The House Of Witchcraft

AKA La Casa Del Sortilegio

Director: Umberto Lenzi

I thought it was about time we looked at another film in the “Doomed Houses” series, after not getting off to a great start with Fulci’s abysmal “The Sweet House Of Horrors”. Today’s entry comes from prolific director Umberto Lenzi, who is probably most well known for directing “Cannibal Ferox” and zombie movie “Nightmare City”, but, as with most Italian directors, his filmography is not limited to horror, having turned his hand to whatever genre is popular at the time.

Horror is what he is most remembered for though, but much like Lucio Fulci, his filmography is pretty inconsistent. For my money, Lenzi’s best work is not up to the standard of Fulci’s best. Personally, I prefer some of the lesser known Lenzi films rather than the more celebrated entries in his filmography, not because they are particularly good, but because they are good fun to watch, and today’s film falls into that category.

“The House Of Witchcraft” (spelt incorrectly on the DVD cover) was released straight to video in 1989 after initially being commissioned as part of a series of TV movies for Italian television which were rejected by the station for being too gory and violent. In the UK, the film was released by Vipco, and then later by Beyond Terror (as seen above sporting a still of a witch with a striking resemblance to Norman Lovett from “Red Dwarf”), which was Vipco using a different name but the discs were exactly the same.

The film opens on our main character, Luke (played by Andy J. Forest), being chased through the grounds of a mansion (house… whatever) by a recording of dogs barking. Luke takes refuge in the house but hears the sound of a rusty chain swinging from side to side. Luke makes his way through the house and into the kitchen where he finds a creepy old woman (played by Maria Clementina Cumani Quasimodo) stirring a large cauldron of boiling water, suspended by a chain over a roaring fire. The woman begins to laugh and beckons Luke to come closer as she adds her next ingredient: a human head.

When I first saw this, I couldn’t work out if the severed head was meant to look fake or not. I am guessing not, as it would serve no purpose to make a shit effect intentionally. I think the head is meant to be Luke’s, but as the film cuts between the fake head and Luke’s actual face, it only highlights just how off the mark the effect is. Despite this, it is still quite a creepy scene, mainly due to the old woman and the way the fire casts a flickering orange glow across the room while the chain creaks repetitively in the background.

Alas, it is all just a dream! Luke wakes up screaming in a hospital. It’s at this stage we hear Luke’s voice, which is provided by Canadian voice actor Ted Russoff. Now, Ted Russoff has dubbed a lot of Italian horror films, including “Zombi 3”, “The House By The Cemetery”, “Beyond The Darkness”… the list goes on and on. He also has quite a distinctive voice and is very easy to spot. However, having first heard him in this film, I associate his voice with actor Andy J. Forest so much that when I hear Ted Russoff dubbing in other films, I just can’t turn my brain off. There’s just something about Russoff’s slight speech impediment that really seems to fit Andy J. Forest’s face!

Luke recounts what happened in his reoccurring nightmare to the nurse, Elsa (played by Susanna Martinková), while she fetches his tablets. We are then treated to one of the most hilariously obvious exposition dumps I have ever heard, which goes as follows:

Elsa: “When did you start having these nightmares anyway?”

Luke: “About six months ago, about the same time I married Martha. Am I out of my mind Elsa?”

Elsa: “Of course not, you’re just exhausted, overworked. Luke, can I ask you a personal question?”

Luke: “You hold a medical degree.”

Elsa: “I’m also your sister-in-law.”

Luke: “You sure are, you married my brother and Mark and you made a sensational little daughter together.”

Elsa: “Yes… then he went and got himself killed in a stupid, ridiculous car crash in Rome.”

Whilst I do appreciate being brought up to speed on how Luke and Elsa are related and their family history, I am sure there was a more subtle way of doing it… although that probably wouldn’t have been as funny. Luke goes on to tell Elsa that his marriage to Martha has been a disaster and it would have been better if they hadn’t met at all. It appears that Martha is obsessed with the occult and Luke fears she may actually be a witch. Elsa tells Luke not to worry and that his test results are all clear and he can go home tomorrow. Given how the pair delivered key information to the audience earlier in the scene, I am surprised we don’t find out more information about Luke’s condition in a similar style, so I have re-scripted the end of the scene for your reading pleasure:

Elsa: “Your tests all came out fine, you’ll be out tomorrow.”

