As covered in our review of The House of Lost Souls, Umberto Lenzi and Lucio Fulci were hired to direct two movies each for The Houses of Doom TV series. The films were supposed to be broadcast on an Italian TV station except they were much more scary than what’s allowed to be aired on primetime in Rome. These two horror legends didn’t want to compromise their cinema for the small screen. They weren’t going to tease the audiences who had enjoyed their previous films. The House of Witchcraft lets Umberto Lenzi create a horror film that fits in with his other scary films from this period. His Ghosthouse came out theatrically in 1988, right before this film was supposed to be released on TV. A viewer of both movies would not notice a difference in fright levels. The House of Witchcraft does not obscure its spells on the screen.
Luke Palmer (Lambada‘s Andy J. Forest) has been having a lot of nightmares. This concerns his wife Martha (The Greatest American Hero‘s Sonia Petrovna). She rents them a country house to give him time to get away from the bad dreams. Maybe being in nature and not stuck in the city is what he need to calm down. As they head out of town, they get involved in a traffic wreck. Martha keeps on driving away from the scene of the crime. He begs her to stop. Martha says with a cold tone, “It’s no use. They’re dead.” She hits the brakes anyway so he can confirm her prediction. Then she has him get in the car before the cops arrive and screw up their vacation. They get to the house and Luke discovers the owner Andrew Mason (Lady Frankenstein‘s Paul Muller) is going to still be around. He’s a blind pianist who starts feeling up Luke’s face as they talk. The country air doesn’t seem to help him sleep. He hears a noise outside, opens the window and looks down to see a scary old woman swinging an ax on a priest in the yard. He’s gets even more weirded out the next day when he enters a local church to find the priest from the yard inside a coffin. Martha completely changing during this vacation. She almost drives over Andrew’s seeing eye dog. Who is this woman? Luke finds himself getting chummy with Andrew’s niece Sharon (Red Shoes Diaries‘ Marina Giulia Cavalli) so he might be getting a whole new life. This is not going to be a relaxing time in the country for Luke.
Lenzi created the AirBnB nightmare of staying at a house in the country while the owner is still on the property before the website appeared. It’s bad enough that you’re dealing with a ghostly killer witch on the ground, but then the owner starts having health problems. Can you get your money back for such a situation? It’s easy to figure out why the Italian TV station wasn’t eager to run the film in primetime. Having an old witch chopping up a Catholic priest with an ax might get a few letters from viewers in Vatican City. Thankfully the Italian TV station didn’t use the witch’s ax to slash apart the film to make it broadcast ready. Like The House of Lost Souls, Umberto Lenzi doesn’t hold back visually in The House of Witchcraft.
Music Note: Goblin member Claudio Simonetti created the synth score although they use the name Claude King in the credits.
The Video is 1.66:1 anamorphic. The 2K restoration looks so good even though the film was supposedly shot on 16mm. The Audio is DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono in both English and Italian. It appears both tracks were created in ADR so pick the language you want to experience. The movie is subtitled in English.
Audio Commentary with Eugenio Ercolani, Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth. This is good since Howarth wrote a book on Lenzi. He brings up a creative connection between Lenzi and Fulci in their early days. There’s also talk of witchcraft in Lenzi’s movie. They point out that this was the first of the four films. They talk about how the Lenzi movies didn’t get much exposure in America like the Fulci duo.
Artisan of Mayhem (19:26) interviews FX artist Elio Terribili in his room full of guns for the movies. He talks about the level of trust the must be there between the FX crew, the cast and the stuntmen to make things look just right on the screen. He talks about the people he worked with while learning filmmaking. This studying included trampolines and explosives. He gets into how firearms are made safe for Italian film sets. He also called Fulci a “one of a kind, weirdo.” The two got along for some reason he doesn’t know. He gets into his argument with Lenzi during this production. This also involved them rooting for rival soccer clubs.
The House of Professionals (18:36) interviews cinematographer Nina Celeste. He had been working as a cinematographer since the ’60s. He stepped up to Director of Photography rather fast. He talks about shooting an entire film for Fulci with only 9,000 meters of film. He gets into dealing with Fulci on the set. He says Dario Argento was supposed to do films for the series.
Cauldron Films presents The House of Witchcraft. Directed by Umberto Lenzi. Screenplay by Umberto Lenzi. Starring Andy J. Forest, Sonia Petrovna, Susanna Martinková, Marina Giulia Cavalli, Paul Muller, Maria Stella Musy, Alberto Frasca, Maria Cumani Quasimodo. Running Time: 90 minutes. Rated: Unrated. Release Date:
