Weirdhouse Cinema: The House by the Cemetery

As Weirdhouse Cinema completes its first journey around the sun, Rob and Joe commemorate the moment by discussing Lucio Fulci’s 1981 “The House by the Cemetery” -- a bloody and bonkers tale guaranteed to satisfy your craving for ghosts, haunted houses, mad scientists, slashers and Italian synth.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is
Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And it's October.
And though we cover horror movies a lot on this show,
we I guess we have to do some really intense

(00:24):
or this month, and so what better time to introduce
our very first Luccio Fulci movie on Weird House. That's right,
Luccio Fulci 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,

(00:45):
and it also feels, on some level it feels like
the perfect film too, to to discuss this week, because
as of this week, Weird House Cinema has completed its
first Journey around the Sun. We've been doing these episodes
for for a year now, and you've been either putting
up with them or enjoying them with us for a year,

(01:05):
and so we we appreciate that. Now, Rob, this movie
was your pick, so I assume this must you must
have some kind of personal history with it. What what
is your connection to House by the Cemetery? I think
it was the first folksy film that I saw that
really connected with me. That the first film where I
where I felt like, I mean, they're even his worst films,

(01:29):
his his less celebrated films. They often there's generally something
enjoyable in them. Uh. But 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. Uh. And
so I think I've had that experience with some of
his other films, like what New York Ripper? And is
it New York Ripper? Yeah, I think I've never seen

(01:50):
that one in Manhattan Baby, which is a wonderful I
love the title Manhattan Baby because it's it's it's kind
of implies a certain understand 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. Um. But those are all

(02:11):
films where I I think I saw more of the
flaws than the uh than the genius. And 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 my memory
had kind of selectively cut out a lot of the
the weirder plot holes in this film, and I mainly

(02:33):
remembered like a really great monster. I remembered some uh,
you know, some weird scenes and some heightened tension, but
ultimately this is just a wonderful weird pick. Well. So
we've been talking recently a number of times about specifically
about these rubbed the Fur movies, movies that are more
about a a vision of of audio visual texture than

(02:56):
they are about the the narrative contents of the film.
And it's funny that that Fulci never came up when
we were talking about these before, because I think, in
the most disgusting possible way, Fulgi was deeply committed to
making rub the fur type movie cinema as a as
a almost purely esthetic exercise over a narrative one. And

(03:18):
so I've seen a number of Fulchy 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 scenes and images. So I tend to
think of of Fulci as a um. I think of
his approach to movie making as kind of similar to
a child creating shoebox dioramas, except of course they're strewn

(03:43):
with ludicrous amounts of blood and gore. Uh So, he
has like an extraordinary eye for these memorable set pieces
of weirdness and wet violence. But on the narrative level,
these scenes and the characters in them always feel just
barely held together by the vagueust of narrative logic. Every
Fulchre movie I have ever seen feels like it takes

(04:05):
place in a dream, wherein every scene, you know, it's
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. Now, like a dream,
you can think, I think, what I do or what
I've done in the past with Full Street movies is afterwards,
I kind of reflect on the dream and and sort

(04:26):
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. People move
into said haunted house, have encounters with the haunt, and uh,
you know there are consequences for all of that. I

(04:47):
think that's basically the plot, But what we actually witness
on on screen is a is a lot more, I
don't know, frenzied and uh and and like you said,
kind of definitely follows the logic or the lack of
logic found in dreams. Yeah, and 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.

(05:09):
Uh so House 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 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
seeing I at least don't feel the normal levels of

(05:31):
narrative logic that you would in a in a movie
where the plot hangs together like it should um and instead,
once again, what we get is more like a collection
of images, shots, set pieces, and scenes, as if billowing
out of a dream and then kind of haphazardly strung
together along a pretty standard kind of horror plot arc.

(05:55):
I think one aspect of this, or one reason for this,
is that I don't think Fulty was ever the sort
of director to let to let the plot get in
the way of a of a great shot, Right there's
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. Not even plot, I mean,
just to let any kind of logic or reality get

(06:16):
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 uh, 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 he wants to
be showing. You is He's just going to show it. Yeah.

(06:39):
You know. Another thing that's kind of interesting about full
cheese 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 film. Yeah, this film

(07:02):
in particular, um, yeah, it feels like it's trying to
be haunting and 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 have a

(07:23):
firm attachment to any of the characters. 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. Don't you mean
oak manner, isn't it? Yeah, the realtors keep insisting don't
call at the Freudstein House. God, I love the cutaways

(07:45):
to the real estate office. Yeah, we got we got
a strong real estate agent subplot in this. 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, they're a bunch of flag
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

(08:06):
a framed portrait of John F. Kennedy and there's a
big bust of an eagle. Uh, I don't know why
it was so patriotic in there. Interesting. All right, Well,
let's go ahead and hear the audio for some some
of the trailer audio. Maybe we'll play the whole trailer
because this is a fun one, and I'll explain why
after you hear it. Even where are you played? Answer me?

(08:31):
Stay in this house once, you don't know will hurt you.

(08:52):
It was to be a getaway. Three. It's becoming run
away nightmare? Do you see anything? Some old steps going down?
He has been awaiting the arrival of his new guests

(09:16):
one by one. They are disappearing, one by blady one.
When you moved to this house, before you get locked in,

(09:42):
read the fine print, you may have just mortgage. You're right,
due to the graphic nature of this film, no one
under it. We're to be admitted. How all right? So

(10:09):
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 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 war Hawk Tanzania film The Devil's Express. You
might also know him from The Burbs and the animated
adaptations of The Hobbit in the Last Unicorn. He was

(10:32):
the voice of of gollum in in the animated Hobbit film,
and here he is narrating a trailer. I love it.
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. I was looking around trying to figure
out what other trailers he narrated, and I couldn't find

(10:53):
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
uh oh, I wish he had done more. I wish
he was still around to do film trailers. Like any
kind of oscar bait, it comes out when here brothers.
Theodore narrated, how would he say featuring the personable Mark Damon? Uh?

