Halloween 2022: October 8th

House by the Cemetery (1981)

Did Lucio Fulci actually come up with the “Gates of Hell Trilogy” name or is that a term film nerds applied to his work after the fact? It’s not like the three movies have any narrative connection. It’s hard to believe that “The Beyond” was conceived as a sequel to “City of the Living Dead,” especially since story was always the aspect of his films Fulci cared the least about. There’s vague references to the gateways of Hell in both movies but that's it. The real connective fiber is that all three films are set in America, insert Lovecraftian themes into standard Italian horror templates, and star Catriona MacColl. This is what makes "House by the Cemetery," which has even less to do with the first two films than "The Beyond" had to do with "City of the Living Dead," the capper on this unlikely trilogy. 

Researcher Norman, his wife Lucy, and their eccentric son Bob move into a dilapidated home in the New England countryside. (That is, yes, by a cemetery. Though that's not horribly important.) The house formally belonged to a colleague of Norman's, who murdered his mistress before committing suicide. The strangeness begins immediately, as Bob has conversations with a ghostly girl, a weirdly intense babysitter moves in, and the door to the cellar is sealed shut. After Norman forces the door open, the horrifying secret reveals itself. An undead mad scientist named Dr. Freudstein, who needs to murder to keep himself alive, resides under the home. And he's eager to continue his experiments. 

Despite his reputation, I've never considered Fulci to be on the same level as Italian masters like Argento, Bava, or Soavi. Why became immediately apparent to me while watching "House by the Cemetery" tonight. Fulci's movie reeks of tackiness. The director's love of crash-zooms becomes truly obtrusive here. Not a minute passes without the camera lens slingshoting on some shocking image. The worst moment occurs near the end, when the camera careens towards MacColl's face every time her head slams on a staircase. This is not the only obnoxious technique in the film. The dubbing is atrocious, as little Bob's voice ranks among the most irritating things I've ever heard in cinema. Walter Rizzati's main theme is quite ominous but the rest of his score is composed of repetitive monster movie funk and distracting synth crescendos. When all of the above is tied to a plot that barely makes sense, it gives the impression of a film that was hastily assembled, with little care for its content. 

While "The Beyond" and "City of the Living Dead" were examples of Fulci getting his Lovecraftian weirdness chocolate in the Italian film industry's zombie peanut butter, "House by the Cemetery" is essentially a slasher movie. It begins with a naked woman dressing, finding her improbably murdered lover's corpse, and getting stabbed through the head with a butcher knife. The script introduces several characters who exist solely to get murdered, each one wandering into the house alone to meet Freudstein's blade. Fulci's fetishized focus on gore reaches pornographic lows here. One death, where a senselessly immobilized woman is stabbed with a fireplace poker, is even filmed like a sex scene. Her heaving breasts are always in frame and it ends with a spurting, slow-mo money shot of blood. A later decapitation and throat ripping are similarly drawn-out, a fake head dropping to the floor after extensive slicing and stabbing or slow-motion extending the tearing of the latex. Fulci just seemed to delight in the sight of fake blood and rubber guts. Such as in a tour of Freudstein's murder lab, where the camera lingers on mutilated corpses and body parts. Oh, and maggots. Fulci loved maggots. Freudstein bleeds maggots and brown goop, by the way. 

What ostensibly elevated Fulci's movies above mere exploitation trash and special effect reels was his command of doom-laden atmosphere. "House by the Cemetery" has some moments like this. The titular location is strewn with cobwebs and dust. There's some nice shots of fog billowing among the New England countryside. The main distinguishing feature of this movie is its touches of dream logic. Why Bob can communicate with a ghost girl, that warns him about the house, is never explained. Neither is the visions he and his mother have, the most graphic of which involved a store mannequin losing its head. While it seems the babysitter, played by "Inferno's" Ania Pieroni and her striking eyes, has some sort of connection to the house, it's never elaborated on. The admittedly ominous ending doesn't explain shit, concluding on a vague note of afterlife shenanigans much the way "The Beyond" and "City of the Living Dead" did. I embrace surreal touches in horror but "House by the Cemetery" seems to just be screwing around most of the time. 

In fact, the film is unintentionally funny at times. A bat attack goes on and on, the poor little creature bleeding more blood than you'd think it would have in its body. Yet this jives badly with the nihilistic and sadistic qualities that are common across Fulci's filmography. There's just so much screaming, Bob's annoying voice, sloppy crash-zooms, and gloopy slaughter in this movie. It's hard for me to get into it and appreciate the better qualities the film does have. I can understand why "House by the Cemetery" has a cult following among mozzarella-loving gore hounds. Yet it's incoherent, crude, and mean enough for me to wonder if Fulci is for me at all. [6/10]

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)

After “The Marked Ones” became the first “Paranormal Activity” to make less than 100 million worldwide, it must have been clear to the folks at Blumhouse and Paramount that audiences were growing tired of the franchise. Because these movies are made so cheaply, it was still easy to justify another sequel. Yet it was presumed early on that "Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension" would be the final installment in the series. Clearly, the studios hoped to take things out on a door-slamming-in-the-middle-of-the-night bang and ponied up the extra cash to release the sixth feature in 3-D. While the sequel didn't lose the producers any money, the added 3-D gimmick did little to persuade audiences. "The Ghost Dimension" became the lowest grossing entry yet. 

Game designer Ryan, his wife Emily, and their six year old daughter Leila are joined in their new home by brother Mike and Emily's spiritualist friend Skyler for the holidays. Ryan uncovers a bizarre camera in the basement, which can seemingly record physical anomalies. He also discovers a collection of VHS tapes from the eighties, showing young girls named Kristi and Katie being groomed by a cult to communicate with a demon named "Tobi." Around the same time, Leila begins to act strangely and talk with a new imaginary friend also named Tobi. It soon becomes apparent to Ryan and Emily that their family is caught in a demonic plan that is about to reach its climax. 

One suspects that the writers of "The Ghost Dimension" were eager to find a new angle for this "Activity." Clearly running short on time and good ideas, the concept of a magical camera that can record spirits is introduced. The sixth film shows us what the series' invisible villain looks like. "Tobi" is depicted as black, slimy, smoky threads that slowly coagulate into a devil-man shaped form. Making a mess of CGI tendrils the antagonist does little to enliven the jump scares that is this series' bread-and-butter. You've got the usually quivering noise on the soundtrack, the loud slams on walls, the nocturnal recordings of folks sleeping, and people jumping out to prank their family. The move to add a CGI demon leaping through a window, right at the viewer, is clearly a desperate attempt to keep things exciting. (And to make use of the 3-D gimmick.) And like most desperate moves, it does little to improve a bad situation. In fact, it undoes what was effective about these movies to begin with. Part of what made the original films scary is that you couldn't see the titular activity until it interacted with an object or person! "The Ghost Dimension" renders this just another story of people running from a computer-generated monster. 

Of course, something else that made the original work was that the ghostly presence's motivations were impossible to understand. The "Paranormal Activity" movies have been working to undermine that since part two. It still boggles my mind that a franchise that started out with doors slamming at night escalated to demonic possession, witches, apocalyptic conspiracies and fucking time travel.  "The Ghost Dimension" continues the series' tail-eating, with the Midwives' evil plot coming to a contrived head. Portals through time and space and the birthdate of June 6th, 2006 play important roles. Going hand-in-hand with this ridiculous premise of evil, real witches is a heroic Catholic priest attempting to perform an exorcism. "The Ghost Dimension" doubles-down on its uncritical handling of Christian hysteria about demons. Tobi attempts to destroy the rosary beads and Bible in the house and it's clear the explicitly Christian God is the only force that can oppose him. (Though, befitting religious horror tradition, He doesn't do a very good job of helping.) One of these days, I'm going to have to write an essay about the weird, pro-Church propaganda in modern horror films like this and "The Conjuring" series. I genuinely thought we, as a culture, had outgrow that shit. 

Ultimately, aside from its lame jump scares, middling CGI tomfoolery, and conservative religious beliefs, "The Ghost Dimension" is a movie about an innocent child being corrupted. Seven-year-old Ivy George is suitably adorable and wide-eyed as little Leila, whose behavior grows increasingly unnerving as the movie goes on. Creepy kids is a tricky horror cliché to utilize well and the scene of Leila biting a Catholic priest is likelier to produce chuckles than gasps. Sometimes I wonder if comedy wasn't the intent here. Mike is introduced with a big silly mustache and wears it throughout the whole movie. A scene of Ryan and his brother getting high, including staring at a Christmas decoration for way too long, got me laughing. The characters vacillate between silly scenes like these and the movie's attempts at scares. I'll give the script this much though. After Tobi leaps right at Ryan's face, the family does a sensible thing that's almost unheard of in haunting movies: They get the fuck out of the house. 

By the way, the subtitle is quite misleading. First off, I don't know why they call it a "Ghost Dimension" since the antagonistic spirit has been specified to be a demon from the very first movie. Secondly, the film simply travels through time and space, not to a parallel dimension, as far as I can tell. (Admittedly, the mechanics of all that aren't well explained.) "Paranormal Activity 6" definitely represents the franchise in its death throes. Throwing a bunch of computer-generated special effects on top of the same-old, same-old bullshit isn't much of an improvement. You know things are bad when the comic relief dialogue is the highlight of the movie. It's also set at Christmas, so there's another reason why I'm sorry I watched this one in October. [5/10]

West Country Tales: The Beast

Here’s the most obscure TV show I'm talking about this season, so forgotten that it doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry. “West Country Tales” was a half-hour horror anthology that ran on the BBC from 1981 to 1982. It recounted supposedly real tales of the supernatural as submitted by viewers. To further distinguish the program, each story is set in the West Country, the most south-western part of the British Isles that are notoriously remote and full of legends and folklore all their own. 

