Sweet House of Horrors Blu-ray Review

Caldron Films

Blu-ray Release: May 13, 2025 (following a 2024 limited edition four movie set)

Video: 1.66:1/1080p/Color

Audio: Italian and English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono

Subtitles: English, English SHD

Run Time: 82:47

Director: Lucio Fulci

Note: This is a review of Cauldron Films’ standalone release of Sweet House of Horrors. In preparation, I researched and wrote about both it and House of Clocks, and wrote the reviews in tandem. There will be significant overlap in the contextual sections of each review.

A wealthy couple in a mansion are brutally murdered, leaving their two young children in the care of their aunt and uncle. The distraught kids seek to communicate with the ghosts of their parents, but they aren’t the only spirits in the building. Chaos ensues as the confused aunt and uncle try to sell the property, prompting the dead to clearly make their desires known. (From Cauldron’s official synopsis)

Over the first three decades of his long career, Lucio Fulci deftly navigated the waves of Italian cinematic fads. Unfortunately, when he finally found himself at the forefront of one of those fads – the gore-soaked horror trend that grew out of Zombie (Italian: Zombi 2; aka: Zombie Flesh Eaters, 1979) – the entire industry began to crash. The already low budgets cratered and the distribution market for exploitation films began favoring home video over theatrical releases (not to mention Fulci’s own declining health). The quality of all Italian horror suffered, but the disparity in Fulci’s work from masterpieces to lethargic disappointments in a matter of two or three years is still quite stark.

The HD and 4K era of home video has been kinder to Fulci’s waning years, revealing more artistry and craft than could ever be seen on bootlegs of European VHS tapes and Japanese Laserdiscs. I’ve even surprised myself with my positive reevaluations of a number of his post-New York Ripper (Italian: Lo squartatore di New York, 1982) films. With that in mind, I’m (separately) revisiting two movies the maestro made for Italian television in 1989 – The House of Clocks (Italian: La casa nel tempo) and The Sweet House of Horrors (Italian: La dolce casa degli orrori).

House of Clocks and Sweet House of Horrors were developed as two parts of a six-movie series under producer Luciano Martino (brother of director Sergio, ex-husband of starlet Edwige Fenech). Martino had, in 1986, found modest success with a different made-for-TV horror anthology, entitled Brivido Giallo, and the plan was to build a second series, entitled Houses of Doom (Italian: Le case maledette), around the theme of haunted houses. Lamberto Bava, who directed all four parts of Brivido Giallo, was expected to return and would be teamed with Fulci and Umberto Lenzi with each man directing two of six feature-length movies.

In the first of many production hurdles, Bava checked out, due to scheduling issues, and was replaced with Marcello Avallone, director of Specters (Italian: Spettri, 1987) and Maya (1989). Then Avallone also left the project (likely a mix of budget cuts and other commitments), leaving Fulci and Lenzi to make four, rather than six films*. After production was completed, the project was shelved for an as-yet-unknown reason. Most fans and critics assume it had something to do with the movies being too gory for television, but the industry was in such rough shape that it could’ve been financial. It took until 2000, four years after Fulci’s death, for the films to have a video release in Italy and another six for them to finally be broadcast on satellite television.

Sweet House of Horrors is the weaker of the two films that struggles to find a coherent identity and suffers from the budgetary constraints to its admittedly ambitious special effects. The screenplay, by Vincenzo Mannino and Gigliola Battaglini from a story by Fulci, lacks direction and personality and fluctuates wildly in tone. For every clever creative choice (the low-angle child’s POV during the funeral, for instance), there are a half-dozen bafflingly weird comedic beats. The incoherent tone seems to have put off fans and critics for years, but it does have some precedence within Fulci’s oeuvre.

The director had a knack for combining cute kids with relentless violence and did so (in a less syrupy manner) in City of the Living Dead (Italian: Paura nella città dei morti viventi; aka: The Gates of Hell, 1980), House by the Cemetery (Italian: Quella villa accanto al cimitero, 1981), his final western, Silver Saddle (Italian: Sella d'argento, 1978), and his unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars (originally published in 1903), Manhattan Baby (Italian: Il malocchio, 1982). And he wasn’t only borrowing from himself here, because Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist (1982), in particular, had a substantial influence on Italian horror going into the ‘90s, leading to a strange, if brief sort of Spielberg-ization of the genre that included Lenzi’s Ghosthouse (Italian: La Casa 3, 1988) and Claudio Fragasso’s Beyond Darkness (Italian: La Casa 5, 1990).

Ultimately, the lack of momentum is a bigger problem than sentimentality. And we can’t accuse Fulci of tempering his love of violence. Sweet House of Horrors’ effects aren’t exactly convincing and are missing the sheer gross-out factor seen in his nastiest work, but there’s a real brutality to them. One sequence is so gory that Fulci gets away with reusing it later to pad time. In it, a man has his head pulped to brainmatter against a post, then his cheeks peeled to the bone with a candlestick. After that, his wife’s face is crushed so severely that her eyeballs pop out of her skull.  