(11:14):
Be good? Well, speaking of humans, let's uh get into
the humans involved in bringing this this strange film to
life first. I guess we'll begin with the director here. Uh,
the key individual we've already we've already brought up already.
That's Luccio Fulci, who seven through nine. So we've mentioned
him multiple times on Weird House Cinema. So it's it's

(11:36):
it's ultimately nice to finally discuss him in one of
his own films instead of just you know, referring to
to people who worked with him. He's best remembered today
for his horror films of the mainly the nineteen eighties. Here,
I guess it's the that's the big time for him, uh,
And it's he is, without a doubt, one of the
titans of Italian b cinema from this era. But all

(11:57):
this really kicked into high gear after nine Zombie came out.
We've talked about this one before. This was a very
prolific period of his career that produced some of his
best remembered films. Now this is Zombie with just an
eye instead of right he is this the one that
was marketed as an unofficial sequel to Dawn of the Dead. Yeah, yeah,

(12:19):
it was very much cashing in on the success of
that film. Um. And it is also We've We've. You
may remember as discussing the like some of the bonkers
scenes in this Uh. This is another one where he
didn't let the plot get in the way of an
interesting scene, such as the one where a what a
shark and a zombie battle each other while a topless

(12:40):
scuba diver swims by, just you know, completely bonkers and
definitely stands out in one's memory. But he'd been active
for a while prior to The Zombie. He had been
directing full length films for twenty years at that point,
including some horror films such as A Lizard in a
Woman's Skin Two is Don't Arch for a Duckling Uh.

(13:01):
He also did in nineteen sixty nine jalo film titled
One on Top 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,
Threes Conquest which is is quite entertaining and weird. Maybe

(13:22):
we'll come back to that one. Conquest can sometimes be
kind of rough because it's 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

(13:43):
Conquest starts, so it's like a you know, it's one
of those barbarian movies, sort of a cone and rip off, um.
But it's got Jorge Rivera from from Where Wolf as
the Conan character. Yes, yeah, yeah, it has a number
of of fun elements in it. I wonder though, if
if you're one of the things about these films is

(14:03):
that um, is that that some of us saw them
years ago with less than on less than great formats. Um.
You know, maybe we even saw him on VHS. So
I wonder if the version of Conquests you saw was
like one of it was like a more recent um
restoration of it, or it was like it was older.
Because the film we're talking about here today was recently

(14:25):
restored in two k uh and and that was the
version that 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. Yeah, this one, Uh, it looks a
lot better now than the version I saw about fifteen
years ago. Um. One more note about one of the

(14:45):
movies you mentioned, I've actually seen a Lizard in Woman's Skin.
That's all Jallo movie that is very strange. It involves
I think it's one of the number of these Italian
jelly that take place in London, if I remember for actually,
and it involves it involves like a like a party house.
There's like a it's like a total I think the

(15:07):
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 of there's like, I don't know, naked people
and panthers wandering around and stuff. Now, if I'm not mistaken,
the title on that one has to do with the

(15:27):
success of Dario Argento is the Bird with a crystal plumage.
And if you start looking at titles of Jello 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 will be like, you know,
the rhino with a with a diamond toe nail. You know,
something like that that seems to get in on the

(15:47):
same trend. 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 uce is
a locked room, and only I have the key. I
gotta make copies of that key. Well, anyway, back back

(16:09):
to Fulty uh. He again he died in and his
his His output slowed down later in life and as
he wrestled with with health issues. But his next to
last film was nine nineties A Cat in the Brain,
which which I have not seen, uh and really didn't
know much about. I just kind of assumed it was
just another standard, you know, bloody fulgy affair, but um

(16:31):
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. Uh. So,
I watched the trailer for it, and it looks it
looks amazing. It's a lot of fulchy ranting, um, you know,
dubbed into English for the you know, the version we
would watch where where he's saying things like the man

(16:53):
was all read and I wanted to kill him, and
then you'll you know, cut to some sort of bizarre
sequence trying to understand the Uh. The reception history of
Fulgi 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

(17:13):
as a kind of lowbrow pervert of gore, uh, somebody
who made these gross movies full of almost hilarious quantities
of gratuitous blood 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

(17:37):
of lowbrow b horror movies of this kind. Yeah, I
think part of it may be that He's important enough
and ultimately impressive enough that he stands out. Uh, 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

(17:59):
deeper into it i MB cinema, you find plenty of
other more notorious nights. Uh. You know, there are a
lot more arguably unsavory characters than than Luccio Fulci. 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 Folchi, like you know, is at that

(18:20):
level of uh subject matter worthy of critical analysis. I think, well,
let's let's look at some of the other other names
involved here. We also have Alissa Brigante, who has a

(18:41):
story credit. This is an Italian screenwriter who wrote on
such films as Zombie Manhattan Baby, The Bronx Warriors, A
Blade in the Dark, Hands of Steel, which we've discussed
on the show before, and many more. Hands of Steel
was the Italian terminator rip off that had the big
beefy guy who comes to the desert bar and then

(19:01):
ends up in an arm wrestling scene. Yeah, an Arizona
movie filmed by Italians and also featuring John Saxon. Oh yeah,
John Saxon and uh. Oh. In that movie was the
one where we encounter the worst song of all time
because the lead actress in it sings sings that pop
single Teddy Bear. I don't know, I kind of like

(19:21):
Teddy Beard. 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, after afterwards, afterwards. Okay.
So the next name we're pointing out, Dardano Sacchetti UH
has a screenplay credit. Born Italian screenwriter who worked on

(19:45):
the likes with with the likes of Lomberto Baba, Luccio Fulci,
in 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 film,
some of the ones we've we've mentioned here already. He
worked on Lomberto Baba's Monster Shark and Demons and Uh.

