A surreal slasher with a supernatural hint and lots of bloody gory kills, that reminds of the seventies horrors. 

• Entertainment factor: ★★★★☆
• Gore factor: ★★★★★
• Surreal factor: ★★★★★
• Slasher factor: ★★★★☆

The House by the Cemetery is an Italian film with an European cast. With lots of bloody kills, a mad scientist mixed with supernatural elements this offers a seventies vibe in the early eighties. It’s the third film of the Gates of Hell trilogy by Lucio Fulci. The first film is City of the Living Dead (1980) and the second film is The Beyond (1981). While not a direct narrative trilogy it more a thematic trilogy where all the films have an occult  surreal vibe. While the first two films revolve around the opening of the gate of hell and the dead start to rise and kill, the first and third film have a cemetery in common. The main star in all these films is Catriona McCall. 

Duration 1h 26m

Plot

Historian Dr. Norman Boyle goes to Boston New England to continue the research of his recently deceased colleague Dr. Petersen. Petersen hanged himself in the historic library after he killed his mistress. Or so the story goes. Norman and his wife Lucy and their young son Bob are staying in the same house as Petersen did. 

Before they leave New York Bob sees a little girl behind a window of a house inside a picture on the wall, who tells him not to go. It’s the same house they are going to stay in. This little girl Mae befriends Bob when they arrive, but not before she had a terrible vision. 

The house, now called Oak house, was formerly the Freudstein house and Norman finds out that Petersen was investigating this eccentric surgeon who dabbled in weird science. Unbeknownst to them murders have taken place inside the house and continue as they start living there. The cellar door is boarded up and they find a tombstone on the floor in the hallway. While the house is drenched in blood, Norman, Lucy and Bob and his babysitter Ann aren’t safe inside the house. 

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Short Review

This third film of the Gates of Hell trilogy is the most surreal of them all and has a more logical story than the previous films. Though it contains a lot of gore, it’s different than the first two films and there is much more focus on the story about the family of Lucy and the surreal experiences of Bob. 

Although this is an eighties film, this film feels much more like a seventies movie. The music, the sound effects, the soft filter, the enormous zooming in on people’s eyes, the snap zooms and the way the story is told is that of a typical seventies horror movie. The hint to the supernatural, the mysterious Mae who is either a psychic or something else, the mannequin that gets decapitated and looks exactly like Ann the babysitter, who acts a bit mysterious as well, all add to that seventies vibe of mystery, the supernatural and the surreal and inexplicable. 

The film has some similarities with the other two films. Just like in The Beyond (1981) there’s a character that is not really human. Little Mae acts just like Emily did in The Beyond as a warning, a character that warns the main character to leave or not to come at all. A cemetery also plays a big part in the City of the Living Dead (1980), as in this film. And in all three films a book plays a pivotal part of the events. However in this film the book doesn’t contain prophecies of the gates of hell but is rather a book about Freudstein’s experiments. Which sets this film more apart from the other two. 

While the other two films dealt with killer zombies, this is a slasher film with a nasty hideous monstrous killer, which borders the supernatural and weird science. The kills are bloody, slowly and the killer takes its time to kill with glee. There’s a lot of blood, zooming in on wounds and blood oozing out of it, securing a slow death. With a lot of stabbing, slicing and poking, the killer makes good use of knives, pokers and other sharp objects to kill his victims. 

The characters aren’t much developed. Unlike the surreal psychological atmosphere of most seventies horrors, this isn’t about the characters, but more about what awaits them. A horrible fate. 

Lucy is on medication for her nerves, which puts her away as either hysterical or paranoid, a typical seventies theme, and she clearly doesn’t want to take them for it says that it can cause hallucinations, Something she can’t handle in a strange house with strange noises, a locked cellar and even an anguish crying that can be heard throughout the whole house. 

Norman on the other hand is the man of the house, who finds that Petersen was investigating Freudstein and thinks his death was suspicious. Bob is the young innocent boy who plays with his toy car and is susceptible to the supernatural. 

The film also has a ambiguous ending. And there are more things that remain unexplained. Both the realtor and the assistant librarian recall that Norman visited Petersen when he stayed at the Freudstein house, while Norman clearly hadn’t been to the area before. The assistant librarian even tells him that Norman visited with his daughter, which he doesn’t have. That never comes up again and is a loose thread that is never explained. 

Also why the mannequin looks like Ann and is seen by Mae remains a bit mysterious. They all serve the mystery surrounding the house and the threat that lives inside its walls. They also add to the supernatural vibe enhancing the mystery even more. 

The House by the Cemetery mainly conjures up an atmosphere of dread and danger and mystery and the weird and colors it with a lot of blood and gory kills. Although made in the early eighties this is clearly a borderline film that if you didn’t know any better feels like it was made in the seventies with surrealism, but instead of psychological themes, filled with a lot of blood and gore. 

Read more about the Gates of Hell Trilogy:

• City of the Living Dead (1980) review
• The Beyond (1981) review