The 24th film on the list is the first (but not the last) Lucio Fulci feature and within 30 seconds we get one of the defining images of the video nasty era. A young woman with a knife through her head. Fulci doesn't do subtlety and from the off he's letting you know his take on the haunted house genre is going to be done on his terms. Terms that once again got him in hot water with the British Board of Film Censorship.
When House first arrived for cinema release it was quickly shorn of 86 seconds. The cut version was then released on VHS which, ridiculously, was prosecuted for obscenity during the video nasty furore of 1984. 4 years later it got another VHS release and this time had another 4 minutes and 11 seconds removed from it on top of the 86 seconds already snipped. It limped into video shops, whimpering like a neutered dog and this was the best version available until 2001 when a still skittish BBFC released it with only 33 seconds removed. Finally in 2009 viewers, the powers that be in Soho Square relented and viewers could legally watch the uncut version and see what all the fuss was about. Was it worth waiting for? Yes. It's definitely one of the best films on the list.
The Boyles are heading north from New York City to New England. The father, Norman, is to research old houses in the area for his work and his wife Lucy and son Bob are tagging along for the 3 months it's going to take. Their home is to be Oak Mansion, a house in New Whitby that just happens to be, by a cemetery. Not only are there tombstones in the garden, which understandably perturbs Lucy, but there's also a few in the house, something that Norman explains away way too fast. What he hasn't told her is that an ex-colleague of his also lived there, in the days before butchering his family in a murder-suicide. Or at least that's what everyone thinks happened...
There's a lot to pick apart in the filmography of Lucio Fulci but one thing he was brilliant at was creating atmosphere and The House By The Cemetery is laden with it. That spooky, shiver inducing New England scenery, the constant sense of foreboding, the unease when you have a child involved with all manner of horrible happenings, even the child himself Bob, is an unsettling little fella. It's a Fulci film that really works even before he ladles on the blood and guts. It started out as his tribute to the New England set H.P. Lovecraft stories that inspired him in his youth and had he laid off the usual excess it would have been a well received but ultimately forgotten entry on the IMDB. But thanks to that fondness for grand guignol it's still being re-released an new formats every couple of years and discovered by new generations of fans.
It doesn't quite reach the heights of The Beyond or Zombie Flesh Eaters The but House By The Cemetery is always worth a watch. Did it deserve to be a video nasty? Not a hope. It's a little bit splashy with the red stuff and every now and then a child (creepy ass Bob) is involved but The Omen already did that years before and had no censorship issues with it. Had it been from a director who was less of a cause célèbre at the BBFC it might have passed by with minimal cuts but after his previous 5 films had been censored (Zombie Flesh Eaters, Contraband, City Of The Living Dead, The Black Cat & The Beyond), some quite heavily, the scissors were always going to be out for this one. Fulci's follow up to this, The New York Ripper, was banned outright, and copies of it actually received a police escort out of the country. Nope, I'm not lying.
Ok. Next up is The House On The Edge Of The Park. The second Ruggero Deodato film of the list and another one that really earns it's notoriety. Gulp.
No comments:
Post a Comment