The Sweet House Of Horrors

AKA La Dolce Casa Degli Orrori

Director: Lucio Fulci

After last weeks look at “The House On The Edge Of The Park”, I decided that this week I should do something a bit more lighthearted… and not as good.

“The Sweet House Of Horrors” was initially part of a series of four made for television films. Two of these were directed by “Cannibal Ferox” director Umberto Lenzi, and two directed by Italy’s godfather of gore, Lucio Fulci. Upon seeing the finished products, the Italian TV station decided they were too violent and gory, so instead, they were released straight to video in 1989. This does beg the question, what the fuck were they expecting from these directors? Had they not seen their other films? In “Cannibal Ferox”, Giovanni Lombardo Radice has his dick chopped off and then eaten and in Fulci’s “City Of The Living Dead” he has a power drill pushed through his head. These guys aren’t going to make family friendly material! Luckily for Radice though, he doesn’t make an appearance in any of the films in this “Doomed Houses” series.

Violence aside, I suspect the real reason for the station not wanting to broadcast “The Sweet House Of Horrors” is because it’s shit. These days people casually say “that’s the worst film I’ve ever seen” to anything, but believe me when I say this, of all of the films I have seen so far, and I hope to see many more, this is the second to worst I have seen (the worst being a film called “Victims!” from 1985, which I may review in the future). 

The film opens on a young couple coming home from a party, disturbing a burglar who is ransacking their house (again, it’s probably a mansion but fuck it, the title has house in it so we will go with that). Things escalate and the couple end up being murdered by the intruder. Sadly this is one of the times that Fulci lingers on the gore too long, especially as it looks like they’ve had jam sandwiches smeared on their faces.

We then meet the children of the murdered couple, at their funeral and it was at this point I realised there wasn’t going to be anything sweet about this house of horrors. Two of the worst things in life are annoying children and bad teeth and these kids score highly in both of these stakes. I’m not going to beat about the bush with this, these kids are horrible. During the funeral scene they are blowing bubble gum and muttering to each other. They then cry and shift to laughing, and back to crying without the camera even cutting away. I say crying, but there are no tears. It’s the worst display of fake crying ever committed to film… probably. To be fair to them, the dubbing doesn’t do them any favours but I also watched the scene with the audio muted and they were still annoying.

It is a very odd scene and does nothing to help build any sympathy for these bereaved children. It’s almost as if we are meant to hate them. Well if that is the case, mission accomplished, because these two make me want to go vigilante and sterilise people in their sleep. We do see, however, that the two little hell spawn are being looked after by their Aunt Marcia and Uncle Carlo (played by “Beyond The Darkness” star Cinzia Monreale and Jean Christophe Bretigniere from Bruno Mattei’s rodent revenge film: “Rats: Night Of Terror”) who are staying at the house until it is sold. Sadly, not even Monreale’s presence can save this film. 

The children (I suppose I’d better let you know their names at this point, Marco and Sarah), obviously aren’t happy that their home is going to be sold and my god do they whinge about it.

Marcia wakes one night whilst Carlo is away and begins wandering around the house to find out what had disturbed her. She ends up in the attic where she sees a giant fly toy (always at the top of every child’s Christmas list) which appears to attack her. The special (and I use that term loosely) effect is pretty shit. I can normally accept dodgy effects if everything else in the film is working for me, in fact, there is often a real charm to practical effects that fail, as at least you know someone really tried, but in this case it’s just pants.

We are then introduced to the estate agent in charge of selling the house, Mr Colby. Making their opinions very clear about not wanting the house sold, the children behave obnoxiously towards Mr Colby and when he has an accident and falls down the stairs (due to some sort of ghostly intervention) the children laugh at him, despite the fact, you know, he is badly injured.

At this point we meet the gardener, Guido, played by Lino Salemme. Salemme is probably most famous for playing a character that snorts cocaine from a Coke can (a bit on the nose, or should that be up the nose) in Lamberto Bava’s cult favourite: “Demons”. He is having a flashback (which is always helpful to fill in the plot if a character isn’t able to explain it) to the night Marco and Sarah’s parents were murdered and turns out he was the killer. You killed the wrong family members Guido, be a good lad and finish the job.

More supernatural stuff happens around the house leading to a scene where Marco and Sarah are woken in the night by two flames hovering over them, much to their delight. The flames are meant to represent the spirit of their dead parents. Again, the effect is poor and an awful job has been done to make sure the kids are actually following the movements of the flames with their eyes which ruins the illusion of the effect, not that it was a very good effect in the first place. The flames begin to fade and the crying starts again, urgh.

The next day, Guido tells Carlo that he is unable to finish the work is has been doing as he is feeling unwell. Carlo offers to pay him for the work he has done so far but when Guido reaches to take the cheque, he begins sweating blood and has another flashback to the night he bumped off the parents. Panicked by what is happening to him, Guido runs out of the house. Guido continues having visions as he wanders in the middle of a road, including seeing a dog jumping at him but the dog turns out to be a truck and he is run over. Christ, truck drivers in Italy don’t give a fuck do they! If it’s in the road, it’s getting run over! The gore on display here works well and if there was anything in this film that could be described as a highlight it would be this, although the dog/truck thing does come out of nowhere, literally and metaphorically.