Of the few episodes still floating around, "The Beast" seems to be the most fondly recalled. It concerns a man returning to his childhood home in the country, after living in the city for many years. He recounts a frightening incident from his youth, where an ill-fated hunting trip ended with an encounter with a hairy wild man. Now, many years later, his cousin has moved into the same house he grew up in. Her and her husband have recently had a run-in with seemingly the same beast, prompting them to sell their house.

It seems "West Country Tales" took that premise of adapting letter sent in by viewers very seriously. "The Beast" is essentially a narrated short story, accompanied by footage of actors acting out the events the protagonist is telling. That means the guy never shuts up. The overbearing narration has its benefits at times. Such as when the man is describing the shotgun he restored in his youth, the reason he headed out into the woods on his own that fateful day. Other times, the guy is literally describing events that are playing out right on our screen. Did we need him to describe the process of reloading the gun as we see the actor do it? You'd think a story all about seeing some weird shit in the woods would have utilized forested isolation, ambient noises and sounds from the wind in the trees and unseen wildlife, more. 

If you can overlook the constantly chattering voiceover, "The Beast" does have its moments. The encounter with the Sasquatch-like creature is fitfully eerie. A crash zoom in the monster's grotesque face is definitely the most memorable moment here. The decision to make the beast more resemble an ogre than your usual hairy Bigfoot was an intriguing one. Later hints of the beast's activity, such as a properly large footprint in the mud or the husband's shadowy fight with the creature in the barn, work well enough. Sadly, "West Country Tales'" budget was clearly low. Its rinky-dink electronic score is dreadful. Truthfully, not much happens in this story, there's a couple of fake-out jump scares, and it ends abruptly. Though, I suppose, that does suggest a version of these events really did play out. I can see why "The Beast" had an effect on anyone watching back in 1980 but it feels underwhelming to modern eyes, save for one or two moments. [6/10]

The Munsters: Don't Bank on Herman / Dance With Me, Herman

“The Munsters” writers, once again, managed to take the simplest premise and weave an amusing half-hour around it. In “Don't Bank on Herman,” Marilyn has a cold so Herman is sent in her place to make a withdraw from the bank. It just so happens that bandits in Halloween costumes have been targeting that bank chain. The teller mistakes Herman and Grandpa for the robbers and give them a huge sack full of cash. Lily has to talk her husband into returning the ill-gotten gains.  “Dance with Me, Herman” begins with Lily coming across an invitation to Parent's Night at Marilyn's school. It turns out she didn't tell everyone about it because she knows Herman is terrible at dancing. He decides to take a dance class – run by a con artist – to remedy this circumstance. As always, wackiness ensues.

Here's another episode that takes a simple case of miscommunication and keeps escalating it to more absurd places. Herman gets anxious about the money and goes to return it to the bank at 3:30 in the morning. (Essentially meaning he'll be breaking into the bank to leave money there.) That already ridiculous premise gets even goofier when Herman and Grandpa manage to lock themselves in the empty vault, forcing the two to call the cops to let them out. The bickering between Grandpa and Herman – over inkwells, mysterious closing doors, and remembering phone numbers – produces some of the funniest moments I've seen thus far on this show. Naturally the actual bank robbers show up too. This episode also corrects some of the overly mean characterization Lily has been suffering from lately. She chastises Herman extensively, in a way that's overdone, but she does apologize in a sweet manner. That's more like it. 

Similarly, “Dance with Me, Herman” takes another incredibly simply premise – Herman can't dance – and builds a surprisingly funny episode around it. There's some great, broad physical comedy. When we get a demonstration of Herman's dancing abilities, he manages to wreck the entire living room and get his head stuck in a harp. (Which becomes an amusing running gag.) Once the con artist get involved, the joke turns from “Wow, he's a bad dancer” to “These guys have to pretend he's good for the con to work!” That's a clever way to milk the set-up for more laughs and everyone's reactions is worth a good chuckle. Don Rickles gets off a couple of zingers as the phony dance teacher. The details of the bogus contract they sign Herman to is another strong joke. The episode also wraps up on a surprisingly sweet note, once again displaying the sincerity of Lily and Herman's love for each other. [Don't Bank on Herman: 8/10 / Dance with Me, Herman: 7/10]