Editorials
[Butcher Block] Lucio Fulci’s Gory ‘The House by the Cemetery’
Butcher Block is a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films and the minds behind them. Dedicated to graphic gore and splatter, each week will explore the dark, the disturbed, and the depraved in horror, and the blood and guts involved. For the films that use special effects of gore as an art form, and the fans that revel in the carnage, this series is for you.
Within a two-year span, gore master Lucio Fulci released his Gates of Hell trilogy; City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, and The House by the Cemetery. It’s an unofficial trilogy, as these films aren’t connected in any way in terms of plot. But there is a recurring Lovecraftian influence, a ton of gore, and actress Catriona MacColl plays a lead in all three. While the first two entries went large scale apocalyptic, The House by the Cemetery opted for a pared down haunted house story. Of course, in Fulci’s hands, a traditional haunted house becomes anything but. Instead of ghosts and walls that drip blood, this New England home paints the floors red with the entrails of unlucky victims.
Opening with a woman wandering an abandoned home in search of her boyfriend, she finds his bloody corpse hanging just in time to get a knife shoved through her skull and out of her mouth. If this isn’t your first brush with Fulci, then it’s no surprise that he gets up close and personal with the carnage. Cut to New York City, where our central family are setting up a move that will transport them to that very same New England home from the opening. Norman Boyle’s colleague Dr. Peterson was conducting important research in the house, but he abruptly killed his mistress and hung himself. Because this mysterious research is so important, Norman moves his wife Lucy (MacColl) and son Bob (Giovanni Frezza) into the house so that he can complete Dr. Peterson’s work. But Bob’s new babysitter Ann (Ania Pieroni) is behaving suspiciously, and a mysterious little girl named Mae keeps warning him away- though he’s the only one who can see her.
Naturally, the Boyle family will soon realize that vicious bats are the least of their problems.
Though The House by the Cemetery has a more coherent plot than many of Fulci’s supernatural horror films, it still retains Fulci’s preference of creating mood and feeling over logic. Meaning there are plenty of story and logic inconsistencies, as well as moments that will leave you scratching your head. Like Ann scrubbing up a big puddle of blood from the kitchen floor; neither she or Lucy seems phased by that. Ann, as a character, remains one of the biggest mysteries. She seems to be aware of the horrors lurking in the basement, or at least drawn to it, but it’s never explained- her decapitation ends any further character development or reveals. Bob’s ghostly friendship with Mae seems like it’s from a different movie altogether, quite likely part of an earlier version of the script from screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti, who drew inspiration from The Turn of the Screw.
So, between that, Lovecraft’s influence, and a bit of Frankenstein thrown in with Fulci’s splatter-filled sensibility, this one is a true collage of haunted house weirdness.
Eventually, the house’s secrets are revealed. It’s not ghosts to blame for this creepy New England haunt, but an undead Dr. Freudstein. The living, worm-filled corpse of a Victorian mad doctor, Dr. Freudstein long ago discovered a way to keep his undead body going with the blood of victims. He also happens to revel in his kills. Though not as gory as perhaps the previous two entries in the Gates of Hell trilogy, this film still has decapitations, brutal throat ripping, scissors to the chest, multiple stabbings, and one gnarly death by poker. The Boyle’s real estate agent gets the slowest, bloodiest death of all.
The effectiveness of the gore has as much to do with the intimate way Fulci lingers on it as it does the special makeup effects by Giannetto De Rossi. De Rossi previously worked with Fulci on fan favorites The Beyond and Zombie, and he’s the mind behind some of the most memorable kills in Fulci’s films. His stellar work eventually made him a commodity stateside, where he worked on films like Dune, Rambo III, and Conan the Destroyer. More recently, he delivered the splattery goods in High Tension. His gore earned The House by the Cemetery a spot in the prosecuted section of the infamous Video Nasties list. The film didn’t pass for uncut release until 2009.
No matter your ranking of this film in the Gates of Hell trilogy, it’s still a rare instance where the haunted house story goes full splatter. Most families move into a haunted house and flee after the supernatural presence proves too much. In Fulci’s hands, don’t expect the family to get out alive. Even if it borrows from familiar stories that came before, Fulci’s style and use of gore makes it feel fresh. And there’s always one of horror’s best screamers in Bob.
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
You must be logged in to post a comment.