La casa del sortilegio

The House of Witchcraft (1989)

* (out of 4)

Luke (Andy J. Forest) is having nightmares of an old castle where some strange things are happening. His wife (Sonia Petrovna) decides to get him away from their home for a relaxing vacation but the spot she takes him is the same place from his dreams.

THE HOUSE OF WITCHCRAFT was part of a four film series that was made for Italian television. Two films were directed by Umberto Lenzi and the other two by Lucio Fulci but all four films have a pretty poor reputation and there's no question that this one here was much worse than either of Fulci's. There are all sorts of problems with this movie, which we will get to in a moment but it's clear that the Italian horror genre was in the middle of a very ugly death.

As I said, there are all sorts of problems with this film including the fact that the screenplay is incredibly bland and unoriginal. How many horror films have we seen where someone is haunted by dreams and then they end up at the place they're dreaming about? Lenzi certainly doesn't do anything fresh with the idea and we're left with a very boring story and even more boring characters. There's not a single scare to be had here and what's worse is that the film stays away from any graphic violence or gore.

Both Forest and Petronva are pretty bland in their roles and the only one who really brings anything is Paul Muller who appears in a few scenes. It was great getting to see the Jess Franco regular here but sadly he couldn't even save the picture. THE HOUSE OF WITCHCRAFT is one of the most unoriginal films that I've seen from Lenzi and it's really too bad that it turned out so poor.

This is one of the two films Umberto Lenzi made for the Italian four part TV-series Houses of Doom, Lucio Fulci helming the others. A young man dreams a recurring nightmare, in which he is running away from someone before he's reaching an old house, where an ugly old woman boils his own head in a big kettle. His girlfriend thinks it's good for him to take a few days off and they drive to an old house that belongs to her family. The house is the one the young man always enters in his nightmare...

Even though the production values are rather low-key, this film is really uncanny and sometimes quite disturbing. Lenzi delivers chilling atmosphere, a classic Freudian nightmare and a decent plot about witchcraft and haunted houses. More thrilling than his other film for the series ("La Casa delle Anime Erranti"; Fulci's two films are "La Casa nel Tempo" and "La Dolce Casa degli Orrori"). In short: This film offers an almost old-fashioned witch story that actually works.

This was the second to last of a quartet of films, unofficially known as the 'House Quartet', that were made in Italy in 1989. Having seen Lucio Fulci's two efforts - the good House of Clocks and the pretty terrible Sweet House of Horrors - I wasn't going into this one with much hope. It would seem that Lenzi's two efforts in this series aren't as well watched as Fulci's, and based on the strength of this film - it's not hard to see why. Umberto Lenzi definitely had the ability to make good films - his crime flicks are second to none, and most of his Giallo output was pretty good, but towards the end of his career he didn't seem to care much, and this is one of his careless efforts. The film was made for TV, and this is made obvious through the plot, which is entirely mundane and basically follows a man who travels to a house after suffering loads of nightmares. The film doesn't have much going for it; the cinematography is bland, the acting is nothing to write home about and the story didn't deserve a film to be based on it. Here in the UK, this film has a release by the cheapo DVD label 'Vipco' - and it completely fits into their little series as it's such a 'bare bones' film. Overall - not recommended!

This was my second House of Doom viewing, having previously enjoyed Lucio Fulci's House of Clocks. Witchcraft opens with a man having a reoccurring nightmare in which he enters a house only to find an old hag/witch boiling his decapitated head in a cauldron! This plays a significant and fairly predicable part of the plot. We get bad dubbing, some laughable script, good looking woman and reasonably gory deaths, though this made for TV movie is very tame compared to director Umberto Lenzi's other films, eg the notorious Cannibal Ferox. I'm a big fan of Italian horror and I got my fix, it's just far from being a classic.

The third entry into the Le Case Maledette franchise. German label X Rated Kult called it Ghosthouse 4 although it was officially never released under that name. But it fits perfectly into the franchise but in fact it had nothing to do with the first entry.

Again, it was directed by Lenzi and that's the reason why it was given the name Ghosthouse 4. The effects are again laughable. The witch has a black teeth but when we see close ups you can see it was painted black, or even one face is just painted with colours to give it a demonic look. I guess a lot of toddlers would do it better. The story is okay because there are a few flashbacks with Carlo (Jean-Christophe Brétigniere) looking towards his own severed head. Again Lenzi added a skull with maggots towards the end, a thing he did earlier.

The acting was rather okay this time with Cinzia Monreale being the biggest name (Buio Omega (1979) and The Beyond (1982)). For non horror geeks Vernon Dobtcheff was seen in In The Name Of The Rose (1986) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

Outdated and even a bit cheesy to todays standards and as I stated earlier in other reviews, very low on everything.

Gore 1/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 1/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5