(1989)
Overall: WOOF
A combination of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, The Collector, plus some other stuff, Hitcher in the Dark, (Paura nel buio), throws a lot of unpleasant cliches into a blender and serves them up equally unpleasantly. One of five feature length movies from director Umberto Lenzi that was released in 1989, this one concerns an odious trust fund brat with disgusting mommy issues who drives around the Florida coast in his rich daddy's RV, picking up female hitchhikers, being an asshole to them, smacking them around, and then murdering them when they either talk back too much, try to escape, have too many sexual partners in their past, or fail to look enough like his mother who he wants to have sex with. Playing such a heartthrob is baby-faced Joe Balogh, who has has all of the charisma of someone that you want to endlessly punch in the mouth. So in other words, he is a terrible villain, yet not terrible in the way that makes him the last bit captivating. Josie Bissett of all people got her break here, but any fans of Melrose Place would be wise to skip such an abysmal affair, unless you want to watch her pose naked while drugged and barely try to get away from a murderous, rapist scumbag for ninety-odd minutes.
(1989)
Overall: MEH
In 1989, both Lucio Fulci and Umberto Lenzi delivered two films each as part of a television series Le case maledette, (Doomed Houses, The Houses of Doom), all of which were apparently shelved due to their violence level not being on par with TV audience acceptability. The House of Witchcraft, (La casa del sortilegio), was the third in production order, shot within four weeks like the other installments and similarly set in an ominous abode where supernatural things are taking place. In this instance, said house is one that Andy J. Forest's character has dreams about, where a wicked old witch is running around murdering people; a witch played by Maria Cuman Quasimodo who looks like a live action version of a Halloween decoration. The framework is dull, sticking to characters prattling on with cliched dialog exchanges that are not even necessary in order for the audience to follow what is going on. Also, it may as well be a slasher movie due to how predictable all of the victim's murders are, plus the fact that Quasimodo simply comes at everyone with a knife after sometimes subtly tricking them with occult magical powers. Lenzi's direction seems uninspired, even with some wind, lighting, fog, severed heads in a cauldron, a spontaneous snow storm in a basement, and a maggot-covered grim reaper thrown in to break up a chatty and stock plot.
(1989)
Overall: MEH
With a premise that could not be less unique, (a bunch of young people driving through the country and then have to stop at an abandoned hotel full of ghosts because of a blocked highway), Umberto Lenzi's second television film of 1989 House of Lost Souls, (La casa delle anime erranti), goes through the motions as much as any of the other entries in the Le case maledette, (Doomed Houses, The Houses of Doom), series, let alone any low-budget Italian genre export in general. Goblin's Claudio Simonetti delivers a typically snappy keyboard score, characters unnecessarily put themselves in harm's way of the supernatural like a bunch of idiots who have never seen a horror movie, cars fail to start, hysterical women get smacked around and gaslit by men, there is a creepy little kid, heads get chopped off in a manner that is actually relevant to the malevolent specter's backstory, and the set pieces are merely a random assortment of "scary" things on paper that seem to have been plucked out of a hat. Its formulaic nature can either be seen as lazy and safe or lazy and safe and ergo fun for Euro-trash fans that return to such films with their expectations in proper check. Plus, at least Lenzi keeps the pace up as to not make it an insulting cliche-fest, though cliche-fest it certainly still is.
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