Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Patience Watson One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Leofwine_draca Lucio Fulci directed plenty of memorable horror films in his time but sadly this isn't one of them. Made in the late '80s, when Italian genre cinema was pretty much going to the dogs/on its last legs, this is one in a series of four television films centred around haunted houses, and is the worst of the four. It's a shame because it starts off on a good footing, with Fulci at his gory best as he delivers a pair of gory murders that are definitely not for the squeamish: one poor guy has his head caved in while a woman has her eyes popped out with a knife.Weirdly, the film then changes tack entirely and becomes a kid's film! We follow two children as they communicate with their ghostly parents, who are represented by a couple of flying flames superimposed over the screen – effects so bad that similar ones in SPIRITUAL KUNG FU, a Jackie Chan film made a full ten years previously to this, were far superior! Somehow the horror is forgotten about except in a couple of brief moments and instead we're treated to an annoying kiddie fantasy flick, with laboured comedy and no reason to watch.I kept hoping that things would pick up, but aside from a fairly nasty road accident and the hilarious intervention of an exorcist, they don't. Lowlights include a possessed excavator and the worst child acting in movie history (worse than TROLL 2), made even worse by the fact that the English dub has female adults dubbing the voices of the boy and girl actors! Speaking of which, the cast is a diabolical bunch of unfamiliars, aside from the reliable Lino Salemme (the cocaine goon in DEMONS) and Vernon Dobtcheff's engaging exorcist. There really is no reason to watch this non-event of a film, which promises so much and delivers nothing at all. Even in the company of the just-okay other films in the series it falls flat, and I would tell anyone to avoid this boring trash.

Joe Ebbasi Of all the cheaply made films I've ever seen this has the most ludicrous conclusion I've ever seen. I'm not sure if the film ever had any proper script but the way the narrative is bizarrely severed at a point when an adequate conclusion was completely viable indicates that the money had run out. There was no money left to pay for fuel for the digging machine and no money left to pay the actors. There was, however, enough money to pay for a rubber hand and a blowtorch to position out of shot to melt the hand. In the context of what went before this finale there is absolutely no meaning in this moment. At a huge stretch: the power of the spirits of the dead parents of the two (f***ing irritating!) children is so strong that they cannot be driven from the house and this is most aptly manifested by the incredible heat generated by the glowing rocks they are capable of inhabiting. How this proves conclusive is lost on me. The general premise of the film is that the spirits of the couple who are brutally murdered (a gentle head slamming for him; a meticulous face-mashing with some kind of kitchen implement for her) at the beginning are present in their house, now inhabited by their children, an aunt and an uncle. They gradually ramp up their efforts to stop the house being sold to a fat real estate agent (so important he has his own chauffeur-drive Mercedes), exorcised by an extra from Moby Dick or demolished by a swarthy, mulleted Italian in a digger. They do this through various incredible methods, such as moving a stair so that the real estate agent takes a tumble and breaks a leg (that only seems to require bandaging), making a demolition digger spin uncontrollably, lifting a jeep off the ground to stop it leaving the grounds with the children and heating up the real estate dude's crutch so that it violently burns his hand and reduces him to a Kermit the Frog voiced wreck. The spirits appear as two flames, a blue shred of spectral vapour, glowing pebbles, a toy fly and in the original human image of the mother and father. The coherence of the whole thing is hindered massively by the dreadful dubbing into English of the children's voices. They babble unintelligibly throughout and matters aren't helped by their constant sobbing and idiotic laughter. The film's other dialogue is generally awkward and unconvincing, characterised by that unnatural tone common of many dubbed films. Despite this, I feel that the narrative would remain disjointed and illogical even if delivered in its original language. Without a window into the children's joint psyche we are unable to contextualise their part in the events inside the house. Are they just weird kids, playing up because they've been orphaned or is there supposed to be an undertone of supernatural insight to their cruel and eerie behaviour? It's unclear. One is left with a desire for the aunt and uncle to leave the little oddities in the house with their spirit parents and get away from the nonsense ensuing there. Ultimately the parents' have had their revenge on their killer from beyond the grave and would surely be content to keep the house intact and the kids there. F** 'em, let them get on with it with their weirdo kids. To sum up: it plods aimlessly, with no natural conclusion in sight. The effects are hit and miss. The acting is decent enough on the part of the adults but the kids are utterly useless and the sobbing, dubbed voices steal at least half of the plot's sense. Avoid!

The_Void Normally, I wouldn't expect anything from a made for TV Italian horror flick; but this one was directed by the great Lucio Fulci, and his first entry in the House tetralogy (a collaboration with Umberto Lenzi), House of Clocks, was a nice little film and so my expectations went up for this one. However, it has to be said that The Sweet House of Horrors is one of Fulci's very worst efforts, as the only really striking thing about it is a pair of irritating kids who, combined, rival the awful Giovanni Frezza in Fulci's House by the Cemetery for sheer irritation. The plot focuses on a house where a couple were murdered. However, it's not the end of the line for them as the dead people return to get revenge for their murder, protect their kids who are still living in the house, and to prevent the house from being sold. The way that the film plods out is almost completely devoid of interesting scenes, and strangely Fulci puts the focus on the kids and it makes the film seems almost childlike. The gore that Fulci is famous for only really appears in one sequence, and it's not even that good as it just feels out of place in the context of the film. Fulci made some brilliant horror films over his vast career; but this isn't one of them. Not recommended.

suspiria10 A couple moves into a nice country mansion to care for their niece and nephew after the children's parents are brutally murdered one night returning from a cocktail party. Strange things begin happening so the couple decide to take the children away and sell the house. But it soon becomes apparent that the house is full of spirits that are out for revenge and have some sort of connection to the kids.This Lucio Fulci made-for-Italian-TV horror isn't one of his best to be sure but it does seem to have a bit of its own charm. The overall story is a bit nutty (a murder thriller with a supernatural twist) but I thought decent enough. The English dubbing was God awful as most of these imports tend to be so the acting comes off as uneven and even hilarious. But Fulci fans should check it out just because and those with a fondness for little cheesy a la Italiano might be interested too. 2 of 5