La casa del sortilegio

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Outdated and even a bit cheesy to todays standards and as I stated earlier in other reviews, very low on everything.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

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.

I like La casa del sortilegio aka The House Of Witchcraft, but it is for certain not one of Umberto Lenzi's best: Seven Blood Stained Orchids, Cannibal Ferox, Nightmare City and a few others are not challenged by this little flick. Anyway, if you like horror with the theme of black magic, an evil witch and some killings you may dare to watch this one - it will serve you with some nostalgic horror and outdated but still fun to watch gore effects (but only a very few, remember, the movie was produced for TV and not for cinema). The best part of The House Of Witchcraft is in my opinion that nice creepy soundtrack - synths supported by mysterious sounds and ghostly voices - a trademark of (Italian) horror movies of the 70s and 80s, and something everyone who want to become a serious maker, director or whatever of horror movies should study thoroughly. Only recommended for the true hardcore lover of Italian horror.

House of witchcraft is a movie about a man that comes to the house of his nightmares, strange things happen there. At first I thought it was rather tacky and cheep but after a while I changed my mind and the further the movie went on the more interesting it came.

I would say that it is rather exciting at times, even if there's no big surprises to be delivered.

Since I saw the English dubbed version it's difficult to judge the acting. The dubbing is fair though, but there's no way of knowing if the original dialog was as bad as in this version, a lot of strange "fabricated" sentences if you know what I mean.

6/10