The film then takes a nose dive back to it’s usual standard as Mr Colby arrives at the house, now with a leg in plaster, accompanied by some comedy music. Once in the house a violent wind blows Mr Colby around whilst the “flames” turn up again and heat up the metal part of one of his crutches. After the wind stops, Mr Colby reaches for the crutch and burns his hand, badly. There’s skin left on the metal! Or that might be a mistake, but either way, his hand looks bloody sore… he’ll have to get used to using his other hand for a while I guess.

In the next scene, we see Marco and Sarah with large animal masks on with birthday cake candles stuck to their fingers as they try and raise the “spirits of the earth and the air”. Yeah, it didn’t make any fucking sense to me either. As they walk around the house chanting, two stones start glowing red outside. Marcia and Carlo spot the children wandering in the garden and Marcia recognises the ritual they are doing and explains it to the audience… I mean Carlo. She talks about it like it’s something completely normal. After all, nothing bad has every happened when children dabble in the occult. The ritual they are taking part in allows them to speak to the spirits of dead people. Presumably they want to speak to their parents, or maybe they want to ask Guido what breed of dog it was he saw.

Sure enough, the flames appear and the children follow them up to the attic, where they quickly fade away again. The children seem fairly happy with what they achieved though so mission accomplished? At least we are spared any further fake crying. Then as they are packing away their masks and candles, a bright light appears, followed by their dead parents. Looks like the ritual worked better than they thought.

They hug and get all emotional, and the parents say they will never leave them again. So, have they been brought back to life? Or are they ghosts? They certainly aren’t zombies because I know what a Fulci zombie looks like and there is no eye trauma going on here. The film then jarringly cuts to the next scene where Marcia and Carlo are trying to take the children away from the house for good. There’s the usual whinging and then the car lifts into the air and a thick fog appears stopping them from driving on any further. The children laugh as usual, but I like to think they are laughing at the special effect.

This is all too much for Marcia and they decide to go back to the house, much to the delight of the two little brats. Marcia and Carlo are seriously starting to worry about the children now though, as they are constantly talking to their dead parents and yet, the adults can’t see them, so they assume the children are losing their minds. I dunno if they are but I certainly am! We are then treated to some hilarious shots of the children running around and playing with their dead parents. No family has ever been that happy and where did that fucking dog come from?

Having reached breaking point, Carlo hires a medium to come to the house to try and rid the house of any ghosts. He manages to summon the spirits of the dead parents who explain they won’t leave the house as their “children need love”, which is true, they do have faces only their parents could love.

We then cut to Mr Corby, the medium, accompanied by a bulldozer approaching the house. It looks like even the medium has quit trying to communicate with the spirits and is just going to tear the house down instead, which will probably work too, but I thought that kind of goes against the point of bringing a medium in to try and sort the situation out. Carlo agrees that they can destroy the house, which I assume is because Mr Corby will find it easier to sell a plot of land than a haunted house.

The plan doesn’t work though as the spirits start messing around with the bulldozer to stop it from getting near the house. Cue comedy music and children laughing. This scene feels like it lasts an age, and that’s even with the bulldozer footage being sped up to make it appear more menacing, which it doesn’t.

The children retreat into the house to find their parents but their spirit is fading due to all the effort of manipulating the bulldozer. Outside, the medium starts working his magic to rid the house of it’s ghostly presence. Marcia and Carlo completely disappear and the kids leave the house. Once outside, the children see the two stones glowing red again and they slip them into their pockets, believing them to be their parents. The medium approaches the terrible twosome and asks to see the stones they put in their pockets, to which they obviously say no. The medium grabs the stone out of Sarah’s breast pocket (careful mate, these days you’d be accused of being a fiddler) but the stone turns red hot and burns the medium’s hand.

As the hand begins to melt away, the children start laughing wildly, sadistic fucks. The effect of the hand melting is bad so again, I like to think the children are laughing at it’s poor execution. It’s nicer to think that than what is actually happening; two children wetting themselves over a man being horribly disfigured for life. Then the film ends on a freeze frame of the children at their most annoying, which we have to endure for nearly two minutes as the credits roll.

I don’t really see this as much of a conclusion to the story either, the parents have been reduced to two stones (supposedly), the house may well still be sold and Marcia and Carlo are stuck having to look after two hideous children who think people being badly injured is funny. Then again, it’s the parents behind all of this. I can understand the want to knock off Guido as, after all, he did kill them but Mr Colby and the medium were only doing what Marcia and Carlo had asked them! With that mean streak in them, no wonder their children turned out to be such cunts.

“The Sweet House Of Horrors” is a truly awful addition to the “Doomed Houses” series and a blot on Lucio Fulci’s already inconsistent latter-day filmography. The child actors are awful, the special effects are amateur and the story is dull, nor does the conclusion make sense. The tone shifts not only from scene to scene but even within the same scene which makes it truly bizarre to watch.

If I had to pick out any positives from the film, I suppose I could say that some of the cinematography and camera angles are nice, the music used over Guido’s death scene is quite cool and gives a good sense of foreboding, and I like the house where it is set but it’s massively underused. It was also nice seeing Lino Salemme and Cinzia Monreale but again, massively underused.

I feel bad giving this a bad review as I do try and find the good in every film I watch and my friends will tell you, I own and like some total shit, but this film is very lacklustre. Having said that, it is still miles better than “Victims!” but if we get to that, you will realise that’s not saying much.

I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone unless you are a Fulci completist but even then, prepare to have your patience tested. The film only runs at 79 mins but fuck me, it feels longer than that. Any other activity you can think of, no matter how mundane, will still be a better use of time than if you watch “The Sweet House Of Horrors”! Avoid!