Quella villa accanto al cimitero [The House by the Cemetery] (1981)

(In French, On Cable TV, April 2020) While I’m absolutely not a fan of early-1980s Italian horror cinema, I could, if I needed to, watch The House by the Cemetery a second time. It’s still very much an Italian exploitation film, but it’s better than many—starting with how it starts by blending slasher, zombie and Gothic haunted house tropes alongside other just plain weird stuff. The mayhem begins when a family moves into a new house somewhere in New England, and it ends when most of the cast is dead. Frankly, I don’t like it that much—but I like it better than other films of its ilk (and about on par with director Lucio Fulci’s earlier City of the Living Dead and The Beyond) and that should be enough—at least it’s supernatural and not strictly slasher or cannibal-focused. Crazy enough to be fun, restrained enough to pass off its episodes as something like a plot, The House by the Cemetery is Fulci at his most tolerable. No praise intended.