(20:07):
He also worked on nineteen ninety The Bronx Warriors, so
another important name in Italian B cinema. And there's another
screenplay credit to Georgio Mariuzo, who also wrote on the
Folksy films The Beyond and Enigma as well as some others.
Now is House by the Cemetery sometimes considered part of
a I'm afraid I'm getting this wrong with part of

(20:28):
a sort of conceptual trio of horror films that Folchi
did along with Gates of Hell and UH and The
Beyond that, Yes, the so called Gates of Hell trilogy
of films. And I'm personally not sure if this is
if this was was dubbed a trilogy by Folki himself,
or if this is something that commentators and fans have

(20:50):
come up with. But at any rate, yeah, we have
the this uh, these three films UH City of the
Living Dead from nineteen eighty and The Beyond and House
by the Cemetery both from one UM and UH, and
it is just so happens we have an actor that
is in all three of these. It is Katherine McCall
or Katriana McCall uh, and she plays Lucy Boyle, the

(21:14):
wife in this picture. She was born in nineteen fifty
four British born ballet dancer turned actor again, all in
all three of the Gates of Hell films. She also
was in nineteen eighties Hawk the Slayer which started Jack Palace,
as well as John Terry, Patricia Quinn and and uh,
it looks pretty interesting. I don't I can't remember I've

(21:35):
seen it or not. I may have seen it. She
was also in Afraid of the Dark, which saw which
started James Fox, Paul McGann and David Doulas. Right, So
I guess if we're getting into the cast, we we
should say that there's a main family in this movie.
And and Catherine McCall plays the mother and the family.
The father is played by this guy named Paolo Malco, Yeah,

(21:59):
plays Dr Rman boyle Um. Malco was born in seven,
an Italian actor who was also in Full Cheese, New
York Ripper was in Sergio Martinos The Scorpion with two Tales.
He was in h Castelleri's Escape the Bronx as well
as Limbert Obaba's Demons three, The Ogre that came out

(22:19):
in 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 Cemetery, and it is
apparently based on Sacchetti's original script four House by the Cemetery. Um,
so they went back. This is according to Lomberto Baba.

(22:39):
So basically they're like, well, you know, 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 Fulci did what he did with it. Uh 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. I didn't know there was a Demons three,
Demons Demons one, and Demons two. Demons one has a

(23:00):
bunch of people go to a movie theater and they
watch a movie and then demons attack. Demons too, has
a bunch of people in an apartment building and then
demons attack. Demons three. I guess it must be a house.
So they're they're scaling back. 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

(23:21):
we just call it Demons three. Why not are people
going to complain? Then it doesn't match up. Although with
a plot of demons Demons wanted to 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. What anyway, Malco has Dr Norman Boyle in

(23:45):
this pretty pretty entertaining and has great hair and in
most scenes. There's some scenes of them standing on wind
swept streets, uh, in New York City, and and you're like, wow,
that's a good head of hair. As Vincent Price would say,
his hair is looks curious, just absolutely wonderful hair. This
is hair first casting, to be sure. And you know

(24:06):
it runs in the family because his son in the film,
his son Bob, also has an impressive head of hair.
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

(24:26):
weird haunting child in it. Uh. That's that's maybe actually
the scariest thing in the movie, but also the funniest
because he's named Bob, and characters are constantly yelling out Bob, Yes, Bob,
an adult's name that is here given to a child. Um,
a child that is also the child. His voice is

(24:48):
dubbed into English and performed by an adult woman doing
a child's voice. So that's this extra level of the
uncanny to it. And also, uh, the you're playing Bob.
Giovanni Frezo was born in ninety two. Just a very
cute child, just objectively extremely cute child who just comes

(25:10):
off like a like a cherub, like an actual angelic
being that seems to glow on the screen and um
in in a way that just just feels unnatural and
just unnaturally cute. This kid the glowing quality also, like
you say, it takes after his dad in this film
luxurious hair, like glowing hair. Yeah, just basically platinum now

(25:32):
that the child actor here, um Giovanni Frezo Uh pops
up in an excellent assortment of Italian genre pictures from
this time period, including Manhattan Baby, Uh, the the excellent
Warriors of the Waste Land, A Blade in the Dark,
and the first Demons movie. Uh. Demons came out of
five and that was his last acting role. He grew up,

(25:52):
apparently to become a product development director, and I think
still works and resides in the United States. I looked
up some some footage of him from a I think
from a DVD or Blue ray extra, and I am
pleased to see that he did not turn into like
a terrifying klass Kinski looking adult dude, because there's something
about like, he's so innocent and um, you know, and

(26:15):
and and cute in this film. 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. But you can confirm normal adult. I mean,
I don't know the guy, but you can look at
a picture of him. You're like, oh, that's that's a
that's a grown human being. Yes, yeah, okay, I mean

(26:36):
product development sounds normal enough. So any I think that
out there that could be final processing. All right? So
that is that is the family, that's our 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. Uh So, the main ghost is May May,

(27:01):
the ghost girl played by Sylvia Cola Tina born nineteen
seventy two. And she's the interesting thing. And I guess
this makes sense because of the rate 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 to nineteen eighty four,
but with fewer credits. She acted in Sergio Martino's The

(27:24):
Great Alligator in nineteen seventy nine, a movie that has
a story credit by George Eastman, and then she was
also in Full Cheese Murder, Rock Dancing Death in nineteen
eighty four. I did not know Sergio Martino had an
alligator movie. I gotta look into that, penned by George Eastman. Well,
I mean, Italian Crocodilian movies can be quite have you

(27:45):
ever seen um, I forget the director's name. There there
are a couple of Italian horror films called Killer Crocodile
and Killer Crocodile Too. I don't think I've seen that
there were They're just they're extremely bad, but very funny.
Well as as for our ghost here, may I feel like,
uh called a Tina is really good in this. You know,

(28:07):
it's hard to judge of a child actor, particularly if
they're dubbed probably by like a different person, but I
don't know she has that. There's a certain quality to
her delivery here where I totally by her sense of
like occasional detachment but also kind of like shocked outrage
at the danger that is lurking on the screen. Yeah.
She has a lot of like look into the camera,

(28:28):
go wide eyed and gasp kind of moments. 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 this. Uh, these divisions of victims and
ghosts and monsters. Uh. This is the character of and
the Babysitter, played by Annia Peroni. She was born in
nineteen fifty seven an Italian actor. She also appeared in

(28:51):
Dario Argenta's Tenebre and Inferno, in which she apparently plays
the mother of Tears. Uh. She's fun in this as
a mysterious character who does a lot of of suspicious staring,
a lot of silent staring. And I have to say this,
this new two K release, this new two K Master
of House by the Cemetery, it reveals every follicle in

