The Sweet House of Horrors (1989)

Redundant and unnecessary.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

After the first few minutes of re-watching this film, I thought I'd been a bit harsh on it. It looked great, had a really excellent opening scene, and seemed to have all the Fulci trademarks out there loud and proud. Then those damn kids turned up and the whole film turned into a pile of crap.One night, two people arrive at their house after a night out, talking complete boll*cks about this and that, and discussing their children, wherever they are at the time. After getting themselves geared up for a bit of filthy squeezy, they discover the world's worst burglar, who proceeds to smash the guy's brains out and do a bit of good old eyeball removal on the lady (just like Ghosthouse and Killing Birds), then for good measure, he smashes in the guy's face with a poker. He then wraps the corpses in sheets, chucks them in a car, chucks the car over a cliff, then burns the sheets. So far, so Italian horror film.We then switch to the funeral, where Auntie and Uncle (don't ask me to remember their names) are in attendance with the recently orphaned kids, and I'm no doctor but these two kids are seriously bi-polar. One minute they're crying their eyes out, and the next they're laughing their arses off at the priest getting a fly on his nose. Also, Lino Salemme (Demons, Delerium) shows up as Guido the caretaker, looking pretty guilty.So off we go back to the house, with Aunt and Uncle, and Auntie doesn't like the house one bit. For starters, there's all sorts of creepy crap going on in the attic, and the kids aren't acting too sane either. They invite a real estate agent over to value the house, whom the kids call Mr Sausage. He's trying to walk up a flight of stairs when the ghosts of Mum and Dad cause him to fall, which makes the kids bust a guy laughing, even after Auntie tells them off.They kids also start to creep out Guido, who starts hallucinating bloody sheets everywhere, which gives us an extended version of what happened at the start of the film (probably also to give us some gore, which this film is sorely lacking). Of course, Guido was the murderer at the start (and that's no spoiler as we kind of know this anyway) and the ghosts drive him insane and to his death.For some reason (and "For Some Reason" would make a great alternative title for this film) Fulci decides to do this in the middle of the film, which leaves us with roughly forty five minutes of film left with these two kids and their parents. The parents, by the way, periodically turn up as crappy, giggling flames that dance around the place while the son wants them to come back from the moon while crying his eyes out before laughing his ass off. Jesus.Aunt, like the audience by this point, has had enough of this crap and wants out of the house, so we get another scene of grievous bodily harm being enacted on Mr Sausage while the kids roll about on the floor laughing. The parents also turn up as ghosts so now you get some cheeseball smooshy family stuff with the family (and dog! The family dog comes back too for some reason!) running around laughing and talking in Conquest-style reverbed voices while Aunt and Uncle arrange for an exorcist to show up.Also For Some Reason, some glowing rocks appear outside of the house. The exorcist tries his best to rid the ghosts of the house and then Mr Sausage turns up with a bulldozer and then it goes haywire and then the exorcist picks up one of those rocks and then his hand melts and then the kids crack up and then the film ends and then Fulci's ghost comes out of your television like Ring and batters you around the head with a baseball bat before pointing and laughing at you for three hours.I've watched nineteen Fulci films from Lizard in a woman's skin up until Demonia and this is by far the worst. In addition, I've recently been watching every Italian horror I can get my hands on from 1985 up until the industry died a death roughly around the mid nineties, and this is the worst of them too! Sometimes I think something gets lost in translation with these films, but here I have no idea what Fulci was aiming for with this one – It's like a horror comedy with extreme gore that is neither scary or funny. Or makes any sense. Looks good though. Next up: Ratman!

A couple, Charles and Marcia, adopt two tragically orphaned children. The new family moves into the dead parents' beautiful old home and is haunted by strange sounds. Soon, the couple is forced to sell the place and take the kids away, but the house is dead against letting them leave. Learn the blood-curdling truth about the parents' deaths and the shocking secret behind the possessed "Sweet House of Horrors". Direct by horror maestro Lucio Fulci, this one is really not good one, but you can check it out if you are a true Fulci's fun. About a two children which after they're parents are brutally murder have to go to fosters parents. Story is really not bad but somehow it doesn't work this time for Mr. Fulci.

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.

A couple is killed in an extremely sadistic way, but their souls return to their two orphaned children to caress them, to take revenge on the killer and to mock the relatives who want to sell the house and the one who wants to buy it respectively. Sounds odd for a Fulci movie, doesn't it?And it really is kind of odd. It starts like a typical Fulci-gorefest with the murder scene which has to be seen to be believed, especially when one considers this one was made for TV. But after this unbelievably violent prologue, the whole thing turns into a fairy tale. There are even scenes that could come right out of a typical Italian slapstick comedy! So, "La Dolce Casa degli Orrori" is an extremely strange mix of genres, and most of the special effects are very cheesy, although the murder scene is outrageously disgusting.It's not bad, but by far inferior to Fulci's other film in the four part TV-series Houses of Doom, "La Casa nel Tempo", which is terrific (the other two are by Umberto Lenzi and called "La Casa delle Anime Erranti" and "La Casa dei Sortilegi").