La dolce casa degli orrori

Plot synopsis:
After being murdered by a burglar, a couple return as spirits to care for their two young children. They also seek revenge against their murderer and try to prevent their house from being demolished.
Mary and Roberto Valdi (Lubka Cibolo and Pascal Persiano) return home from a party to find a masked intruder ransacking their elegant country house. The masked man attacks and brutally kills both of them, and then disguises their deaths as an auto accident by driving their dead bodies to an isolated hilltop in their own car and pushing it over the edge. (The murder scene is incredibly graphic and gory for a TV movie, but strangely the remainder of the film is very tame, almost like a Spielberg movie suitable for kids.)
At their parents funeral, bereaved children Sarah (Ilary Blasi) and Marco (Giuliano Gensini) exhibit a strange mixture of grief and stifled hilarity, chewing gum whilst weeping and giggling at the elderly priest (Dante Fioretti) conducting the graveside ceremony. The children's Aunt Marcia, Mary Valdi's younger sister (Cinzia Monreale) and Uncle Carlo, her husband (Jean Christophe Bretigniere), decide to stay with the children at the Valdi house while arrangements are made to sell the property. When Carlo is called away on business, Marcia spends an uneasy night at the Valdi house without him. Disturbed during the night, she explores the attic and is frightened by a giant toy fly which seems to attack her.
Over the next few days, Sarah and Marco are adamant that they wish to continue living at the house and are openly hostile to Mr. Colby (Franco Diogene), the real estate agent whom Carlo brings to the house. When the overweight Mr. Colby suffers an accident at the house after falling down a flight of stairs, the children laugh maliciously. Meanwhile, the Valdi's gardener Guido (Lino Salemme) watches over the events with suspicion. A flashback recalled by Guido reveals that he was the masked intruder who broke into the house to rob it, only to be surprised when his employers returned sooner than anticipated, and he was forced to kill them. Elsewhere, Marcia becomes more and more scared of the house, and supernatural presences make themselves felt.
That night, Sarah and Marco are visited in their beds by floating flames which they suspect represent their dead parents. The following morning, Guido is about accept an generous check from Carlo for renovation of the house when a violent flashback, brought on by the supernatural forces within the house, shocks him into screaming his guilt for all to hear. He runs off and accidentally gets run over and killed by an oncoming truck on the road.
The following day, the injured Mr. Colby returns, but is attacked by a violent wind-storm in the hallway. Supernatural flames appear and heat up his crutches, burning his hands, making him fall down. Terrified, but defiant, he leaves the house again. That evening, Sarah and Marco conduct a masked ritual to contact the spirit world. They asks their parents to manifest themselves and to look after them. Their wish is somehow granted and they are greeted by their parents ghosts. Sarah and Marco are finally happy and able to spend more time with their loving, but non-corporeal parents, at any time they wish. But Marcia and Carlo cannot see the ghosts and they try to bundle the children into their car, intending to leave the house and return to their own home. However, a ghostly fog prevents them from getting very far and they are forced to return. The frightened couple bring in a medium, an arrogant, caped 'spirit challenger' (Alexander Vernon Dobtcheff) to exercise the house of the children's parents.
After a brief skirmish with the ghostly forces in the house, the spiritualist returns with a wrecking crew and a giant bulldozer and again commands the spirits of Mary and Roberto to leave the house before its smashed to rubble. For a while, the children try to inhabit an old lean-to playhouse they'd constructed, while the spiritualist, Mr. Colby, Marcia and Carlo are outside trying to persuade them to leave the building. The spirits of Sarah and Marco's parents enter two small stones as a way of staying with them forever wherever they go. The children finally walk out of the house where the spiritualist sees them hiding something in their pockets and tries to confiscate the stones. But when he picks up one, his right hand is melted away as he screams in agony. The family of living children and ghostly parents will apparently remain together.

Tags: psychedelic, murder, violence

Review:
Irritating kids in a lacklustre Fulci effort.
Normally, I wouldn't expect anything from a made for TV Italian horror flick; but this one was directed by the great Lucio Fulci, and his first entry in the House tetralogy (a collaboration with Umberto Lenzi), House of Clocks, was a nice little film and so my expectations went up for this one.
However, it has to be said that The Sweet House of Horrors is one of Fulci's very worst efforts, as the only really striking thing about it is a pair of irritating kids who, combined, rival the awful Giovanni Frezza in Fulci's House by the Cemetery for sheer irritation.