(29:13):
her lush loupine eyebrows. It's pretty great. 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. Yeah.
I mean she has really intense eyes as well, but
but luscious eyebrows. You've never seen eyebrows like these before. Um,

(29:34):
and she a lot of the scenes again getting back
to like fulci never letting the plot get in the
way of a good scene. He 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
on to the next set. 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

(29:56):
were going to be looking at. It's just we can
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. Yeah, or sometimes we don't exactly one
more actor to to highlight that. We may come back
to to one or two more when we get into
the plot. But we also have this real or character.
We have multiple realder characters, but the main one is Laura,

(30:19):
played by the actor Dagmar Lassender. She was borne a
checkborn 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 Lasseter. Lastenders intends to
to stand out in the credits of a film. Her
credits include Mario Baba's Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Lomberto Baba's

(30:41):
Devil Fish, and also Full Cheese The Black Cat. Also
a picture unrelated to these filmmakers titled Werewolf Woman. So
she plays a character in this named well you said Laura,
Mrs Gittleson, right, Yeah, yeah, Miss Gettleson. She's she's she's
the estate agent. And there's a great scene where she

(31:03):
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 like damn tombstones. She's fun. All right, Well,
let's get to the music, because the music on this
film is definitely worth highlighting. Uh, this is a this

(31:26):
is a fun score. Uh you know, it's a little
bit Uh, it's it's a little bit, a little bit funky. Uh,
definitely cynthy and apparently highly influential. Um I I saw
it pointed out that the music, some of the music
that was used or created for Garth Marenghe's Dark Place

(31:46):
years later. It's kind of like like a direct reference
to the score to this film. That makes so much sense.
And a lot of what's funny about Karth Maringue's Dark
Place is just slightly tweaking things that are already true
about House by the Cemetery, like, uh, some of the
kind of the vibe in the dialogue scenes with these
long pauses between lines and awkward staring. Absolutely. In fact,

(32:11):
I even thought of garthmringhary Stark Place. And there's one
part of the movie where, um, where Paulo 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 sick. Yeah. I had the same
thought that that's a great sequence to by the way,
yeah listening to that, and and it aren't we getting

(32:33):
we're presented with visuals of blood flowing over a tombstone, yes, yes, yeah, alright,
so the individuals responsible for this music, primarily Walter rizati Um.
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 to His notable scores include this one, UH,

(32:59):
the Bronx Warriors, as well as some various action films.
I think this is the main stand out, but you
also have Alexander Blocksteiner 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 scores tracks. So it

(33:19):
all comes together again into just a very fun score
that is a you know occasionally, Uh definitely gets into
this kind of cheesy groove that that only works with
this film. But I think it's overall pretty excellent and
has some wonderful moments of horror synth workin I thought
we might have a taste of it right here. Yes,

(33:53):
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. Yeah, 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

(34:13):
really speak to its digital availability on streaming sites, but
you've had some fabulous vinyl editions put out by both
Death Waltz Records, which you know excels at this sort
of thing, as 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
oh wait, those were the humans. But there's also one

(34:34):
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 can you can technically go and see it. Um.
I mean, you know, obey obey local laws as far
as approaching it. But the house here is, uh, the

(34:56):
freud Stein House is actually the Bailey Ellis House located
on the Lisa State in the coastal Massachusetts town of um.
Let's see, I'm not I'm sure I'm going to bush
the name of this Skitchua s c I t U
a t E situate Skitchuat in any rate. It's about
thirty miles southeast of Boston, and according to Atlas Obscura,

(35:19):
it's currently owned by the Skitchuwat Arts Association and if
you go to their website, uh, you can see recent
photos of it. Um. The website states, quote b Ellis
House is a unique Gothic Romanesque mansion and home to
the s a A's indoor classes and workshops. It also
provides studio space for half a dozen artists. So hey,

(35:40):
go there, sign up to create your own injury for
the night gallery. Um uh, this this house is still
standing and there and there's there's still wonderfully creative things
going on inside it. I will drop everything in my
life and go to Massachusetts to become a part of
Dr Freudstein's art collective by away. This house was also

(36:01):
used in um Berto Lindsay's Ghost House, so you get
to double dip by visiting this place. It's a really
good house. I will say, yeah, it's 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 great headstones everywhere,
just all through the yard and then also in the
surrounding woods. All Right, Now, here's the part of the

(36:30):
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, right, I mean, I
still have there's still things I do not understand, and
I've I've I've seen this film more than I've seen

(36:53):
some truly you know, um, you know, subjectively great works
of art. Um. I've also, especially in this last viewing,
I really tried to understand everything, you know, like I
was gonna be quizzed on it. Uh, can I really
speak to what's happening in this movie? And I really
can't explain some of the choices and elements here, although
I will try. We will at least try to describe

(37:14):
a number of the dioramas that that ful she creates
in the shoe box of this film. Yes, uh 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 I could. I can't remember if

(37:37):
you mentioned this a minute ago. Is there actually a
cemetery by the house or the tombstones added for the film?
I think the tombstones were added for the film. Um,
I'm not clear on that, but but I didn't I
didn't see anybody pointing out, uh, you know, there being
an actual cemetery surrounding this house. Okay, well, we see

(37:57):
it in the opening frame like this, this this beauty
fold 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. Right. It's it's ultimately a

(38:19):
familiar scene. I feel like I've seen other in other films.
A woman is dressing, and then she starts looking around
the house for her boyfriend, assuming he's pranking her by
suddenly disappearing. Uh. And then you know, so she she
wanders around being like, oh, what is his name? Is
it Mike? Steve? It's Steve. She's like, Steve, are you there? Steve?
Steve stopped kidding around, Steve. And then, of course what happens.

