The Story:

An unsuspecting family moves into a new home that features a tomb in the floor, corpses in the basement, and an in house doctor whose taking new patients.

The Characters:

The characters are fodder for Freudstein’s rejuvination process. They are annoying, and the voice dubs are terrible. You’ll laugh at the bad script and have a Hell of a lot of fun watching them die. At one point the character Bob picks up a Curious George doll with ‘Curious George’ stitched on it’s sweater, but the dub actor continuously refers to it as ‘Yogi’.

Effects/Gore:

Dr. Freudstein looks great as a decomposing sadistic maniac who rejuvenates himself with pieces of his victims. Anytime blood is shown it’s focused on with grisly detail. If you’ve seen the deliberate, grotesque, slow, viewer torturing violence of a Fulci movie in the past, you know what to expect. Although it’s slightly tamer, you won’t be disappointed with your visit to this house.

Lasting Appeal:

The movie is so bad that it’s good. I’ve met more than a severed hand full of people that due to the annoying characters have never made it to the end credits. That’s understandable, the pacing is a little off, the characters are annoying, and the script is terrible. But if you embrace all that is bad about it, it comes off as hilarious and well worth revisiting.

Final Headcount:

It’s far from a masterpiece, but the characters reactions are ridiculous and the gore is so nasty you’ll be both laughing, and cringing right through to the end. I’ll close off this review with a drinking game I just now conjured up while reminiscing about the awefully great House by the Cemetery.

Take a drink everytime Freudstein makes an appearance in body or name, the camera zooms in on someone’s eyes, Bob’s Mom calls his name, Bob has a psychic vision, and whenever somebody gets attacked or killed!