Au-delà des ténèbres

"La Casa 5"/"Beyond Darkness" is another lamentable horror film from Claudio Fragasso,the man behind incredibly awful "Troll 2"(1990).The plot is simple:a priest(Gene Le Brock)and his family move into new house.Unfortunately the house was built over the place where twenty witches were burnt at the stake.Soon the terror begins..."La Casa 5" is a typical Italian possessed house horror which owes a lot to "The Amityville Horror"(1979).The script is mediocre,the acting is horrible and there is absolutely no gore.The special effects are also pretty bad including a possessed radio and flying cleaver.The film is not as painful as "Troll 2",but it's close.Skip it.My rating:4 out of 10.

Fun little film that seems to combine The Amityville Horror and Poltergeis , tie in a little of The Exorcists and you've got the plot. If you're into a lot of gore then this one probably isn't for you but worth a watch if nothing else is around. 5/10

From the director of "Troll 2" comes this moderately amusing haunted house / exorcism movie. Gene Lebrock ("Metamorphosis") stars as Father Peter, a reverend who moves with his family into a house of horrors. Not surprisingly, terrible things happened on the same grounds many years ago, and Father Peter must team up with the intense Father George (David Brandon) to take on the forces of evil and save his son Martin (who's played by Michael Stephenson, a.k.a. the young hero of "Troll 2").

Flagrantly bad acting combines with director Claudio Fragassos' extravagant efforts to show the audience a good time. Fragasso gives this silly movie as much atmosphere as he possibly can, but the screenplay, which he wrote with Rossella Drudi, is pretty inane. The music score by Carlo Maria Cordio is over the top, which seems like an attempt to distract the audience from the fact that we're not seeing anything particularly interesting or unusual in this movie. The visual effects are variable, the makeup effects not that bad at all.

The hunky Lebrock is very much a stiff, but "Friday the 13th" series fans might enjoy seeing actress Barbara Bingham (Mrs. Van Deusen in "Jason Takes Manhattan") in the role of his wife. Brandon does an awful lot of gnawing on the scenery. One person who looks like they're having fun is Mary Coulson, who plays the gnarly old crone Bette.

One of the producers was an uncredited Joe D'Amato; the costume designer was Laura Gemser.

Five out of 10.

There's a reason why this claims to be a part of a series it's not: no one would watch it otherwise!

A collared priest enters a prison to give last rites to a middle aged female serial killer. Somehow she's stolen a number of stout children's souls, and the priest can see them. He's somehow affected by her evil holy book, which has a picture of Satan and a house in it that look much more recent than all the other pages. He turns into an alcoholic who staggers around town. Apparently he is possessed and also having a crisis of faith.

Anyway, another collared priest moves into the house from the book because an older priest gave it to him for him and his family of four. There's a strange giant black swan rocker in the children's room they assume was a gift for the kids. One of the doors has a poorly- bricked and stuccoed wall behind it with a slit that glows. Obviously supernatural bad stuff starts happening soon, but the family for some reason stays. Turns out the older priest knew that the entire family would be in danger, but he thought it would be a good idea anyway for some reason.

The movie is filled with terrible editing, terrible dialogue, and terrible plotting. The special effects aren't so good, mainly the house being full of smoke and red light as the cast has sweaty faces. There's a bunch of somewhat spooky zombie witches. A mixture of witches and innocent women had been burned at the stake on the site years ago. What the connection is to the serial killer is anyone's guess.

It's a poor mix of The Amityville Horror (haunted house), The Exorcist (exorcists, possession and crisis of faith), and Poltergeist (child taken into other world, stuff flying around). Don't bother! Who would actually believe this as a sequel to Evil Dead?

The most glaring flaw of this film is that it features a married Catholic priest. Not a former priest, but a priest-priest. I know you're asking yourself, how is that possible? It's not.

Beyond Darkness (not to be confused with the much more famous Beyond the Darkness) was directed by an Italian but set in the United States. Apparently this poor soul was under the impression that there were married priests in America because he saw Protestant preachers on TV? Just baffling.

Otherwise this is a very bland, middling rip off of Poltergeist. Nothing special, was probably a Friday night movie on a major network channel in 1990.