The plot focuses on a house where a couple were murdered.
However, it's not the end of the line for them as the dead people return to get revenge for their murder, protect their kids who are still living in the house, and to prevent the house from being sold.
The way that the film plods out is almost completely devoid of interesting scenes, and strangely Fulci puts the focus on the kids and it makes the film seems almost childlike.
The gore that Fulci is famous for only really appears in one sequence, and it's not even that good as it just feels out of place in the context of the film.
Fulci made some brilliant horror films over his vast career; but this isn't one of them.
S10 Reviews: The Sweet House of Horrors (1989).
A couple moves into a nice country mansion to care for their niece and nephew after the children's parents are brutally murdered one night returning from a cocktail party.
Strange things begin happening so the couple decide to take the children away and sell the house.
But it soon becomes apparent that the house is full of spirits that are out for revenge and have some sort of connection to the kids.This Lucio Fulci made-for-Italian-TV horror isn't one of his best to be sure but it does seem to have a bit of its own charm.
The overall story is a bit nutty (a murder thriller with a supernatural twist) but I thought decent enough.
The English dubbing was God awful as most of these imports tend to be so the acting comes off as uneven and even hilarious.
But Fulci fans should check it out just because and those with a fondness for little cheesy a la Italiano might be interested too.
After the first few minutes of re-watching this film, I thought I'd been a bit harsh on it.
It looked great, had a really excellent opening scene, and seemed to have all the Fulci trademarks out there loud and proud.
Then those damn kids turned up and the whole film turned into a pile of crap.One night, two people arrive at their house after a night out, talking complete boll*cks about this and that, and discussing their children, wherever they are at the time.
After getting themselves geared up for a bit of filthy squeezy, they discover the world's worst burglar, who proceeds to smash the guy's brains out and do a bit of good old eyeball removal on the lady (just like Ghosthouse and Killing Birds), then for good measure, he smashes in the guy's face with a poker.
So far, so Italian horror film.We then switch to the funeral, where Auntie and Uncle (don't ask me to remember their names) are in attendance with the recently orphaned kids, and I'm no doctor but these two kids are seriously bi-polar.
Also, Lino Salemme (Demons, Delerium) shows up as Guido the caretaker, looking pretty guilty.So off we go back to the house, with Aunt and Uncle, and Auntie doesn't like the house one bit.
For starters, there's all sorts of creepy crap going on in the attic, and the kids aren't acting too sane either.
They invite a real estate agent over to value the house, whom the kids call Mr Sausage.
He's trying to walk up a flight of stairs when the ghosts of Mum and Dad cause him to fall, which makes the kids bust a guy laughing, even after Auntie tells them off.They kids also start to creep out Guido, who starts hallucinating bloody sheets everywhere, which gives us an extended version of what happened at the start of the film (probably also to give us some gore, which this film is sorely lacking).
Of course, Guido was the murderer at the start (and that's no spoiler as we kind of know this anyway) and the ghosts drive him insane and to his death.For some reason (and "For Some Reason" would make a great alternative title for this film) Fulci decides to do this in the middle of the film, which leaves us with roughly forty five minutes of film left with these two kids and their parents.
The parents, by the way, periodically turn up as crappy, giggling flames that dance around the place while the son wants them to come back from the moon while crying his eyes out before laughing his ass off.
Jesus.Aunt, like the audience by this point, has had enough of this crap and wants out of the house, so we get another scene of grievous bodily harm being enacted on Mr Sausage while the kids roll about on the floor laughing.
The parents also turn up as ghosts so now you get some cheeseball smooshy family stuff with the family (and dog!
The family dog comes back too for some reason!) running around laughing and talking in Conquest-style reverbed voices while Aunt and Uncle arrange for an exorcist to show up.Also For Some Reason, some glowing rocks appear outside of the house.
The exorcist tries his best to rid the ghosts of the house and then Mr Sausage turns up with a bulldozer and then it goes haywire and then the exorcist picks up one of those rocks and then his hand melts and then the kids crack up and then the film ends and then Fulci's ghost comes out of your television like Ring and batters you around the head with a baseball bat before pointing and laughing at you for three hours.I've watched nineteen Fulci films from Lizard in a woman's skin up until Demonia and this is by far the worst.
In addition, I've recently been watching every Italian horror I can get my hands on from 1985 up until the industry died a death roughly around the mid nineties, and this is the worst of them too!
