Here is yet another flick from the Fulci vault. A family moves into an old house in New England for the summer so that the dad can do some research. He is taking over the research that was done by his colleague before he killed himself. Little did the family know that the place where they are staying is haunted by a terrible creature that lives in the basement and feeds on humans to stay alive. Behold the terrible Dr. Freudstein! After some really strange, and sometimes deadly occurrences start happening around the house, the family starts piecing the mystery together. But will it be too late? Will they become the latest victims of Dr. Freudstein’s horrible wrath? Watch and see.

Veterans Paolo Marco and Katherine MacColl play the married couple in this movie. You may recognize Katherine as one of the hotties that played in The Gates of Hell. You also get the obligatory Fulci sighting in this movie.

I said it before, I’ll say it again. The man wasn’t a bad actor. The acting in this movie overall is pretty tight, except for the annoying ass little boy. I don’t usually advocate child violence without a half-decent reason, but man was I waiting for this little bastard to get it. I despised his shaggy hairstyle and his monotonous high-pitched voice. You will too. He does several really annoying unrealistic things that will really piss you off. There was a little ghost girl in this movie too, but she wasn’t annoying.

You get to see the obligatory boob shot in this flick. They put it right at the beginning, to get it out of the way. Then she gets a knife shoved through the back of her skull and it comes out of her mouth. There are some pretty gnarly sights in this flick, such as a lot of intestines and a bounty of maggots. You get a really drawn out spike stabbing that takes like 60 seconds to fully complete. Pretty brutal. You also get this crazy scene where this bat raises total shit on this whole family and almost completely annihilates the whole lot of them. I’ve never scene such devastation from such a seemingly insignificant scene.

The storyline for this flick has more holes than your average Fulci flick, or Italian horror flick for that matter. “Holy shit! How is that possible?” you must be thinking. I’m not sure. I will give some examples. The townspeople give hints that the main character has been to this town before, or somebody who looks just like him. This is mentioned several times but goes absolutely nowhere! Nowhere! Then, the main guy is investigating this enigmatic Dr. Freudstein. Who is this guy? He has to do some reseach in the library to find out. How about the mother fucker underneath the tombstone right in the middle of your living room that says “blah blah blah Freudstein” That’s right, tombstone in the living room. They never got the connection.

And then there’s the coup d’etat. There is one character throughout the movie who it is led to believe is in on the whole murder deal. We always get shots of her menacing eyes and her odd behavior. In one scene she is even cleaning up a blood trail off the floor left from the mad doctor carrying off a bloody corpse. She does this before the family awakes so they won’t notice. Suspicious? Hell yeah! Oh wait, nevermind. She gets wacked in the next scene and clearly has no idea from what or why. She wasn’t involved at all. What the fuck?

You may think that I just gave you a bunch of spoilers, but I don't feel that they are technically spoilers because they are illogical and can’t possibly be derived by cause and effect. I call them wtf’s.

Anyway, it’s still a decent Fulci flick. You have a couple moments where you are really on the edge of your seat. The ending is pretty cool, like most Fulci’s. The music is boss and the film is shot really well.

I give it 6 out of 10 decapitated meat mannequins. It probably is only a 5.5, but I’m slightly biased. Adjust your scale as you see fit, probably way down.

Oh yeah, Dr. Freudstein is pretty cheesy looking, but clearly has the reflexes of a cat, when necessary, despite being over 100 years old. I should have put this comment up in the actual review but oh well.

First off let me say I like this movie. I even own it. Ok now that I have that out of the way...

WTF is it with the babysitter Ann? If she wasn't evil they at least could've had her getting it with the husband. They certainly alluded to that.

The bat killed me, where have you ever seen a bat that had to be stabbed 937 times before it lets go and dies? I mean if it had been me I would've had to stop in the middle of dismembering the thing just to look around the room at the others and say something like "can you believe I'm still carving this sucker up? and it's still holding on?"
The absolute worst thing about this movie is the kid. I wasn't bothered as much by the voice as the fact that his name was Bob. Who names their kid Bob? It was the single most used word in the movie. Someone was always yelling for Bob.

There are so many more things I could joke on but I don't want to give too much away. I do think if you can find this movie you should give it a try. Watch it with people who appreciate horror.