You're scared of the haunted house? Who even said it was a haunted house?! Assumptions will get you nowhere in 1981's The House by the Cemetery. Also unavailing will be reasoned deductions or belief in what the film directly tells you from minute to minute. Director Lucio Fulci and his screenwriters throw various things at you, some of them bloody, some atmospheric, some repetitive. None of them add up.
In a New York apartment, a little boy named Bob (Giovanni Frezza) stares at a photograph of an old house with a little girl (Silvia Collatina) in the window.
He looks oddly like Klaus Kinski.
The little girl telepathically warns him not to go to the house. But that's just what his parents, Norman (Paolo Malco) and Lucy (Catriona MacColl), plan to do. When they drive up to the old home somewhere in Boston, Lucy's astonished to find it looks exactly like the photograph in their apartment. Norman dismisses the idea but a closeup suggests he knows something more than he's letting on . . .
While they're settling in, a striking young woman called Ann (Ania Pieroni) randomly shows up and introduces herself as the babysitter. She and Norman exchange significant looks. Is this their first meeting or . . .?
Researching the mad surgeon who died in the house, Norman meets a librarian who remembers Norman visiting previously with his daughter. Norman says he's never been there and he doesn't have a daughter. But there's something fishy about his denial . . .
Lucy asks why she needs to keep taking those pills. Norman explains they "calm her nerves". Surely he's telling the truth and yet . . .
That's right, this is the story of a nineteenth century surgeon secretly living in the basement and murdering people. Why were you looking at Norman? And what made you think the little girl with telepathy was important? Weirdo.
Maybe the biggest mystery to me, though, is how this fireplace is supposed to work.
The House by the Cemetery is available on The Criterion Channel.
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