Sometimes I think something gets lost in translation with these films, but here I have no idea what Fulci was aiming for with this one – It's like a horror comedy with extreme gore that is neither scary or funny.
A couple is killed in an extremely sadistic way, but their souls return to their two orphaned children to caress them, to take revenge on the killer and to mock the relatives who want to sell the house and the one who wants to buy it respectively.
Sounds odd for a Fulci movie, doesn't it?And it really is kind of odd.
It starts like a typical Fulci-gorefest with the murder scene which has to be seen to be believed, especially when one considers this one was made for TV.
But after this unbelievably violent prologue, the whole thing turns into a fairy tale.
There are even scenes that could come right out of a typical Italian slapstick comedy!
So, "La Dolce Casa degli Orrori" is an extremely strange mix of genres, and most of the special effects are very cheesy, although the murder scene is outrageously disgusting.It's not bad, but by far inferior to Fulci's other film in the four part TV-series Houses of Doom, "La Casa nel Tempo", which is terrific (the other two are by Umberto Lenzi and called "La Casa delle Anime Erranti" and "La Casa dei Sortilegi")..
A murdered couple return from the beyond to care for their two young children, as well as seek revenge against their killer, accept their children's step parents, and try to prevent their house from being sold.So, Lucio Fulci made two television films around 1989.
"House of Clocks" is the other one, and sad to say it is the superior one.
This film lacks the gore, the horror and the things we typically associate with Fulci.
While it tries to build a fantasy world around the children ,it never seems fully successful (though I confess part of my problem was the bad dubbing on the kids).Given the framework Fulci was working in, it is not a bad film, but it is not one of his more memorable and comes off as fairly bland.
I would not call this his worst film, but it clearly is not among his best..
Good story, but this one does not work!.
A couple, Charles and Marcia, adopt two tragically orphaned children.
The new family moves into the dead parents' beautiful old home and is haunted by strange sounds.
Soon, the couple is forced to sell the place and take the kids away, but the house is dead against letting them leave.
Learn the blood-curdling truth about the parents' deaths and the shocking secret behind the possessed "Sweet House of Horrors".
Direct by horror maestro Lucio Fulci, this one is really not good one, but you can check it out if you are a true Fulci's fun.
About a two children which after they're parents are brutally murder have to go to fosters parents.
Story is really not bad but somehow it doesn't work this time for Mr. Fulci..
Of all the cheaply made films I've ever seen this has the most ludicrous conclusion I've ever seen.
I'm not sure if the film ever had any proper script but the way the narrative is bizarrely severed at a point when an adequate conclusion was completely viable indicates that the money had run out.
At a huge stretch: the power of the spirits of the dead parents of the two (f***ing irritating!) children is so strong that they cannot be driven from the house and this is most aptly manifested by the incredible heat generated by the glowing rocks they are capable of inhabiting.
The general premise of the film is that the spirits of the couple who are brutally murdered (a gentle head slamming for him; a meticulous face-mashing with some kind of kitchen implement for her) at the beginning are present in their house, now inhabited by their children, an aunt and an uncle.
They gradually ramp up their efforts to stop the house being sold to a fat real estate agent (so important he has his own chauffeur-drive Mercedes), exorcised by an extra from Moby Dick or demolished by a swarthy, mulleted Italian in a digger.
They do this through various incredible methods, such as moving a stair so that the real estate agent takes a tumble and breaks a leg (that only seems to require bandaging), making a demolition digger spin uncontrollably, lifting a jeep off the ground to stop it leaving the grounds with the children and heating up the real estate dude's crutch so that it violently burns his hand and reduces him to a Kermit the Frog voiced wreck.
The spirits appear as two flames, a blue shred of spectral vapour, glowing pebbles, a toy fly and in the original human image of the mother and father.
The coherence of the whole thing is hindered massively by the dreadful dubbing into English of the children's voices.
Without a window into the children's joint psyche we are unable to contextualise their part in the events inside the house.
Are they just weird kids, playing up because they've been orphaned or is there supposed to be an undertone of supernatural insight to their cruel and eerie behaviour?
One is left with a desire for the aunt and uncle to leave the little oddities in the house with their spirit parents and get away from the nonsense ensuing there.
Ultimately the parents' have had their revenge on their killer from beyond the grave and would surely be content to keep the house intact and the kids there.
F** 'em, let them get on with it with their weirdo kids.