Luke: “That’s good to know, I’m so glad I’m not crazy.”

Elsa: “Yes, it was a worry, I don’t think I could have coped with losing you as well as your brother, after he died in that stupid, ridiculous car accident in Rome.”

Luke: “Yes, but at least you were able to get married and make a sensational little daughter together before he died. What’s her name again?”

Elsa: “We just call her daughter. I remember the conception well, we started off making love on the stairs until I started to get carpet burns on my bottom so then we went up to the bedroom. Four hours your brother had my body jack-knifing over and over.”

Luke: “Mark sure knew his way around a lady. Elsa… Can I ask you a personal question?”

Elsa: “Of course, I have a medical degree and you are my brother-in-law.”

Luke: “If my tests are all clear, why do I need to stay another night?”

Elsa: “I dunno, just go with it.”

The next day, Luke is collected from the hospital by his wife, Martha (played by Sonia Petrovna), and she whisks them away to stay at a secluded house in the countryside to help Luke recover from his possible nervous breakdown (it is implied this is why he was in hospital) and so they can try and get their marriage back on track. We then get an extended scene showing the couple driving through the city and out into the countryside. Clearly, this is only here to bulk out the running time, but the accompanying music is nice in a “Sega Mega Drive” kind of way, so I can forgive the film for this.

Just before reaching their destination, Luke and Martha narrowly crash into a car coming from the other direction, swerving violently across the road. The passing car flips over and then crashes in quite an impressive stunt. Luke tells Martha to stop the car so they can help them but she says that it’s no use as they are already dead. Luke pleads again for Martha to stop, which she finally does, so Luke can check on the passengers of the other car. Sure enough, they are both dead. Martha shouts at Luke to hurry up before the police arrive. A strange response given that she and Luke hadn’t done anything wrong.

Luke and Martha finally arrive at the house and shock horror, it’s the same house that Luke has seen in his nightmares. Unable to believe his eyes, Luke makes his way through the house when he begins to hear the familiar sound of the rusty chain swinging in the kitchen. As he enters the kitchen, he finds the chain swinging over the fire but no cauldron and no old woman. As Luke is taking everything in he is approached from behind by an old blind man and his dog. This is Andrew Mason (played by Paul Muller) and he is the owner of the house. Despite not being able to see Luke, Andrew senses that Luke has been to the house many times before which clearly puts Luke on edge. After Martha arrives in the kitchen (accompanied by a chorus of barking from the guide dog), Andrew then shows the pair around the estate.

That night, Luke is trying to relax in his bedroom when he hears the old woman from his nightmares laughing outside his window. As he looks out, Luke sees the old woman murdering a priest with a poker. Luke quickly puts on some clothes and runs out into the garden only to find no trace of the old woman or the priest. Feeling as though he is losing his mind, Luke makes his way back into the house.

Luke rushes into Martha’s bedroom but she is not there and her bed is still perfectly made. As he is about to leave, Luke spots a black cat sitting on the floor with blood on its paw. Clearly not an animal lover, Luke leaves the room to carry on his search for Martha. As Luke staggers out into the garden once more, he bumps into Sharon (played by Marina Giulia Cavalli), Andrew’s niece, who has come to stay in the house as well. At that moment, Martha wanders across the garden in a sort of daze. When confronted by Luke, she said she couldn’t sleep so went out for a walk. Luke notices that Martha has a cut on her hand and Martha becomes very defensive when questioned about how it could have happened. Sharon takes the pair inside so they can treat Martha’s wound.

