful composition. But so this lady's wandering through
the house and she gets attacked by the tomb like
(01:05:15):
the stone slab over the tomb that Lucy discovered there,
it bites her leg essentially, and then she is killed
by the monster hand guy from the beginning of the movie.
Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
And that's that's the doctor. That's doctor freud Stein, who
will we will increasingly see a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:05:30):
More off right, Well, we don't see it's still just
his hands here, Like, that's the big reveal at the
end of the movie, is getting to see his full form.
Here you just get hands. And then this lady gets
murdered in a scene of an absolutely ridiculous excess of blood.
Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
Yeah, this is a I think he stabs her with
a poker multiple times.
Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
Yeah. So sometime around this point in the movie, also
Norman discovers the cassette tapes made by his predecessor, by
the previous scholar who was working in this house and
this guy Peterson, and Peterson's recording himself talking into a
tape recorder about the the freud Steen house. He seems
(01:06:10):
to be losing his mind, he says, the house it
draws me like an infernal magnet. How many have wandered
into the waiting spider web. The smell of the rooms
terrifies me, and then eventually we get to him saying blood, blood, blood,
which of course it will be irresistible to all the
Garth Morangi fans out there. But then then the scenes
(01:06:34):
right after that are really full of stoppin' shop. So
like the you know, mom comes home with the grocery
bag that has at the Stop and Shop logo on them.
Honest values are what stopping shop is all about. And
then there's Stop and Shop brand cartons of milk everywhere.
Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
Yep, yep, adding that you know, some level of that
red Mario Bova pop to the background.
Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
Yeah, But here characters really start going down in the basement,
so like Anne's going to go down in the basement,
Bob's gonna go down in the basement, and and this
this is third act territory here.
Speaker 1 (01:07:08):
Yeah. So so first of all, I want so one
of the people that goes down into the basement is Anne.
And this is ultimately a sequence that really raises a
lot even more questions for me because after the so
after the real estate lady is again just brutally murdered
in the upper portion of the house and then dragged
into the into the cellar, it appears that Anne has
(01:07:31):
spent quite a bit of time cleaning up after this murder,
like the mom comes back. Apparently they went out to
a restaurant last night. They had invited Anne, but Anne
was going to go quote unquote visit her parents, which
apparently means clean up after the murderous creature slash, ghosts,
slash whatever that lives in the cellar. And then and
(01:07:53):
then she just kind of avoids the topic about what
she's doing. But she's like clearly cleaning up all this blood.
So it's like, is Anne work looking for the presence
in the basement? Is she a thrall of the forces
in this house? What is it? It's not explained. And
then when Anne goes looking for Bob wanders into the basement,
(01:08:14):
the force brutally murders her, like chops her head off
with a knife, and and so it's like, well, what
was that all about? Then? But did she work for
the thing in the basement? Did she work for some
other force? Like what is the arrangement here? I have
no idea.
Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
Yeah, I could not understand it all. At first, it
seems like she is working for the monster, and then
she's surprised when she encounters it and so yeah, I
don't know, I don't know. Yeah, why was she cleaning
up the blood?
Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
Yeah, she died like she lived. A complete mystery. Okay,
But when Bob's in the basement, then this is where
the cellar really takes on. This this strange, otherworldly to mention,
because there are the sounds and you know, creepy and
also creepy sits. We keep seeing these big beast eyes
glowing in the dark that remind me of the eyes
of the Great Dweller from Stephen King's Creep Show. And
(01:09:05):
it's easy to think when you first see them, oh,
these must be the eyes of the presence in the basement.
These are the eyes of doctor Freudstein. But as we'll
explain when we finally see doctor Freudstein, he does not
have these eyes. No, So what was this? Is this
another presence? Is this another?
Speaker 5 (01:09:21):
Like?
Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
Is this? Like? I have so many questions about the
whole arrangement here with ghosts and potentially de mat demonic
presences and also you know, artificially living undead creatures. It's
really out there. I have no idea what's going on?
Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Yeah, the same here, just these these weird glowing yellow
and red catlike eyes in the dark that don't correspond
to any creature or monster we see later in the film.
Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
But one of the key sequences is this scene, you know,
where Bob is shut into the closet. Whatever's in the
basement is able to close the door at will and
trap people who wander down. Bob is stuck in the basement.
Mom's trying to free him from the other side, and
something's coming up the stairs to get him, and of
course he is the doctor, uh, doctor freud Stein.
Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Now we don't I think this part, we don't fully
see his face yet. That reveal is still coming. But
one of the funniest parts again is that Lucy is
trying to get in to help Bob and she's literally
prying at the basement door with a kitchen knife. It's
just the knife in the door, in the door jam,
just prying. And then that doesn't work. And then I
(01:10:31):
think this is when Norman comes home and he attacks
the door with a hatchet to try to get in
and save Bob. There again was a very funny moment
where he goes keep away from the door and Bob
goes yep.
Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
I will and then here comes the monster hand and
polds Bob's head against the door while Dad's trying to
hack through it with the with the with the with
the hatchet. Yes, it's it's pretty great. I mean, it's terrified.
It's really an ingenious scene. I don't think I've ever
seen anything quite like this.
Speaker 2 (01:11:01):
And the dad accidentally chops the monster's arm off with
the hatchet, then also keeps hacking at the door in
a very inefficient way, like hitting the door in completely
different places, like in the middle and then at the side.
Speaker 1 (01:11:15):
Yeah, and finally we do get to see our monster,
our doctor Freudstein in full and oh man, I've long
loved this monster design. So he is apparently one hundred
and fifty year old surgeon with a who really liked
illegal surgeries. He's beat death through some mix of butchery
and cell theft. And when I say beat death, you
(01:11:38):
know it's it's arguable, like how close the score was here,
because his body is just this desiccated husk of scars
and rot with seemingly new parts at it is needed.
I think that's the reason he has one monster arm
and one seemingly normal arm. He's clearly lost all of
(01:12:01):
his humanity and now just exists. Is this thing that
lures people into the cellar so he can cut them
to ribbons and you know, maybe harvest some of their
cells or their body parts. He boasts amazing strength to
match his brutality. He can't speak, or doesn't seem to.
He seems to only emit guttural sounds, and we don't
know if this is due to his state of mind,
(01:12:22):
like is his brain just rotting in there, or is
it just because he doesn't have you know, functional speak
chapparatus anymore. He also may have supernatural powers, like he
may be the one that's opening and closing in that door,
or he's aided by the ghosts of his family, or
I was trying to figure out, well, maybe it has
something to do with those those beast eyes in the cellar.
(01:12:44):
Maybe like he's somehow horre cruxed himself and so he
exists both as an incorporeal like presence in the cellar.
But then also this this uh, this doomed you know,
corporeal rotting creature. It's it's wonderful, Like the suit looks
really good. You can basically smell him.
Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
Oh yeah, yeah. The design of the monster is absolutely fabulous,
especially the head where his head is it's almost like
a wax helmet of a kind, with these deeply recessed
eye sockets that don't appear to have eyes in them,
and and no mouth. Yeah, the mouth part is just
kind of smoothed over and it's just this vertical scar.
(01:13:29):
Now it's excellent.
Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
Yeah, there's kind of a bodies exhibit sensibility to his head,
like he's been plasticized. Oh and then when Dad, Dad
gets in there and it stabs him. And when Dad
stabs him, another one of the most minervable scenes in
the film is what comes out is not blood, but
this just kind of rotted sludge filled with squirming maggots.
(01:13:52):
I mean, just packed with maggots and not meal worms.
Is sometimes the case, sometimes you have meal worms standing
in for maggots. But this is the real deal. This
is just a big maggoty sludge that starts dripping out
of his body.
Speaker 2 (01:14:04):
Yeah. Tremendously gross and in some ways beautiful monster design.
Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
Now Here the big spoilers what happens when the family,
the final three go up against doctor Freudstein. Well it
doesn't go so well. Dad, you know, gets in there
and gets the stabbing in on doctor Freudstein. But then
doctor Freudstein rips Dad's throat out in a very grizzly sequence.
And then Mom and Bob are going up these stairs
to that tombstone trap door and trying to force it
(01:14:32):
open so that they can escape, and Freudstein ends up
grabbing Mom and like dragging her down the stairs, bonking
her head on each rung. And then and I think
this must have been a I don't know if this
was a cut scene, but like the next scene you
see is like her head has been dashed to pieces
on the concrete floor, and then the creature's coming back up.
Freudstein's coming back up to get Bob, and Bob manages
(01:14:54):
to squeeze his way out and is pulled to safety
by May, the ghost girl.
Speaker 2 (01:14:59):
Yeah, so I was confused about the ending. Does Bob
escape the monster by becoming a ghost?