(38:42):
She discovers Steve. Steve is dead. Uh. He's been nailed
at the backside of a door with a pair of
surgical scissors and his brain has been surgically or or
through blunt trauma exposed um. And then an unseen killer
stabs her through the back 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

(39:03):
the floor dead. And then a pair of mine, 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. So 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

(39:24):
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 she's coming down the hallway that is lit from behind,
and in the foreground we're looking through the gaps in
an iron spiral staircase that's just covered in cobwebs. And

(39:45):
it's a gorgeous shot. Yeah, yeah, And a great shot
of this seemingly endless seller in this 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
of of reality and space and time. But yeah, it
seems enormous, and it seems like they're are corners of

(40:06):
it that haven't been explored in like a century and
a half. I ultimately love the unreality of this cellar.
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, uh. And then there's
an interesting compositional shift coming up, so you see the

(40:26):
same house and a girl standing in the window looking out,
making kind of a scary screaming face, which then cross
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

(40:48):
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. How
to come back to that ghost girl for a second,
because yes, she's haunting in the photo, but the face
she's making, you could be interpreted to his fear. But
it's also the kind of face that a childli this

(41:10):
would make when somebody does a cannonball into a swimming
pool and a kool Aid commercial, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah,
that's radical, and it is radical. But yes, now we
meet Bob, and and we say we meet the whole family. Yeah,
there's Dr Norman Boyle, there's his wife, Lucy Boyle. There
is adorable Bob, who we've we've already described disturbingly cherubic

(41:33):
and speaks in the dubbed voice of an adult woman
doing a kid's voice, and and there a lot of
aught of scenes to of of Bob playing just way
too diligently with his toys. Um like, like, who has
ever given a remote control car to a child and
seeing them and get that this much usage out of it? Uh,

(41:53):
It's it's really not fair. 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 it is not flat. Oh but uh so
here's a question I have. Is Bob like Danny Torrance like,
is he psychic? Or is just the ghost girl picking

(42:14):
him as a regular non psychic person to send messages to.
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 either she can speak to him because he's
a child, or he's a special child. But I have
I have a suspicion that the idea is that children

(42:36):
are weird and can see ghosts. 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.
I guess so, but ultimately that's just how I choose
to interpret it. And there's I'm not sure where fult
she actually stood on this. Well, immediately what happens here

(42:58):
is that uh Lucy, the other comes in. It's 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 ha
ha um. 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 she just kind of

(43:18):
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 in the cemetery outside
the house. And we're told that this is in New Whitby, Boston. Yeah, yeah,
this this film. Most of these scenes were filmed in Massachusetts,

(43:39):
take place in Massachusetts, and this is ultimately a Massachusetts film.
Maybe her first. I'm not sure if we've I can't
remember if any of the previous films we've we've watched,
have been set or filmed there. I believe this film
is sort of trying to tap into some misquatonic magic. Yeah, yeah,
I think so, But that doesn't mean we don't have
a brief stop over in New York City. On the

(43:59):
streets of New York, Dr 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 research that his colleague, Dr.
Peterson was doing right before said colleague murdered his mistress

(44:22):
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
they're not really any answers to be found in the film.
What a set up. And yet 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

(44:46):
to this lead actor here with you know, the glorious
head of hair and fulchie. 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
to to pal here to what's a Norman boile he says, um,
and there he was researching suicide times. We have to

(45:08):
live in taxi. He just sails a taxi, hops in
and takes off. 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. 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 Cruel Summer.

(45:29):
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, well, that's pretty authentic. That's pretty good. There's
a scene that comes up in a minute here that
is great. That has made the ghost girl, um not

(45:52):
who By the way, it doesn't look like she just
looks like a normal person, just like a kid. Yeah,
not like you know, Translucenter or anything. So just just
like a kid. Is out on a street. I think
this is supposed to be in Boston or this town
outside of Boston that they're going to, and she is
staring into the window of a storefront that has mannequins

(46:13):
dressed up in I guess the clothes the story is selling.
And so one of these mannequins looks like a very
evil Denise Richard's type face and uh, and it's wearing
one of the what do you call those frilly white
collars kind of like doilies. Yeah, kind of like a
like a like a witch costume. I guess it looks
sort of. But then it's like May hallucinates the the

(46:37):
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. Uh.
And then somehow this leads into the meeting of May
and Bob, which is very funny as well. Like Bob
shows up in town, his parents going to talk to
the realtors and he's just sitting in the car, think

(47:00):
playing with the toy. And then suddenly they're like psychic
mind melding. 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 their brains. Oh and
somehow this sequence ends with Bob like sitting in a
park cradling this gigantic, horrible doll, this giant garbage doll
that that he's been given I guess by May. He's like, mom,

(47:23):
we're taking this home, right, And they're like, yeah, yeah,
I loaded up load up your garbage doll. But so
from here we get the family moving into the new
house and there's a lot of great photography. Uh, we
get to see them interacting with the realtors. This is
where there's that funny scene where Ms. Gittleson drives over
a tombstone and then yells at it um and uh,

(47:46):
Lucy the mother has this strange freak out about the
doll that Bob found. It's like, but it's after they
get 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 does the little whip zoom on her eyes. This
movie loves whip zooms. By the way, did you notice
that now that you pointed out, Yeah, there's a lot

(48:09):
of a lot of whip zoom and going 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. Yeah. Now, this is the
point in the film where we we introduce Uh, one
of my favorite characters, and we've already talked a little
bit about her, Uh the actor playing her. But but

(48:30):
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
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

(48:51):
First Lady of the United States. Um, God, 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 exactly look like and 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

(49:12):
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 Ann the babysitter, and then
just zoom whip, zoom, zoom, cut zoom. So this is
just instantly just so insane, because I mean, in what
universe does a real literally provide your babysitter, in which

(49:35):
case does a babysitter just sort of appear without you know,
there's 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. And then various other
questions come up regarding and and this whole babysitting arrangement
and her relationship with any other entity in the film.
It's bonkers. For moment one, An appears to be up

(49:58):
to no good like the 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 what had led him to do
these horrible things. And meanwhile, there's like a scene where
Lucy is walking around at night having heard strange sounds

(50:20):
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, gives her gives her the
most evil just hyena eyes. So Anne lives in the
house with them, right, she's like a living babysitter, Like
basically she's a nanny, even though they don't really use

(50:41):
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 mom comes
home finds that Anne is no no, no longer around.
It's just bob by himself, and she just dismisses. She's like, oh,
I guess Anne went home to see your parents. There's

