La casa del sortilegio

The director Umberto Lenzi sure was fixated about severed heads and used them over and over again in his two TV-movies "The house of lost souls" and "The house of witchcraft". Doing the same thing doesn't do any favors for this film, it's just a fun turkey to watch with clumsy dialogue.

In these two Lenzi films they have people running around and about way too much but there's less of it in this film.

In all its cookiness this film isn't too bad either. It's more like a slasher with a touch of giallo genre but even for a giallo it's executed in a too straightforward way making the plot rather obvious and leaving very little mystery. In a way it's very American kind of film and that's not a good thing at all in my opinion.

Lenzi has done so many better films upon his career than his later works but still this film has got lots of positive things. Visuals, sets and cinematography are all very good for a TV-movie and upon all it didn't seem like the makers had taken it too seriously. They knew exactly what they were doing.

All in all this is better than "House of lost souls" and way better than "Sweet house of horrors". Fulci's "House of Clocks" however is the best of all these four TV-movies.

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an evil witch and some killings you may dare to watch this one - it will serve you with some nostalgic horror and outdated but still fun to watch gore effects (but only a very few, remember, the movie was produced for TV and not for cinema).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

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!

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