Speaker 1 (01:15:08):
I don't know. Does Bob does mean Bob dies or
Bob crosses over or has Bob been saved in the
physical world by May. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2 (01:15:19):
I really don't. Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
I think it's intentionally haunting and vague and in Fulci
does nothing to clear it up by having the final
shot in the film be this wide shot of the
house again, and then there's a quote there attributed to
Henry James, says, no one will ever know whether children
or monsters or monsters are children.
Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
So I want to reveal something. This didn't exactly sound
like Henry James to me, and I was like, I
wonder if that's an authentic quote. I looked it up.
It appears it is not. I could not find this
as a Henry James quote anywhere, and I could find
people saying that she made this up and attributed it
falsely to Henry James. Why pick Henry James, I'm not sure.
(01:16:06):
I mean Henry James, Like, what's the connection there? I
guess James wrote Turn of the Screw, which is a
horror classic. Otherwise, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
I have no idea. I mean, maybe it was just
inspired by the works of Henry James, and yeah, just
wanted to throw in a quotation, but then not a
real quotation. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
Good choice either way, good choice.
Speaker 1 (01:16:32):
So there you have it, House by the Cemetery. There's
so much to love in this one.
Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
Well, so one of the things I did think was
actually kind of interesting toward the end was did I
understand correctly that a lot of the times the characters
have heard a sound of a child sobbing and they
thought it was Bob, and so they were looking for Bob,
but it wasn't Bob. It turns out it was the monster,
and the monster was sobbing with the voice of a child.
Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
I'm not sure. Possibly, but also I think those are
possibly just ambient ghost noises, like ghosts of all the children,
because we get these scenes of all these other bodies
that have been cut to pieces down there. We see
at one point, like a slaughtered child that looks a
little bit like Bob. And I don't know if this
is a vision of the potential future or this is
a child that was killed in the past. I think
(01:17:22):
there's that's during the playing of the Haunted tape.
Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
Oh yeah, the Haunted cassette tape where.
Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
Doctor Peterson is like, oh not that children. The children.
Speaker 2 (01:17:33):
It's labeled I think it says Peterson personal.
Speaker 1 (01:17:36):
Yes, And you remember what Norman does with that. After
he's through listening to it, He's like, well, this is
going directly into the fire burning in the library on
a Sunday when it's closed. Why is there an open
brazier in the library, so that to keep the tape,
keep the place warm, or just in case cursed documents
or recordings are found. There's like a sign saying, remember,
(01:17:58):
if you find a cursed document in our cassette tape
in the library, incinerate immediately, be considerate of others.
Speaker 2 (01:18:05):
I mean, I got to say, we're deep enough in
the dream logic of the plot by that point it
feels right. Yeah, So I guess that's house by the cemetery.
Speaker 1 (01:18:15):
That is a house by the cemetery. So this one is.
This one's pretty widely available at this point. You can
find you can ultimately find it streaming a lot of places,
and the version streaming you can, you know, purchase a
rent digitally. I find that it tends to be the
restored version. That's the version I watched. I watched the
(01:18:37):
first half of it on my trial of AMC Plus
in Apple, and then my trial ran out and I
had to switch to a trial of like Showtime or
something to finish watching it. So I took the cheapskate approach,
but I was also very tempted to pick up the
handsome blue Underground Blu ray of this, which has fully restored,
(01:18:58):
but also well with the version I was looking at.
It comes with all these behind the scenes features, and
also it comes with the soundtrack as a CD, which
was very tempting as well.
Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
Oh yeah, sounds like a steal.
Speaker 1 (01:19:09):
All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and close it
up here. We're gonna we're gonna close up the house
by the cemetery. We're gonna put the reorder's lock on
the front door, and we'll be back next week with
another another weird film. But yeah, thanks again for everyone
who's who's enjoyed these or put up with these episodes
over the past year. If you want to listen to
(01:19:31):
weird more episodes of Weird House Cinema, we air it
every Friday in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed.
We're primarily a science podcast, believe it or not, and
we do our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I
know it's kind of hard to tell during the month
of October because we have a lot of a lot
of creepy content thrown in there if you're just discovering
us or something, But yeah, core episodes on Tuesdays and
(01:19:53):
Thursday's Artifact or Monster Fact on Wednesday. On Monday we
have a listener mail and over weekend we air a rerun.
Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:20:24):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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