The House of Clocks
| The House of Clocks | |
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Shriek Show DVD cover
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| Directed by | Lucio Fulci |
| Produced by | Massimo Manasse Marco Grillo Spina |
| Screenplay by | Gianfranco Clerici Daniele Stroppa |
| Story by | Lucio Fulci |
| Starring | Keith Van Hoven Karina Huff Paolo Paoloni Bettine Milne (as Bettina Milne) Al Cliver |
| Music by | Vince Tempera |
| Cinematography | Sebastiano Celeste (as Nino Celeste) |
| Edited by | Alberto Moriani (as Albert Morris) |
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Production
company |
Dania Film
Reteitalia |
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Release date
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Running time
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84 minutes |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
The House of Clocks (Italian: La casa nel tempo) is a 1989 Italian horror film directed by Lucio Fulci, made initially for Italian TV, but released direct-to-video instead.
The story revolves around a wealthy older couple who are murdered during a robbery by three young perpetrators. The event results in a supernatural reversal of time, symbolized by the fast, counter-clockwise movement of hands on the house's many clocks. Eventually, this leads to the resurrection of the older couple, who subsequently seek to terrorize the three burglars.
An elderly couple, Victor (Paolo Paoloni) and Sarah (Bettine Milne), live in a rambling country house filled with clocks of all shapes and sizes. The couple's taciturn grounds man Peter (Al Cliver) is happy enough looking after the slavering pack of dogs the couple own. But the maid Maria (Carla Cassola) is becoming more and more suspicious of her sinister employers that they are hiding something. Sure enough, she discovers the dead bodies of a money-grabbing nephew (Paolo Bernardi) and his wife (Francesco De Rose) lying preserved in open coffins in the wine cellar. Maria is gorily killed by the elderly Sarah in the greenhouse the next morning while announcing her plans to quit.
Meanwhile, three hoodlums, Diana (Karina Huff), Tony (Keith Van Hoven) and Paul (Peter Hintz) are driving through the area and decide to rob the old couple's house after receiving a tip-off from a grocery store owner in a nearby town about the wealth it supposedly contains and the decrepitude of the owners. That evening, Diana cunningly talks her way into the household by pretending that her car has broken down nearby and asks to use the phone. Soon, the phone lines are cut by her male accomplices and they force entry through an open window. Their plans to rob the old couple go badly wrong when Peter intervenes with his shotgun. A bloodbath ensues with Sarah accidentally getting shot, Peter getting killed by Paul, and Victor attacks Tony, forcing Diana to shoot him dead. The young trio are horrified by this turn of events, but decide to bundle the bodies away in a cupboard.
At first the dazed criminals fail to notice what effect the mayhem has had on all the clocks in the house. Each clock stops at 8:00 PM, the exact time the couple were killed. When they do notice, they try to leave, but are trapped indoors by the Dobermans let loose to prowl the grounds. Stranger still, the clocks begin to move in reverse, first slowly, then faster. The three decide to relax in the house overnight, and they head off upstairs to smoke some joints. Diana and Tony get a little too drawn into it and start to make out with each other, and soon begin to have sex.
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