Sandy Petersen Let me establish my credits. I am by no means anti-Fulci. I adore the man, and I love his films. Even his lesser trash like House of Clocks and Aenigma appeal to me. I sorely regret his premature death from diabetes.That said, there is truth in the statement that "In Fulci's movies, the scenes that are unwatchable for being too gory are separated by scenes that are unwatchable for being too artsy." The problem with the awesomely named "Sweet House of Horror" is that it includes Fulci's "artsy" bent (though without his usual skill) but leaves entirely off his "gory" tendencies (admittedly, in a TV movie he was probably shackled to some extent).M. R. James once explained that for a ghost story to be good, it had to include three things. First, the story had to take place somewhere reasonable, so the reader could imagine himself present. Second, the story should not use the psychic jargon of the moment, which spoils horror and turns it into technical chat. Third, the ghost should be malign - a friendly ghost doesn't frighten.Sweet House of Horrors fails on all three counts. First, the tale is in a huge old mansion inhabited by two of those cute Italian blond children hampered only by a congenital inability to act. What is it with Italian directors? Can they not tell when a kid can't act? And why are they almost always blondies? I know for a fact that Italy has some brunettes. The kids' evil aunt and uncle plot to murder them to seize the family inheritance for their own. The plot makes no real sense, because the aunt and uncle are the kids' guardians, so presumably they have access to the money already. Plus, as guardians, how hard would it be to pull off a boat accident or whatever? But no other Italian film-maker worth his salt cared about logic, so let's move on.The second topic - don't mess with psychic jargon, is violated again and again. We get all sorts of "rules" and "vibrations" and scenes of the parents appearing. But here the Italian tendency to ignore logic serves the movie well, since the jargon conflicts with itself and is impossible to make heads or tails of, so it really doesn't violate James' rule all that strongly.The third topic is where the movie really falls down. The ghosts are the kids' parents, whose only goal is to protect them from the evil relatives. We learn this very early in the movie, and from then on we are completely without any terror at any moment. When the ghosts appear, we know it is only to pick on the evil aunt and uncle, whom we hate already. The only moments of tension are when auntie (or uncle) try to harm the kids, in a normal, physical fashion (like poisoning them). But these moments aren't too bad, because we know the ghosts will save the kids, and the move has no gore or strong scenes anyway.This last is especially appalling given Fulci's previous track record in being perfectly willing to endanger or even kill kids - this added a lot of suspense, shock, and horror to his previous movies. Remember the zombie girl in The Beyond? Or the threatened little boys in House by the Cemetery or City of the Walking Dead? Hell, Fulci wiped out a whole passel of kids in Don't Torture A Duckling. Those films were solid, scary, masterworks. But the limpwristed Hollywood sensibility in Sweet House of Horror keeps us from being scared, just as we know in any Hollywood movie that no kid is ever going to be harmed, we know it here.The movie is also not saved by Fulci's normal knack for scene-setting. His skill in putting together an image displayed in Massacre Time or Zombi is just completely absent. The movie has a pallid washed-out fuzzy look that just enervates every single moment. It is tedious to get through.I literally would recommend EVERY other Fulci movie above this one. Even such turds as Demonia and Conquest. At least those movies had a couple of good moments. Sweet House of Horror has none.

Joe Ebbasi Of all the cheaply made films I've ever seen this has the most ludicrous conclusion I've ever seen. I'm not sure if the film ever had any proper script but the way the narrative is bizarrely severed at a point when an adequate conclusion was completely viable indicates that the money had run out. There was no money left to pay for fuel for the digging machine and no money left to pay the actors. There was, however, enough money to pay for a rubber hand and a blowtorch to position out of shot to melt the hand. In the context of what went before this finale there is absolutely no meaning in this moment. At a huge stretch: the power of the spirits of the dead parents of the two (f***ing irritating!) children is so strong that they cannot be driven from the house and this is most aptly manifested by the incredible heat generated by the glowing rocks they are capable of inhabiting. How this proves conclusive is lost on me. The general premise of the film is that the spirits of the couple who are brutally murdered (a gentle head slamming for him; a meticulous face-mashing with some kind of kitchen implement for her) at the beginning are present in their house, now inhabited by their children, an aunt and an uncle. They gradually ramp up their efforts to stop the house being sold to a fat real estate agent (so important he has his own chauffeur-drive Mercedes), exorcised by an extra from Moby Dick or demolished by a swarthy, mulleted Italian in a digger. They do this through various incredible methods, such as moving a stair so that the real estate agent takes a tumble and breaks a leg (that only seems to require bandaging), making a demolition digger spin uncontrollably, lifting a jeep off the ground to stop it leaving the grounds with the children and heating up the real estate dude's crutch so that it violently burns his hand and reduces him to a Kermit the Frog voiced wreck. The spirits appear as two flames, a blue shred of spectral vapour, glowing pebbles, a toy fly and in the original human image of the mother and father. The coherence of the whole thing is hindered massively by the dreadful dubbing into English of the children's voices. They babble unintelligibly throughout and matters aren't helped by their constant sobbing and idiotic laughter. The film's other dialogue is generally awkward and unconvincing, characterised by that unnatural tone common of many dubbed films. Despite this, I feel that the narrative would remain disjointed and illogical even if delivered in its original language. Without a window into the children's joint psyche we are unable to contextualise their part in the events inside the house. Are they just weird kids, playing up because they've been orphaned or is there supposed to be an undertone of supernatural insight to their cruel and eerie behaviour? It's unclear. One is left with a desire for the aunt and uncle to leave the little oddities in the house with their spirit parents and get away from the nonsense ensuing there. Ultimately the parents' have had their revenge on their killer from beyond the grave and would surely be content to keep the house intact and the kids there. F** 'em, let them get on with it with their weirdo kids. To sum up: it plods aimlessly, with no natural conclusion in sight. The effects are hit and miss. The acting is decent enough on the part of the adults but the kids are utterly useless and the sobbing, dubbed voices steal at least half of the plot's sense. Avoid!

suspiria10 A couple moves into a nice country mansion to care for their niece and nephew after the children's parents are brutally murdered one night returning from a cocktail party. Strange things begin happening so the couple decide to take the children away and sell the house. But it soon becomes apparent that the house is full of spirits that are out for revenge and have some sort of connection to the kids.This Lucio Fulci made-for-Italian-TV horror isn't one of his best to be sure but it does seem to have a bit of its own charm. The overall story is a bit nutty (a murder thriller with a supernatural twist) but I thought decent enough. The English dubbing was God awful as most of these imports tend to be so the acting comes off as uneven and even hilarious. But Fulci fans should check it out just because and those with a fondness for little cheesy a la Italiano might be interested too. 2 of 5

rundbauchdodo A couple is killed in an extremely sadistic way, but their souls return to their two orphaned children to caress them, to take revenge on the killer and to mock the relatives who want to sell the house and the one who wants to buy it respectively. Sounds odd for a Fulci movie, doesn't it?And it really is kind of odd. It starts like a typical Fulci-gorefest with the murder scene which has to be seen to be believed, especially when one considers this one was made for TV. But after this unbelievably violent prologue, the whole thing turns into a fairy tale. There are even scenes that could come right out of a typical Italian slapstick comedy! So, "La Dolce Casa degli Orrori" is an extremely strange mix of genres, and most of the special effects are very cheesy, although the murder scene is outrageously disgusting.It's not bad, but by far inferior to Fulci's other film in the four part TV-series Houses of Doom, "La Casa nel Tempo", which is terrific (the other two are by Umberto Lenzi and called "La Casa delle Anime Erranti" and "La Casa dei Sortilegi").