(51:03):
like there's no communication with the baby sitter slash nanny.
It's just like, oh, well she's done. She wandered off.
That's fine, that's what babysitters do. That is the end
of and the the pair. And yet there's still more
questions about Anne. We'll get to as we proceed. So
where is it after this? We follow Norman for a
bit because he's trying to figure out what was going
on with Dr Peterson's research, and he goes to someplace

(51:26):
as a library. I guess it's supposed to be a
unity university, Like is this misquotonic university or something? 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. Yeah. And so he meets a scholar
there who a scholar who's got like a this awesome

(51:47):
looking beard. Uh. And the scholars like, you've been here
before with your daughter, and Norman is like a 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
the connecting to anything. Uh. 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

(52:09):
mis gendering of children happens all the time, uh, 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. He'd
never been there. But then who was it? Uh? But
we get to meet the librarian in the sequence, right,
the librarian was It was a lot of fun. It's

(52:31):
a small role, but it's played by this guy, Jim
Paulo Sacharolla, Uh Saccarolla perhaps playing the librarian. Uh. Yeah,
and he's I really like this guy has some real
Ronald Lacy energy. You know, he's got kind of a um,
you know, a devious baby face. Yes, yes, yes, he
reminds me a little bit of Dylan Baker, you know,

(52:52):
the actor. But either way, he's a stupendous baby faced
Renfield boiling over with nervous laughter. I loved his scenes. Yeah,
I and he 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,

(53:12):
this slightly suspicious librarian and and it's a it's a
fun screen presence apparently shows up in a number of
number of other Italian B movies of this this time period,
just a bookish weirdo. There's also an awesome scene later
on in the movie where he's wearing a green sweater
that looks like it's made of felt. So he comes in,
he's like a walking pool table. I loved it. Yeah,

(53:35):
And he and he's actually got some fun dialogue in
that part, because it's it's like he's 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 and meanwhile our here, I was like, I'm here
to research. Yeah, have you seen my hair? Do you
know who I am? Look? How handsome I am? How

(53:56):
dare you question my presence here? There's a 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, um, and he's wandering around. He
finds a tombstone for somebody named Mary freud Stein, and
then he immediately has this incomprehensible encounter with the ghost

(54:18):
girl May, where May says, she says a line 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. 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. So this is

(54:39):
all while Norman in his library is learning about the
sort of unsavory history of a doctor, Jacob freud Stein,
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 guy, right, And this is when
we find out that this isn't just a house by

(55:02):
the cemetery. It is perhaps the house on the cemetery,
or more specifically, the cemetery is also inside the house.
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 the
stained glass windows with these uh, like green and yellow

(55:24):
and purple flower shapes that are that are framed against
the this blue stained glasses. It's just wonderful. Uh. And
and this is the 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. And Will will later find out

(55:48):
that in kind of Scooby Doo fashion, this tombstone is
also a secret door, like a trap door that gives
you entry way into the cellar. And they're in addition
to the the door that nobody can open yet that
clearly goes to the cellar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And like
in this scene, there's a bunch of grunts and jostling

(56:08):
and whatnot coming from the basement, so it sort of
indicates the trap door thing. 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. Uh. There's
a lot of a lot going on in this house
from an auditory point of view here. So Lucy is

(56:31):
not happy about this, and she screams, but eventually she
and uh 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. Yeah, it's implied like this is
just what they do out here. Um, And I remember thinking,
is it is this ever a thing? I don't think

(56:52):
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. Uh, this is what they did. 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 uh, Norman is standing in the kitchen

(57:16):
and it's one of those things where I think we've
talked about how a great thing with some 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

(57:37):
box of something called fiddle fattle. It looks like it's
a I don't know, it looks like cracker jacks or something.
It might be caramel popcorn. Yeah, watching this scene, I
also I thought back to our recent viewing of of
Mario Bava's Black Sabbath, and I 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

(57:58):
color wild to suck you in. This doesn't quite pull
that off, but you can see that she was going
to the same sort of effect. But I guess this
is all leading up to one of the finest sequences
in the entire film, which is the bat scene. The

(58:22):
bat scene is so good, and it comes from the
first time the family actually decides to venture into the basement.
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 know why. She doesn't explain why.
I don't think the movie addresses why she was trying
to pry in. Um. If it does that, I missed it.

(58:42):
But eventually the whole family goes in and there's this
great scene of um of Norman, the dad trying to
unlock the door to the basement by prying at the
key with the sharp edge of a kitchen knife. So
he's got a kitchen like wedged in it, blaze ead
out like blade poking into the metal of the key

(59:04):
and just twisting and twist, wrenching it over to turn
the lock. One of several scenes where people are 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.
Fulgi Actually, scenes from this movie could be used as

(59:25):
a video version of the Don't Do What Donny Don't
Does book about knife safety. Yeah, it's basically it's shake
hands with danger but generally but 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. Um. But then what happens instead is, yeah,
they open the door successfully with their knife, and then

(59:46):
they start heading down there to check it out. I
think Dad's in front right with the flashlight and all,
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

(01:00:06):
of the cellar into the kitchen, just still stabbing at
this bat. It's a fix to his hand, producing about
six bats worth of blood in the process, and just
getting it everywhere, flinging bat blood on everyone in the room.
And it's just stuck on his hand like a leitch,
like it's just you can't pull it off, and he's
just stabbing and stabbing and getting blood on his whole family,

(01:00:30):
and it's absolutely ludicrous. This scene is everything. Um. By
the way, I got to say, it compares quite favorably
to another 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

(01:00:50):
whereas this bat attack is just the the paragon of excess,
the bat attack in Suspiria is where Jessica Harper is
in her room at this school and suddenly she gets
creeped out by It's just like a ball of black
socks with wings. It's uh not a good bat one
to ten on the bat believability scale, What do you

(01:01:11):
give the suspiria bat. The suspiria bat would be like
a two or three. This one, I don't know if
believability is the word, but it's so overwhelms the senses
that one need not believe either way. It is just there,
It's just in you, alright, So I'm going to mark
you down for a five. Okay. But the other thing