The next morning, Luke goes back to the garden to try and find some evidence of the priest murder. He finds a bible with blood on it by one of the plant pots, but little does he realise that Martha is watching him from her bedroom window. Troubled by recent events, Luke calls Elsa and asks her to come and stay the weekend so he can try and explain what has been going on. After finishing the call, Luke goes for another snoop around Martha’s bedroom where he finds some sort of talisman with the image of a cat. Just as he looks at it, a strong wind blows through the open window and feathers from a pillow begin flying around the room. Not sure why you would have a pillow with the seam open, doesn’t seem very practical.

Once the wind has stop blowing and the feathers have landed, Luke tries to find the talisman but it has disappeared. At that moment, he hears someone honking a car horn outside. It’s Martha, and she begins revving the engine before speeding off, almost running over Andrew’s guide dog, and then narrowly missing Sharon. After discussing Martha’s volatile behaviour for a moment, Luke and Sharon go to find Andrew who is tending to some plants in his greenhouse. Luke asks if the old man was aware of anything bad happening at the house in the past and Andrew recalls that years ago, when they were having work done to one of the wings, the builders uncovered the remains of a witch. Luke also asks if Andrew owns a black cat to which Andrew laughs, stating a cat wouldn’t last more than five minutes with his dog around. That’s enough chit chat though, as Luke and Sharon head into the nearby village to run some errands.

While in the village, Luke drops into the church in the hope of speaking to the priest, only to find a group of people gathered around a coffin where the priest’s body lay. A local tells Luke that the priest was found dead the night prior, on the edge of the village. Suffering a skull fracture, the local suspects the priest was knocked off his bike in a hit and run.

Luke gets back into the car with Sharon and tells her about his nightmares, the house, the old woman and the murder of the priest he saw. Luke tells Sharon to drive back to the house so he can show her the bloody book he found in the garden, proving that the priest was killed by the old woman in the garden and not in a road accident. When the pair arrive back at the house, Luke takes Sharon to his bedroom and finds that the book has been taken from his safe box and replaced with two tarot cards, one depicting a clergyman and one depicting death. Understandably, Luke believes Martha to be behind the disappearance of the book.

Later that evening, whilst Luke, Andrew and Sharon are having dinner with the newly arrived Elsa and daughter Debra, Martha arrives back at the house. Martha receives the usual barking reception from Andrew’s guide dog and rather than joining the group for dinner, goes straight to bed. Andrew asks Luke if he has known Martha to have ever suffered from a nervous disorder, as his dog had a similar reaction to a woman he once knew who also slept walked and ended up killing her ten year old son. Suddenly the lights go out but Sharon says that power cuts are quite common in these parts and it could last all night, much to the displeasure of Debra who asks how she is going to be able to read her comic books. Oh how times have changed.

A while later, up in his bedroom, Luke gives Elsa the rundown on what has happened since arriving at the house. Worried for Luke’s mental state, Elsa gives him some tablets to help him sleep. As she is about to leave the room, Elsa asks “are you falling in love with Sharon?”. Seems like quite a direct question to which Luke, understandably taken aback, says no. The dubbing in this scene is pretty funny with Luke delivering lines like “it’s nearly the year 2000 but I’m living in the dark ages” and Elsa seems far too jovial at times, especially given the macabre nature of the conversation.

Later that night, we see Debra’s boyfriend, Steven (played by Alberto Frasca and voiced by the same actor who dubbed Bruno in “A Blade In The Dark”, although my searches to find the dubber’s name were sadly unsuccessful) wandering onto the grounds of the house just as Martha passes by sleep walking. He hides until she is out of site and then Debra comes to greet him and takes him up to her bedroom. The pair exchange some awkward dialogue for a while and have something to eat until it’s time for Steven to leave but he promises to come back the next night. As he sneaks back out into the garden Steven is spotted by Martha, still wandering around the grounds. Steven flees deeper into the garden when he begins to hear a woman laughing. After being spooked by a couple of owls, Steven comes face to face with the old woman who stabs him with some garden shears until he falls down a nearby well and dies.