The acting is decent enough on the part of the adults but the kids are utterly useless and the sobbing, dubbed voices steal at least half of the plot's sense.
Possibly Fulci's Worst.
I am by no means anti-Fulci.
Even his lesser trash like House of Clocks and Aenigma appeal to me.
I sorely regret his premature death from diabetes.That said, there is truth in the statement that "In Fulci's movies, the scenes that are unwatchable for being too gory are separated by scenes that are unwatchable for being too artsy." The problem with the awesomely named "Sweet House of Horror" is that it includes Fulci's "artsy" bent (though without his usual skill) but leaves entirely off his "gory" tendencies (admittedly, in a TV movie he was probably shackled to some extent).M. R.
James once explained that for a ghost story to be good, it had to include three things.
Second, the story should not use the psychic jargon of the moment, which spoils horror and turns it into technical chat.
Third, the ghost should be malign - a friendly ghost doesn't frighten.Sweet House of Horrors fails on all three counts.
First, the tale is in a huge old mansion inhabited by two of those cute Italian blond children hampered only by a congenital inability to act.
Can they not tell when a kid can't act?
The kids' evil aunt and uncle plot to murder them to seize the family inheritance for their own.
The plot makes no real sense, because the aunt and uncle are the kids' guardians, so presumably they have access to the money already.
But no other Italian film-maker worth his salt cared about logic, so let's move on.The second topic - don't mess with psychic jargon, is violated again and again.
We get all sorts of "rules" and "vibrations" and scenes of the parents appearing.
But here the Italian tendency to ignore logic serves the movie well, since the jargon conflicts with itself and is impossible to make heads or tails of, so it really doesn't violate James' rule all that strongly.The third topic is where the movie really falls down.
The ghosts are the kids' parents, whose only goal is to protect them from the evil relatives.
We learn this very early in the movie, and from then on we are completely without any terror at any moment.
When the ghosts appear, we know it is only to pick on the evil aunt and uncle, whom we hate already.
The only moments of tension are when auntie (or uncle) try to harm the kids, in a normal, physical fashion (like poisoning them).
But these moments aren't too bad, because we know the ghosts will save the kids, and the move has no gore or strong scenes anyway.This last is especially appalling given Fulci's previous track record in being perfectly willing to endanger or even kill kids - this added a lot of suspense, shock, and horror to his previous movies.
Or the threatened little boys in House by the Cemetery or City of the Walking Dead?
Hell, Fulci wiped out a whole passel of kids in Don't Torture A Duckling.
Those films were solid, scary, masterworks.
But the limpwristed Hollywood sensibility in Sweet House of Horror keeps us from being scared, just as we know in any Hollywood movie that no kid is ever going to be harmed, we know it here.The movie is also not saved by Fulci's normal knack for scene-setting.
The movie has a pallid washed-out fuzzy look that just enervates every single moment.
It is tedious to get through.I literally would recommend EVERY other Fulci movie above this one.
At least those movies had a couple of good moments.
Sweet House of Horror has none..
Haunted house horror masquerade turns out to be a rubbish kid's film.
Lucio Fulci directed plenty of memorable horror films in his time but sadly this isn't one of them.
Made in the late '80s, when Italian genre cinema was pretty much going to the dogs/on its last legs, this is one in a series of four television films centred around haunted houses, and is the worst of the four.
It's a shame because it starts off on a good footing, with Fulci at his gory best as he delivers a pair of gory murders that are definitely not for the squeamish: one poor guy has his head caved in while a woman has her eyes popped out with a knife.Weirdly, the film then changes tack entirely and becomes a kid's film!
We follow two children as they communicate with their ghostly parents, who are represented by a couple of flying flames superimposed over the screen – effects so bad that similar ones in SPIRITUAL KUNG FU, a Jackie Chan film made a full ten years previously to this, were far superior!
Somehow the horror is forgotten about except in a couple of brief moments and instead we're treated to an annoying kiddie fantasy flick, with laboured comedy and no reason to watch.I kept hoping that things would pick up, but aside from a fairly nasty road accident and the hilarious intervention of an exorcist, they don't.
Lowlights include a possessed excavator and the worst child acting in movie history (worse than TROLL 2), made even worse by the fact that the English dub has female adults dubbing the voices of the boy and girl actors!
There really is no reason to watch this non-event of a film, which promises so much and delivers nothing at all.
Even in the company of the just-okay other films in the series it falls flat, and I would tell anyone to avoid this boring trash.