The House by the Cemetery (Italian: Quella villa accanto al cimitero) is a 1981 Italian supernatural slasher film directed by Lucio Fulci, co-written with Dardano Sacchetti and Giorgio Mariuzzo, and starring Catriona MacColl, Paolo Malco, Ania Pieroni, Giovanni Frezza, Silvia Collatina, and Dagmar Lassander.
The third and final installment in Fulci's Gates of Hell trilogy, preceded by City of the Living Dead and The Beyond,[6] the plot revolves around a series of murders committed by a ghoulish and demonic serial killer taking place in a Massachusetts home that happens to be hiding a gruesome secret within its basement walls.
Fulci developed the screenplay for The House by the Cemetery with inspiration from the works of H. P. Lovecraft, while co-writer Sacchetti was influenced by the novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
Upon its premiere in Italy in August 1981, The House by the Cemetery became a domestic box-office success, grossing £1.408 billion, making it Fulci's most profitable horror film released in the 1980s.
After discovering his body stabbed with scissors, she is killed with a French knife and dragged through a cellar door by a monstrous figure.
As his mother packs, Bob notices a photograph of a house in which a girl is standing at the window with a fearful expression.
In the real estate office, Mrs. Laura Gittleson is annoyed when her colleague hands the couple "the Freudstein keys."
He opens the cellar door and walks down the stairs, only to be attacked by a bat, which will not let go until he stabs it repeatedly.
Spooked, the family drives to the real estate office and demands to be re-housed but are told it will be days before they can move.
While the Boyles are at the hospital to treat Norman's injuries from the bat, Mrs. Gittleson arrives at the house to tell them of a new property.
Norman and Lucy get into the cellar, which contains several mutilated bodies (including Ann, Mrs. Gittleson and the couple who died earlier), surgical equipment and a slab.
Grabbing a knife from the slab, Norman stabs Freudstein, causing flesh and maggots to ooze out of the latter's old lab coat.
[7] Sacchetti also stated that the film was based on his own personal experiences as a child, being raised in a large country house with a big dark basement, and that age 9 he had to cross a cemetery at night.
[7] The film went through several changes from the original story by Elisa Briganti and the script by Sacchetti.
[8] Sacchetti commented on this stating that "Mariuzzo always intervened afterwards, either because I had to leave to work on another film or refused to make those changes that Lucio demanded.
"[8] The House by the Cemetery was shot on location in New York City, Boston, and Concord, Massachusetts.
[8] The Italian ratings board asked for a brief six-second cut in The House by the Cemetery where Dagmar Lassander's character Laura Gittleson is murdered; ironically, Fulci obliged only because of his dissatisfaction with the effects in certain shots.
[15] Anchor Bay Entertainment released the film on VHS and DVD in 2001, the latter of which was re-pressed by Blue Underground in 2007.
[21] In October 2023, Arrow Films also released a 4K disc in the United Kingdom, sourced from Blue Underground's 2020 restoration.
"[15][25] In France, Philippe Ross of La Revue du cinéma proclaimed that Fulci had to show "us something other than these endless scenes of butchery who truly become more and more painful and soporific"[15][26] Christophe Gans reviewed the film in L'Écran fantastique stated that "Except for two or three welcome details [...] the suspense "for laughter", so appreciated by American filmmakers, here becomes particularly tedious"[15][27] Gans praised the films visuals, noting "melancholic, wintery photography" while still concluding that the film's "repertoire of gimmicks repeated or borrowed from Argento, our greatest regrets is the absence of madness in the explanation of the monster, yelled amid the din of a stretched suspense.