Reviewed By: Scabboy
Directed by: Umberto Lenzi
Released by: Imperial
Alternate title: La Casa 3

2 out of 5 skulls

A little girl possessed by a clown doll killers her family, 20 years later the house is vacant when strange sounds are being picked up from the house. Once they find out where the sounds are coming from (by electronically tracking them) they decide to investigate the house. That’s when they find out another group of young adults have been spending the night in the area. One of them turn up dead and the investigation begins- they try to learn what’s going on after visions of a young girl with a clown doll. Suspecting the creepy caretaker for the recent string of murders, Law enforcement turn a blind eye to what is really happening at the house. With help from a few people they learn that the only way to stop the horror is to burn the girls corpse along with the doll.

First off let’s just point out how well the movie’s score works to set an atmosphere- sinister organ with incoherent high pitched voices create one of the creepiest scores I have heard in any movie. Sometimes I wonder how it would sound with a nice 5.1 or DTS audio track, but that will probably never happen.

Putting the score aside we had a pretty great cast, and pretty well acted. The movie did a great job of breaking it apart so we weren’t in one place for too long. Something that a movie set inside of one location can rarely get away with (i.e. Romero). With the kills that needed it the blood was well done, but of course probably heavily cut out so we only see a glimpse of each kill- thanks to Robert Gould who also did Special Effects for the forgettable Killing Birds.
For being a low budget production, it was quite successful in just about every aspect. Umberto did a great job capturing some truly creepy moments along with an all around great cinematography by Franco Delli Colli.

The only complaints I have about the movie is the lack of pace. It seems to stay at a pace for the entire movie, never picking up when I thought it would. This did not help, nor harm it, but it would have made certain parts of the movie a lot better. The last complaint is working in the caretaker as one of the murderers. I thought it was great he did some killing, and it gave the movie’s ending more meaning, but it sort of took a lot from the movie- sometimes making you wonder if he was the actual killer and not the girl. What I am trying to say is that it made the movie confusing at times. Maybe that is a good thing.

At the end we have a creepy haunted house movie that is definitely recommended to people who love haunted house or haunting movies. Not recommended to fans of the slasher genre- mainly due to the lack of pace and “slashings” although there are some. I think the movie’s score makes it a very memorable movie. It’s what I remember most about it.

This is available on VHS and Laserdisc, no U.S.A. DVD as of yet.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 2:36 pm and is filed under HORROR VHS reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.