The next morning, Sharon wakes up Luke in a panic as Andrew has had a heart attack. Luckily, Elsa seems to have brought all of her nursing gear with her to the house so is able to treat him. Andrew recalls hearing a man scream during the night, just before he began feeling tightness in his chest. With Andrew stabilised, Elsa and Luke go to find Martha. Having combed the garden to no avail, the pair enter the greenhouse to find the lush and colourful plants and flowers have died. Furthermore, they find Martha passed out on the floor. Elsa comments that there is a strange smell in the air, almost like sulphur, when suddenly Sharon appears in the greenhouse and says it’s not sulphur but rather the smell decaying bodies give out. How does she know this? After this rather out of the blue and ominous comment, the group pick up Martha and take her to her bedroom to rest but, as they pass, some of the flowers begin to bleed.

Later that night, Debra goes outside to meet Steven again only to find he is nowhere to be seen. Upon seeing Martha out for her nightly sleep walk, Debra heads back inside where she sees Steven, perfectly intact. Suddenly the lights begin to flicker and the bulbs burst. Scared, Debra runs down into the basement where she finds Steven, stood smiling at her. After a loud clap of thunder and a flash of lightening, Steven disappears and the door to the basement entrance locks itself. After a couple of jump scares from a swinging human skull and a skeleton covered in maggots, Debra finally comes face to face with the old woman, this time brandishing a knife. Just like her boyfriend the night before, Debra is stabbed to death.

Luke wakes from his slumber and begins to walk around the house where he bumps into the black cat again. The cat disappears and then Luke spots a bloody knife on the floor which he picks up to inspect. After looking it over, Luke hides the knife and goes to find Martha in her bedroom. Martha, now wearing the talisman, screams at Luke that she hates him and accuses him of wanting to kill her. Luke leaves her screaming hysterically on her bed and finds Elsa wandering the corridors trying to find Debra. Luke, Elsa and Sharon team up to search the house to try and find her but of course, they decide to split up. Elsa makes her way into the kitchen, where she finds the cauldron of boiling water just like in Luke’s nightmare but this time it is Debra’s severed head cooking away. Well… I think it’s Debra’s head. It’s a head and seems to be female so I presume it’s meant to be Debra.

Luke and Sharon hear Elsa’s screams from the kitchen and run through but when they look inside the cauldron it’s empty, in fact, there isn’t even a fire. Shaken by her ordeal, Elsa is taken to Luke’s room to rest when the group hear manic laughing from elsewhere in the house. Luke and Sharon go off to investigate and find Martha, standing in the corridor, again in a trance like state, holding a bloody tarot card. Unable to snap her out of her daze, Luke ushers Martha back into her bedroom, locks the door behind her, and gives the key to Sharon to look after.

Luke decides this is probably a good time to go check on the man who has recently had a heart attack so goes to Andrew’s room. Despite being blind and confined to his bedroom, Andrew seems to have a pretty good idea of what has been going on and suggests that Luke should check the garden to see if Debra is there. Luke grabs his torch and enters the garden, now shrouded in a moonlit fog but before he can begin his search for Debra, he spots Sharon walking the other way. Luke questions why Sharon has left Elsa alone but Sharon reassures him that Elsa is fine as she gave her a sedative. Giving her a sedative doesn’t mean she is going to be fine, it simply means she won’t put up a fight when the old woman comes in to murder her! Not that anyone has put up much of a fight so far. Having said that, clearly the sedative hasn’t worked, as we next see Elsa sat up on the bed when she begins to hear Debra’s voice calling out to her. With this, Elsa gets up to try and find where the voice is coming from.

Elsa makes her way down into the basement where it has begun to snow. This scene, whilst not really making any sense to the plot, is a visual delight and a real highlight of the film. It shows great creativity, a far cry from the awful light effects in Fulci’s “The Sweet House Of Horrors”.

Elsa spots Debra, standing with her back to her in the middle of the basement and runs down to greet her. However, as Elsa approaches, Debra turns around to reveal her face has been badly mutilated, in a kind of Linda Blair in “The Exorcist” cosplay way.

Elsa screams as Debra begins to strangle her mother, but stops strangling her when Elsa drops to the floor. A stunned Elsa looks up at where she had just seen her daughter to find the old woman standing in her place, holding a pickaxe which she plunges into Elsa’s chest, killing her instantly.