* In the late ‘80s, a collection of (at least) six horror movies that had a “Lucio Fulci Presents” label slapped on their box art. Among them was Giovanni Simonelli’s TV movie Hansel and Gretel (Italian: Hansel e Gretel, 1990), which Fulci has long been rumored to have co-directed without credit. In Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1980-1989, author Roberto Curti briefly points to similarities between Hansel and Gretel’s screenplay (credited only to Simonelli) and that of one of Avallone’s unfilmed segments, The Best Friend’s House (Italian: La casa dell’amico del cuore).

Bibliography:

• Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci by Stephen Thrower (FAB Press, 1999)

• Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1980-1989 by Roberto Curti (McFarland, 2019)

Video

As I already mentioned, the Houses of Doom movies were shelved upon completion and didn’t get an official Italian release until 2000 (I’ve read conflicting reports of a small theatrical release around that time). House of Clocks and Sweet House of Horrors were released on UK and Japanese VHS tape, and I distinctly remember bootleg copies being offered to US viewers in the backpages of Fangoria, Gorezone, and early internet message boards. Both of Fulci’s entries made their official stateside debuts in 2002 from Shriek Show/Media Blasters. These were part of a larger Lucio Fulci collection and the only anamorphically enhanced copies available.

Minus House of Clocks, which made its way to Japanese Blu-ray in 2021, the Houses of Doom collection had its US HD debut via a four-movie set from Cauldron Films (it was beaten to market by a matter of weeks by German company Retro Gold 63). The limited edition featured new 2K restorations of the films and is now available as standard edition, stand-alone discs with the same A/V and extras. Fulci was experimenting with soft focus, smoke, lens flares, and diffusion effects at this point in his career. The most extreme version of this is seen in his barbarian fantasy, Conquest (1983), which appears to have been filmed through a dollop of Vaseline. Sweet House of Horrors is the foggier of the two Houses of Doom pictures (possibly in an effort to disguise its optical effects), leading to a smeary effect that is magnified by the fact that cinematographer Nino Celeste was forced to shoot on 16mm. 

Cauldron’s Blu-rays are an across-the-board upgrade over the DVDs, which had a shot-on-video look to them (perhaps they were mastered from a video source?). The extra resolution and clarity draws out the textural qualities of the 16mm sources. It’s very grainy, foggy, and diffused – more so than House of Clocks – but cinematic compared to previous editions. The purposefully sickly palettes (another trademark of this era of Fulci production) are also warmed up, revealing pinker skin tones, richer reds, and a slightly golden tint in place of the vaguely green look of the DVDs.

Audio

Both films are presented with Italian and English dubs, both in uncompressed DTS-HD Master Audio mono. The Italian track has a crisper quality, but also applies a lot more echo to the vocals. I’m not sure if this was an attempt to make things spookier or to make the titular house sound larger. The English track has a slightly muffled quality to the dialogue and the dubbing team had zero interest in lip sync this time around. Everyone is clearly speaking Italian on set and the Italian performances reflect this, especially the two children. In terms of music and effects, the two tracks are basically the same. Composer Vince Tempera offers up another Fabio Frizzi-esque score that sets the mood and includes some solid, head-bobbing grooves, especially the opening house-robbing theme.

Extras

• Commentary by film historians Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth (2024, in English) – The author of Splintered Visions: Lucio Fulci and His Films (Midnight Marquee Press, 2015) and prolific retrospective featurette director reunite (minus Nathaniel Thompson this time) to explore the wider Houses of Doom production, the state of the industry at the time, how Sweet House of Horrors connects to Fulci’s larger career and personal life, and the careers of the cast & crew. There is understandable overlap between this and the House of Clocks track.

• Fulci’s House of Horrors (16:43, HD) – Set designer Massimo Antonello Geleng chats about Fulci’s versatility, skill, and prickly personality, and his collaborations with the director over the years.

• Sweet Muse of Horrors (28:55, HD) – Actress Cinzia Monreale recalls stories of breaking into the industry, favorite collaborators, and multiple film and television roles, including several projects with Fulci (Silver Saddle, The Beyond, Warriors of the Year 2072 [Italian: I guerrieri dell'anno 2072, 1984], and Sweet House of Horrors).

• Editing for the Masters (18:05, HD) – Editor Alberto Moriani closes out the Cauldron exclusive interviews discussing his eclectic career and working with his most famous and beloved collaborators. 

• Paura: Lucio Fulci Remembered, Vol. 1 interview gallery – These shorter clips were (I believe) all conducted by Mike Baronas and Kit Gavin for the 2006 DVD collection:

  • Co-writer Gigliola Battaglini (3:05, SD)

  • Actor Jean-Christophe Bretigniere (3:48, SD)

  • Actress Lino Salemme (10:55, SD)

  • Actor Pascal Persiano (3:45, SD)

• Archival introduction and interview with actress Cinzea Monreale (0:48, 6:48, SD) – These might have also been included with Paura, but I’d have to rewatch hours of clips to be sure.

• Promotional trailer

The images on this page are taken from the Blu-ray and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.