The Sweet House of Horrors (1989)

Just what I expected

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

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! Speaking of which, the cast is a diabolical bunch of unfamiliars, aside from the reliable Lino Salemme (the cocaine goon in DEMONS) and Vernon Dobtcheff's engaging exorcist. 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.

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.

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. Not recommended.

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").