Elderly couple Vittorio and Sara Corsini (Paolo Paoloni, whom you may remember from his supporting role in Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust and Bettine Milne, The King’s Whore) live in a large, ornate, clock-filled country villa, along with their maid Maria (Carla Cassola, Demonia, Albert Pyun’s Captain America) and disfigured handyman Peter (Al Cliver, Zombie, The Beyond… to name but a few), where they spend their golden years gardening, tending to timepieces large & small, and enjoying each other’s company.
Being rather well-off, they have unfortunately encountered a relative or two that wanted to get their claws into their loot.
Fortunately for our geriatric lovebirds, they are aces at putting a murder on a mother fucker… and once that action has been discovered by Maria, they off her snooping ass too!
Enter: Three shit heels, Diana (Karina Huff, Voices from Beyond… with her rad n’ bad inverted cross earrings), stubble-sporting pretty boy Tony (Keith Van Hoven, Lenzi’s Black Demons), and wonton cat-murderer/loathsome fucker (same thing really) Paul (Peter Hintz, Empire Picture’s sci-fi/WWII hybrid flick, Zone Troopers)… shit heels who just so happen to be small-time crooks who plan on robbing the villa via home invasion by way of a ruse.
That shit goes violently south shockingly fast, and our anti-heroes find themselves trapped in the mansion due to the chaotic canines that patrol the grounds of the estate… but those hellish hounds are only the beginning of the deranged dangers to come as the creepy clocks harbor a supernatural secret that puts the trio’s continued existence in question!
One of two fright flicks (the other being The Sweet House of Horrors, also from 1989) created for Italian TV in the late ’80s by horror maestro Lucio Fulci (The aforementioned Zombie, The Beyond, Demonia, and Voices from Beyond… again, naming but a few) … which would be followed by two other features directed by Cannibal Ferox director Umberto Lenzi to comprise the La case maledette or The Houses of Doom series, The House of Clocks certainly holds nothing back considering it was intended for broadcast TV (even one with more lenient standards than in the U.S.)…
Throughout it’s hour and twenty three minute runtime, this flick features large quantities of blood, entrails, shotgun wounds… the list is longer, and will certainly please my fellow gore hounds… so maestro Fulci is thankfully certainly up to his usual terror tricks (though perhaps a bit less intense than usual).. not to mention a naked boob or two…
The narrative in between those grizzly set-pieces is full of clever twists and turns that give the proceedings an “E.C. comics horror tale filtered through a Twilight Zone lens” vibe that is flat-out psychotronic glory through and through!
Adding immeasurably to the atmosphere of the piece are the choice of location… with the Gothic, secret passage filled arcane abode creating a grim sense of fading majesty as well as oppressive menace… and the eerie score courtesy of composer Vince Tempera sends shivers down the spine with it’s ambient synth and vocal magic!
The above looks pretty damn fantastic here as Cauldron presents the film via a 2K restoration/1080p presentation that features plenty of detail… but where the picture excels is in it’s rich colors, which really make the reds in those gore sequences pop let me tell ya!
Additionally you can view The House of Clocks in English (with optional subtitles) or Italian with English subtitles.
Enhancing the feature are a selection of special features that begin with an audio commentary from film scholar/documentarian Eugenio Ercolani, Mondo Digital’s Nathaniel Thompson, and writer/horror cinema expert Troy Howarth which provides an info packed conversation that provides context as to the feature’s place in Fulci’s oeuvre, details of the film’s production, the history of the actors involved and much more… in highly listenable fashion!
Also included are interviews with cinematographer Nino Celeste, composer Tempera, 1st AD Michele De Angelis, FX artist Elio Terribili, and actors Paoloni, Cassola, & Cliver… as well as an archival trailer for the film.
Surreal, imaginative, gory… The House of Clocks is well worth your time!
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