Here’s an older zombie movie that I pulled up at random from Glenn Kay’s excellent Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide. This is a Fulci original and from how it sounds, it might be worth a look. The picture in the book alone is pretty interesting. In it, a young boy stares straight ahead, glassy eyed and distant. Blood pours down his face, for the top of his head is gone, revealing the jelly like contours of his exposed brain.

I’m guessing Fulci didn’t hold anything back which is just the way I like it :)

From the book:

The House by the Cemetery, also known as Quella villa accanto al cimitero was Lucio Fulci’s quick follow-up to The Beyond (1981) and the last zombie film of his most prolific filmmaking period. It once again stats Catriona (or Katherine) MacColl, as a mother who moves with her family to a small community in New England. After an amusing opening, MacColl quickly realizes that she and her family aren’t alone in their new home. Yes, this is a haunted house flick, but don’t expect any ghostly whispering and fluttering curtains. Expect murdered corpses to spring to life and kill people on gory, Fulci-esque fashion. It turns out that the house’s deceased former resident, the mad surgeon Dr. Freudstein (Giovanni De Nava), is hidden in the basement; he needs blood to maintain his wonderful pulpy skin tone and generally gooey appearance. And so he emerges every so often to violently claim a victim and leave an awful mess behind on the floor for the others to clean.

The scariest thing in this film isn’t the walking corpse of Dr. Freudstein but, rather MacColl’s son, played by Giovanni Frezza in an irritating impersonation of little Danny Torrance (Danny Llyod) from The Shining (1980). Actually, the child actor probably isn’t to blame for the character’s inappropriate dubbed-in voice, which is likely that of an adult female. (In older films it was common for grown women to redub prepubescent characters, because it saved the filmmakers from having to work with children in a cramped studio for hours on end).

Although Fulci himself counted House among his personal favorites, it is one of his lesser efforts. It does include some entertaining scenes, but for a Fulci film its pace is slow, its story is plot heavy (even though most of the plot points it raises are never resolved), and it features only one real zombie. In fact, it was Fulci’s least successful zombie picture at the Italian box office (its gross sank to 265 million lira, approximately $230,00 U.S.), and even today its appeal is limited to serious Fulci aficionados. After the film’s disappointing release, the director moved on to other subject matter; his next title was the slasher film The New York Ripper (1982). He would not return to the zombie subgenre for some time.

Has anyone seen this?

Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide (amazon.com <- new window)
The House by the Cemetery – Netflix (netflix.com <- new window)