Secretive professor Norman Boyle (Paolo Malco) and his unstable wife Lucy (Katherine MacColl) move into a strange old house, along with their deeply annoying son (Giovanni Frezza) who sees a ghost girl that tells him not to go. The house had been inhabited by a colleague who was doing some unusual research when he killed his mistress and himself. Once in the house, they are joined by Ann (Ania Pieroni), the young, cute, and weird babysitter. The colleague was doing some strange research, as was a much earlier owner of the house, Dr. Freudstein. (Yes, that’s Dr. Freudstein). No one should be surprised when weird things start happening.
It’s a ghost story. No, it’s a zombie film. No, it’s a mad doctor flick. No, it’s about people going mad. No, it’s a slasher. I don’t mind a film being multiple different things at once (OK, I mind a little), but I’d like it to be clear which. And no, it isn’t unclear to make some kind of point. It seems Lucio Fulci shot a bunch of scenes that have no real connection to each other, and then called it a movie.
Gore is the point. It usually is in Fulci films. And there’s lots of killing and lots of blood, and by early ‘80s standards, it looks pretty good. We get multiple beheadings and throats being torn out. There’s impalings, broken legs, and a bizarrely bloody bat bite. I found it a bit ho-hum, but if all you want is to see blood shooting or dripping out of someone, you could do worse. However, none of that violence and gore has any weight. Half the victims we don’t know—in a few case, in any way at all.
Not that we really know any of these characters as none of them make any sense nor behave in any foreseeable way. The plot of a film can be nonsense, but the characters really need to be believable at some level. Let’s take Ann. She’s introduced as a ghost, but she isn’t one (I guess). Then she acts possessed, but isn’t. Then she acts like she knows some great secret, but she doesn’t. Then she just doesn’t talk when asked direct questions. Then she acts as if she is in league with the mad doctor, but she isn’t. Often she’s shot as if flirting with Norman, but apparently she wasn’t. And finally she drops into average babysitter mode. There’s no character there to work with.
Lucy gets upset for no reason, then gets calm for no reason. She seems mentally unstable, then she seems fine. As for Norman, the film sets up that he has some questionable behavior in his past (a mistress or he was working with his dead colleague), but nope. He just acted really suspicious for no reason. And when the bat flies into his wife’s hair, Norman just stands there looking bored and shining a flashlight on her. Is this supposed to mean something. Apparently not.
So an incoherent plot and nonsensical characters wrapping a lot of gore. It is considered part of Fulci’s Death Trilogy, along with The Beyond and City of the Living Dead, but there’s no connection beyond questionable plots and characters with lots of gore.
While shot primarily in English it was re-dubbed in post and it shows. The dialog fits the lips about 50% of the time, but there is no true Italian version. This sort of dubbing was common in southern European films of the time.
Fulci is probably best known for the faux-Dawn of the Dead (which was called Zombi in Italy) sequel, Zombi 2.