(1981)***The Boyle family moves to Boston and into the old Freudstein mansion. Their young son Bob gets several warnings from a ghostly girl living in a picture of the house they are to move in to.
She is desperately urging him to persuade his family not to move but of course the parents don’t listen to the child. When they first move in they discover the basement door has been nailed shut, but of course they have to pry it open. Unbeknownst to them there is a hideous old Freudstein living in the basement. He must kill people and remove their body parts to maintain his decaying body so that his immortal soul may remain living.
Another Lucio Fulci film, this one from early in his 80’s era. This flick didn’t totally wow me. Sure the old codger was gross and freaky but I think his appearance was a little under-shadowed by the stupidity of this family. I’m not talking about them ignoring the kid either, that’s a given. First of all, you move into a freaky old mansion with a mysterious & ominous family history. You find the basement door boarded up and nailed tight, don’t fuck with it! You probably don’t want to know what’s down there. Secondly, you move a rug in the sitting room and find a Freudstein stone tomb cover is there. That means someone from the freaky old family is buried in that basement that they shouldn’t have messed with & it’s time to get the hell out of there. Most importantly, you hear noises coming from the aforementioned formerly sealed basement you a) grab your shit and run or b) go down there and investigate. Hmmmm…or, you come home to find the nanny is missing and your young child is cowering in his room crying about how the nanny’s head came rolling down the basement stairs you a) grab your kid and run or b) grab your kid and take him down to the scary basement to look for the nanny’s head.
Fulci did a little playing around with close ups of eyes to accentuate the drama of the scene. It almost felt like Fulci was taking a crack at being Argento in the style he filmed this one. He really should have stuck with what he does best and kept us guessing. Unfortunately, you pretty much know who is in the basement early on it’s just a matter of who is going to become a victim.
It’s still a solid 3 star movie for me though. The basement dude was sufficiently disgusting and seeing young Bob being mentally damaged by the visual of a basement full of body parts was utterly enjoyable. Bob is just too beautiful and Aryan, he needed to be shaken up a bit and believe me when I tell you, it was his own fault. I guess going through life with the name Bob Boyle just wasn’t evil enough. Again I raise my glass to Fulci for giving me a night of enjoyable horror even if it wasn’t his best effort.
3 comments:
Nice review but I disagree; If I moved into a new place and there was a door nailed shut, I'd pry that sucker open faster than a Kenyan at the Boston Marathon.
I believe you would, but you do know that curiosity KILLED the cat, right?
I think curiosity would get the better of me too but I'd probably leave it until the day I was moving out. Then I'd take a quick peek after the car was packed and running of course.
So was one of his infamous eye gouges included in this one? It's funny, when I think of Fulci I think of disgusting gore, not good decent storytelling.
Actually that's not funny at all.
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