Luke and Sharon, both back inside the house now, hear the commotion in the basement and go down to investigate. This time there is no snow, but Elsa’s dead body is still laying in the middle of the room with the axe protruding from her. Luke feels Elsa’s wound and says to Sharon that her blood is still warm so she hasn’t been dead long. This is obviously true as it hasn’t been long since the pair left Elsa in the bedroom!

Luke spots some cat paw prints on the dusty ground and follows them to a cupboard where inside they find Debra’s actual dead body. We are treated to a pretty over the top, yet strangely under-played, reaction from Luke. “Why her? why her? She was only a baby” he cries. I wouldn’t really class her as a baby Luke. The pair notice a tarot card has been placed in Debra’s hand, the same one depicting death which Martha was seen with earlier. After finding this, Luke is certain that Martha is responsible for all of the deaths, hypothesising that whenever Martha disappears, the black cat turns up and then something “wretched” happens. I would say that the events of people being murdered is slightly more than “wretched”. Luke pleads with Sharon to believe him that Martha has been turning herself into the black cat using her supernatural powers, powers she has access to because she is a witch.

Luke and Sharon head back to Martha’s room to see if she has been able to escape using the powers of witchcraft. Sure enough, Martha is nowhere to be found but the black cat is sat on the bed looking all cute and cuddly… I mean evil and menacing. Luke instructs Sharon to go to her room and to lock the door. Luke then goes to see Andrew and assures him that Sharon is safe. Then, much to Andrew’s displeasure, Luke takes Andrew’s dog and lets it loose in the house, presumably so it tracks down the black cat to kill it, thereby killing Martha and stopping the witchcraft once and for all.

The dog runs straight to Martha’s room and Luke opens the door, letting the dog in, and shuts it behind leaving the two animals to battle it out. All sorts of hellish noises are heard from inside the bedroom until there is an eerie silence. Luke opens the door and finds the dog ripping Martha’s nightie as she lay next to the bed with her throat ripped out.

Suddenly a gun shot is heard and Luke and Sharon run into Andrew’s room to find he has committed suicide. “I know it’s a terrible thing, we’d better go, there’s nothing more we can do for him now” Luke says rather nonchalantly to Sharon. The police and the ambulance arrive and take away Andrew’s body. Inside the house, the police inform Luke and Sharon that Andrew had left a suicide note confessing that he was behind the murders of Elsa and Debra, over an old argument which is detailed in the note. Wait… What?! I wasn’t even aware they knew one another. Luke had to give Elsa instructions to find the house, plus they seemed pretty happy eating dinner together.

Luke, picking out the obvious flaw in this story (apart from the fact we have seen all along that it wasn’t Andrew performing the murders) asks the policemen how Andrew could have performed the murders, seeing as he was a blind man. “He’d been living in this house for 20 years, he knew it by memory, didn’t need any eyes” one of the policemen replies dramatically. The policemen go on to say that it wouldn’t have been difficult to lure the women into the basement, especially with the help of the dog. Now, guide dogs are amazing but I seriously doubt their powers of persuasion are that great. The policemen put the death of Martha down to her probably disturbing Andrew and the dog during one of the murder attempts and the dog attacked her after getting spooked. Alas, Luke doesn’t try to set the record straight with the police, thinking that a written confession is likely to be taken more seriously than some story about witchcraft. With nothing more to say, Luke and Sharon drive away from the house, vowing to never visit again.

Later that night, Luke and Sharon check into a hotel and start having passionate sex (looks like they are a couple now). “I want to forget, help me to, you can do it” Luke says mid-coital embrace; that man sure does know how to talk dirty.

We then cut to Luke, having his reoccurring nightmare again, running away from the sound of dogs barking in the distance. As per usual, Luke makes his way into the house and then into the kitchen after following the familiar sound of the rusty chain swinging from side to side. The old woman stops stirring the cauldron and looks at Luke, laughing, before picking up his severed head ready to plunge it into the boiling water.

