The Sweet House of Horrors
| The Sweet House of Horrors | |
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Shriek Show DVD Cover
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| Directed by | Lucio Fulci |
| Written by | Lucio Fulci |
| Starring | Jean-Christophe Brétigniere Cinzia Monreale Lubka Lenzi |
| Music by | Vince Tempera |
| Cinematography | Sebastiano Celeste |
| Edited by | Alberto Moriani |
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Release date
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Running time
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82 minutes |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
The Sweet House of Horrors (in original Italian, La dolce casa degli orrori) is a 1989 Italian horror film directed by Lucio Fulci, made initially for Italian TV, but released direct-to-video instead when it was deemed too horrific for television. After being brutally murdered by a burglar, a young couple return as spirits to watch over their two young orphaned children. The ghosts also seek revenge against their murderer, and try to prevent their house from being demolished.
Mary and Roberto Valdi (Lubka Cibolo and Pascal Persiano) return home from a party to find a masked intruder ransacking their elegant country house. The masked man attacks and brutally kills both of them, and then disguises their deaths as an auto accident by driving their dead bodies to an isolated hilltop in their own car and pushing it over the edge. (The murder scene is incredibly graphic and gory for a TV movie, but strangely the remainder of the film is very tame, almost like a Spielberg movie suitable for kids.)
At their parents funeral, bereaved children Sarah (Ilary Blasi) and Marco (Giuliano Gensini) exhibit a strange mixture of grief and stifled hilarity, chewing gum whilst weeping and giggling at the elderly priest (Dante Fioretti) conducting the graveside ceremony. The children's Aunt Marcia, Mary Valdi's younger sister (Cinzia Monreale) and Uncle Carlo, her husband (Jean Christophe Bretigniere), decide to stay with the children at the Valdi house while arrangements are made to sell the property. When Carlo is called away on business, Marcia spends an uneasy night at the Valdi house without him. Disturbed during the night, she explores the attic and is frightened by a giant toy fly which seems to attack her.
Over the next few days, Sarah and Marco are adamant that they wish to continue living at the house and are openly hostile to Mr. Colby (Franco Diogene), the real estate agent whom Carlo brings to the house. When the overweight Mr. Colby suffers an accident at the house after falling down a flight of stairs, the children laugh maliciously. Meanwhile, the Valdi's gardener Guido (Lino Salemme) watches over the events with suspicion. A flashback recalled by Guido reveals that he was the masked intruder who broke into the house to rob it, only to be surprised when his employers returned sooner than anticipated, and he was forced to kill them. Elsewhere, Marcia becomes more and more scared of the house, and supernatural presences make themselves felt.
That night, Sarah and Marco are visited in their beds by floating flames which they suspect represent their dead parents. The following morning, Guido is about accept a generous check from Carlo for renovation of the house when a violent flashback, brought on by the supernatural forces within the house, shocks him into screaming his guilt for all to hear. He runs off and accidentally gets run over and killed by an oncoming truck on the road.
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Wikipedia