(01:01:32):
is this scene reminded me of The Simpsons where Homer
gets his hand stuck in the toaster and it still
has his hand stuck in the toaster. Dad, it's in
there again, alright. So eventually, eventually the bat is vanquished.
And at that point, I think everybody has had enough
of the seller and they have agreed not to go
back in there for the time being. Well, and we're

(01:01:53):
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, yeah,
everybody always wants out of this house. Why won't people
just stay in the house? And this is great because
we don't get enough scenes of realtors talking to realtors

(01:02:14):
in our movies, particularly in haunted house films. You know,
maybe the the the owners of the renters are talking
with real Ittor but uh, but but not not this
kind of inside real Ittor talk. You get. So one
of the realtors is the one we've already met ms Gettles, Gettleston,
Gettleston in one played by Dagmar Yes. And then the
other one is this guy who I don't know if

(01:02:35):
he has a name, but he has h a powerful
aura of sleeves. Yes. 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,

(01:02:57):
and May is depicted as welling within gin pop of
a super max prison for dolls is you know, just
dolls everywhere crammed in. Uh. You imagine that the dolls
are like shoving each other for more personal space and uh,
and they have some kind of conversation here in the house.
And I think this is implied to be the same house,

(01:03:19):
but like not not in a different reality version of
the house. Yeah, And I'm not sure where to fall
on this, Like this room and also to a large extent,
the seller are these places that are that physically exists
and are closed off from the rest of the house,
like the main I presume rental house. Um, I forget

(01:03:40):
if they were supposed to purchase this house or surely
they're renting. You don't, e don't just buy a hunted
house you want to rent, um, 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
law of time and space. That's a nice comparison, except

(01:04:03):
I would say House of Leaves is somehow less confusing
than the Cemetery. So from here the movie kind of
ramps up more into into attack mode. Uh. So multiple
characters are are going to get slaughtered by the monster here.
Uh there's a scene where the real estate agent Ms.
Gittlson just kind of pops into the house to wander around. Uh.

(01:04:23):
There's some beautiful, eerie shots of the house like that
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 the stone slab over the

(01:04:45):
tomb that Lucy discovered there. It bites her leg essentially, uh,
and then she is killed by the monster hand guy
from the beginning of the movie. And that's that's the doctor.
That's Dr freud Stein, who will we we will increasingly
see a lot more of. Right, well, we don't see him.
It's still just his hands here. Like that's the big
reveal at the end of the movie, is getting to

(01:05:05):
see his full form. Here you just get hands. And
then this lady gets murdered in a in a scene
of an absolutely ridiculous excess of blood. Yeah, this is
I think he stabs it with a poker multiple times. Yeah.
So sometime around this point in the movie, also Norman
discovers the the cassette tapes made by his predecessor, by

(01:05:28):
the previous scholar who was working in this house. Um
and this guy Peterson and Peterson's recording himself talking into
a tape recorder about the the freud Steen house. He
seems 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

(01:05:51):
saying blood, blood, blood, which of course it will be
irresistible to all the Garth Marenghi fans out there. But
but then then the scenes right after that are really
full of stopping shop, So like the you know, mom
comes home with the grocery bag that has at the
stopping shop logo on them honest values or what stopping

(01:06:12):
shop is all about. And then there's stopping shop brand
cartons of milk everywhere. Yeah yeah, adding that, you know,
some level of that red Mario Baba pop to the background.
But but here characters really start going down in the basement,
so like An's gonna go down in the basement, Bob's
gonna go down in the basement. Uh. And and this

(01:06:35):
this is third act territory here, yeah, so um so,
first of all, I went to so one of the
people that goes down to the basement. Is Ann And
this is ultimately a sequence that really raises at 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

(01:06:56):
into the cellar, it appears that Anne has 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. Um, 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, ghost

(01:07:18):
slash whatever that lives in the cellar. And then and
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 his Anne working for the presence in
the basement. Is she a thrall of the forces in
this house? What is it? Uh, it's not explained. And
then when Anne goes looking for Bob wanders into the basement, Uh,

(01:07:43):
the force brutally murders her, like chops her head off
with a knife. And uh, and so it's like, well,
What was that all about? Then? What 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. Yeah, I could not understand at all.
At first it seems like she is working for the
monster and then she's surprised when she encounters it, and

(01:08:05):
so yeah, I don't know, I don't know. Ye, why
was she leaning up the blood? Yeah, she died like
she lived. A complete mystery. Um, okay, But when when
Bob's in the basement, then this is where the seller
really takes on. This the strange other world they to
mention because they are the sounds and you know, creepy
and also creepy size. We keep seeing these big beast

(01:08:25):
eyes glowing in the dark. That reminds me of the
the eyes of the Great Dweller from Stephen King's Creep Show.
And it's easy to think when you first see them, Oh,
these must be the eyes of the presence of the basement.
These are the eyes of Dr Freudstein. But as we'll
explain when we finally see Dr Freudstein, he does not
have these eyes. So what what was this? Is this

(01:08:48):
another presence? Is this another like is this Like, I
have so many questions about the whole arrangement here with
ghosts and potentially demat demonic presences and and also, uh,
you know our officially living undead creatures. Uh, it's really
out there. I have no idea what's going on. Yeah,
the same here, just these these weird glowing yellow and

(01:09:11):
red cat like eyes in the dark that don't correspond
to any creature or monster we see later in the film.
But one of the key sequences is this scene, you know,
where Bob is shut into the closet. Whatever is 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,

(01:09:32):
and something's coming up the stairs to get him, and
of course he is the doctor, uh Dr freud Stein.
Now we don't I think we have this part. We
don't fully see his face yet that that reveal is
still coming. But one of the funniest parts again is
that uh Lucy is trying to get in to help Bob,
and she's literally prying at the basement door with the
kitchen knife. That's just the knife in the door in

(01:09:55):
the door jam, just prying and then that doesn't work,
and then I think, uh, 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, I will and uh
and then here comes the monster hand and holds Bob's

(01:10:17):
head against the door while Dad's trying to hack through
it with the with the with the with the hatchet.
It's pretty it's pretty great. I mean, it's terrified's it's
really an ingenious scene. I don't think I've ever seen
anything quite like this. And the dad accidentally chops the
monster's arm off with the hatchet. Um then also keeps
hacking at the door in a very inefficient way, like

(01:10:39):
hitting the door in completely different places, like in the
middle and then at the side. Yeah, and and finally
we do get to see our monster, our doctor freud
Stein in full and oh man, I've I've long loved
this monster design. So he is apparently a hundred and
fifty year old surgeon with a who really liked illegal surgeries.