Suddenly Luke awakens, still in the hotel room, but Sharon is nowhere to be seen. Luke gets dressed and rushes out of the hotel to try and find her. A member of the hotel staff informs Luke that Sharon left several hours earlier and drove away in quite a hurry. Luke then jumps into his car (despite the fact that Luke and Sharon drove to the hotel in the same car and Sharon has already taken, or stolen?, a car) and drives off to the house. As he approaches, his engine begins to smoke and the car breaks down. Luke gets out of the car to check under the hood when a group of hunters walk past him with some dogs. Not the most likely looking group of hunting dogs I might add. Luke tries to engage with the hunters but they ignore him and carry on walking into the woods.

In the next shot, we see Luke running through the woods with the dogs barking in the background. In this context, it’s not actually clear that the dogs are chasing him, as we were led to believe from the nightmare sequences. The dogs certainly didn’t take much notice of Luke when they walked past in the previous scene. Luke makes his way through the gates into the house and through to the kitchen where, true to form, the old woman is stirring the cauldron and cackling away to herself. The door slams behind Luke and then the old woman’s head morphs into Sharon’s head, in a slightly dodgy looking effect as it looks like Sharon doesn’t have a neck.

Sharon tells Luke that she is actually a witch, just like her mother was, and the body found in the house when Andrew was renovating was one of her ancestors. She goes on to say that Andrew didn’t write the note confessing to murders and they were all committed by her with Martha used do her evil deeds. In fact, according to Sharon, the only thing wrong with Martha was her sleep walking. That doesn’t explain her reaction to the car crash victims though, she still acted like a bit of a bitch.

Sharon begins to laugh hysterically when the grim reaper appears and decapitates Luke with his scythe. Sharon picks Luke’s head off the floor (looking uncannily like an Action Man head) and she drops it into the cauldron. Poor Luke, I’m not sure what he had done to Sharon, or even if they had met prior to meeting at the house. Was he that bad in bed? Furthermore, was Sharon making him have nightmares about the old woman? If so, why? Plus, there is no mention of Steven and if the police ever found his body in the well. I dunno, but it doesn’t really matter. As Sharon cackles away, the credits roll. The end.

“The House Of Witchcraft” is a fairly basic, haunted house type story with a few memorable characters and scenes. To use a term coined by film critic Mark Kermode, the direction of the film is very “tab A into slot B” but that doesn’t really matter. The cinematography is pretty good, and doesn’t suffer the same flatness that “The Sweet House Of Horrors” did. I’m not sure where the film is set but the house and the surrounding countryside are beautiful, of which the film makes good use.

The murder scenes are pretty standard, but the old woman is very creepy and she is a memorable villain, despite never saying anything apart from chuckling to herself. Andy J. Forest and Ted Rusoff make a likeable lead in the form of Luke, and he has great chemistry with Marina Giulia Cavalli as Sharon and she manages to switch from nice girl next door to cackling evil witch with ease. There is some chuckle inducing dubbing and dialogue but this only added to my enjoyment of the film.

The score by Claudio Simonetti of Goblin fame (under the pseudonym Claude King) is nicely done and brings out the most of the eerie situations on screen. Sadly the soundtrack doesn’t appear to be available to purchase, not that is much of a surprise as it is a largely forgotten TV movie.

“The House Of Witchcraft” is fairly unremarkable in some ways but I find it extremely watchable. There’s something quite comforting about it’s mediocrity and whenever I do watch it, I feel like I’m being wrapped up in a warm blanket… a warm blanket of mediocrity. That sounds like a negative thing but it’s really not. The film is played safe but the fact it manages to maintain that throughout is kind of commendable. The film never drags as there is always something going on and skips along at a pretty brisk pace. In fact, this is one of the most enjoyable films I have reviewed on this blog so far.

If you want a decent haunted house story, with some funny dialogue and a few entertaining kills, then look no further because this has you covered. I will say, however, that the film is never “seat-joltingly disturbing” as the DVD cover states. Although, I guess putting “like a warm blanket of mediocrity” probably wouldn’t sell the film quite as well!