everyday is halloween

house by the cemetery [1981] 

another halloween, another lucio fulci movie.  i don't mean it like that.  when i count the number of dvds i own compared to the number of directors of movies of said dvds fulci is one of the most collected of my cherished discs.  i didn't mean to.  there are many directors near & dear to my heart.  but fulci is something else altogether.

fulci's films are an acquired taste.  i am not talking about the boundaries of good vs bad.  i mean, art is subjective, right?  only so, the cinema of lucio fulci, when the filmmaker hits all the keys, his movies transform into a surreal nightmare world void of logic.  

like this movie under discussion.  the boyle family, scholastic researcher norman, housewife/mother lucy, & their young son bob, move from their nyc flat to the spacious wilds of the outer reaches of boston.  norman has taken up the research of a colleague who dismembered his mistress then hanged himself while he researched a turn of the 20th C 'mad doctor' freudstein.  

the boyles had the temerity to move in to the freudstein house too.  they didn't know that when they rented the property.  they were kind of tricked into the house by the real estate agent who wanted to unload the unsavory house.  but what happens next is grue galor.  

fulci delivers the gore by the bucket.  fx maestro gianetto de rossi keeps things wet, icky & red.  you'll want to shower after watching this pic.  

but what fulci, his director of photography, his editor, & his composer make is a symphony of fear.  the dread is palpable.  the landscape is sear, the palette is grisaille & the house is beautifully dusty & decrepit.  the trees are void of leaves & the outdoors are washed out creating a landscape of doom & dread.  also, fulci fucks with our notion of time.  a little girl, mae, the daughter of dr freudstein, befriends small bob.  she obliquely warns bob of the dangers he & his family face as they move into her old house.  mae is both corporeal & incorporeal.  she is present day & in the late 19th C.  

& there are moments of chilling terror.  like when norman finds his late colleague's freudstein research & plays a dusty cassette tape.  the voice on that tape, & the camera winding its way thru the freudstein's basement, as norman listens to the voice is fucking creepy.  

another thing about fulci, he was not afraid of the bad end for his characters.  not always does a film require a happy ending, or a final girl to survive & kick the monster's ass.  this is one bleak movie.  one that messes with our perceptions & expectations.  you want linear narrative?  go elsewhere.  you want logic?  forget about it because you are trapped in a bad dream.  

i can't ask for more in a halloween kind of movie.

boo