(01:10:59):
He's beat death through some mix of butchery and self
theft and uh. And when I say beat death, you
know it's uh, 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 that it

(01:11:20):
is needed. I think that's the reason he has one
monster arm and one uh, seemingly normal arm. Um. He's
clearly lost all of his humanity and now just exist.
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

(01:11:40):
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, like is his brain just rotting in there,
or is it just because he doesn't have you functional
speech apparatus anymore. He also may have supernatural powers, like

(01:12:00):
he may be the one that's opening and closing on
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, maybe like he's somehow horcrux himself, and so
he exists both as a an incorporeal uh like presence

(01:12:20):
in the cellar. But then also this this uh, this
this doomed uh you know, compoile, rotting creature. It's uh,
it's it's wonderful. Like the suit looks really good. He
you can brace basically smell him. Oh yeah, yeah. The
design of the monster is absolutely fabulous. The especially the
head where his his head is, it's almost like a

(01:12:43):
wax helmet of a kind, these deeply recessed eye sockets
that don't appear to have eyes in them. And uh
and no mouth. Yeah, the mouth part is just kind
of smoothed over and it's just this vertical scar. Now
it's excellent. Yeah, there's kind of a body's exhibit sensibility
to his his his head like he's been plasticized. Oh

(01:13:06):
and then when dad dad gets in there and um
and stabs him. And when Dad stabs him another one
of the most memorable scenes in the film is what
comes out is not not blood, but this just kind
of rotted sludge filled with squirming maggots, I mean, just
packed with maggots and not meal. Worms is sometimes the case,
sometimes you have meal worms standing in for maggots. But

(01:13:27):
this is the real deal. This is like just a
big maggoty sludge that starts dripping out of his body. Yeah,
tremendously gross and and in some ways beautiful monster design.
Now Here the big spoilers. What happens when the family,
the final three go up against Dr Freudstein. Well, it
doesn't go so well. Um Dad you know, gets in

(01:13:48):
there and get some stabbing in on Dr Freudstein. But
then Dr Freudstein rips Dad's throat out in a very
grizzly sequence. And then Mom and Bob are are going
up these stairs to that tombstone trap door or and
trying to force it 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

(01:14:09):
then like 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 creatures coming back up. Freudste is coming back
up to get Bob, and Bob manages to squeeze his
way out, and it's pulled to safety by May, the
ghost girl. Yeah, so I was confused about the ending.

(01:14:30):
Does Bob escape the monster by becoming a ghost? I
don't know? Does 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. I really don't. Yeah,
I'm not sure. I think it's intentionally haunting and vague

(01:14:52):
and uh and and ful. She does nothing to clear
it up by having the final shot in the film
be this this wide shot of the how else 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. Uh so I want to reveal something.

(01:15:14):
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 ful she made
this up and attributed it falsely to Henry James. Why
pick Henry James? I'm not sure. I mean Henry James, Like,

(01:15:36):
what's the connection there. I guess James wrote Turn of
the Screw, which is a horror classic. Otherwise, I don't know.
I have no idea. I mean, maybe it was just
inspired by the works of Henry James, and I just
wanted to throw in a quotation, but then not a
real quotation. I don't know. Good choice either way, good choice.

(01:16:00):
So there you have a house by the cemetery. There's
just there's so much to love in this one. Well,
so one of the things I did think was actually
kind of interesting towards 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.

(01:16:20):
But it wasn't Bob. It turns out it was the monster,
and the monster was sobbing with the voice of a child.
I'm not sure. Possibly, but also I think those are
possibly just ambient ghost noises, like ghosts of all the child,
because we get these scenes of all these other bodies
have been cut to pieces down there. We see at
one point, like a slaughtered child that looks a little

(01:16:44):
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 there's
um that's during the playing of the Haunted tape. Oh yeah,
the haunted cassette tape for Dr Peterson is like, oh,
not that children about children. It's labeled I think it
says Peterson personal. And you remember what Norman does with that.

(01:17:06):
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 the tape keep the place
warm or just in case cursed documents or recordings are found.
There's like a sign saying, remember if you find a

(01:17:27):
cursed documentary cassette tape in the library, incinerate immediately, be
considerate of others. I mean, I gotta 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. That is a house by the cemetery.
Um so this one is, uh, this one's pretty widely

(01:17:48):
available at this point. Uh, you can find you can
ultimately find it streaming a lot of places, and the
version streaming you can you know, purchase the rent digitally. Uh,
I find that it ends to be the restored version.
That's the version I watched. I I watched the first
half of it on my trial of a m C

(01:18:09):
plus an Apple, and then my trial ran out and
I had to switch to a trial of like Showtime
or something to finished watching it. So I took the
cheap skate approach. But I was also very tempted to
pick up the handsome blue Underground Blue ray of this,
which has you know, fully restored, but also all of
the version I was looking at. It comes with with

(01:18:29):
all these behind the scenes features, and also it comes
with the soundtrack as a c D, which was very
tempting as well. Oh yeah, it sounds like a steel Alright, 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 reorders lock on the front door,
and uh, we'll be back next week with another another

(01:18:50):
weird film. But yeah, thanks again for everyone who's who's
enjoyed these or or put up with these episodes over
the past year. If you want to listen a weird
more episodes of Weird House Cinema, we are it every Friday,
and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed were
primarily a science podcast, believe it or not, and we
do our core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I know

(01:19:11):
it's kind of hard to tell during the month 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 Thursday's Artifact or
Monster Fact on Wednesday. On Monday we have a listener
mail and over the weekend we are a rerun Huge
Things as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

(01:19:34):
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. Stuff to Blow Your Mind It's production
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(01:19:57):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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