Italian director Lucio Fulci, who passed away in 1996, came to be known and embraced by a legion of fans as one of the "masters" of the horror genre; his title of "Godfather of Gore" was both lovingly bestowed and well deserved. Fulci's horror films usually center around either mad scientists, serial killers, or cannibalistic zombies. In the case of House by the Cemetery, a serial-killing cannibalistic mad scientist zombie is operatically ensanguined.

In Fulci's work, bodies are ravaged landscapes, terminally vulnerable and endlessly opened reservoirs of blood at the mercy of a hostile, unknowable world which itself is enslaved to supernatural forces. Fulci dwells on the details of dying, the suffering of his characters paralyzed in violent tableaus. They are as much Fulci's victims as the killer's, pinned within his lingering displays that are so concentrated they come close to transcending the boundaries of the narrative to exist in a zone of pure voyeurism.

With its scissor piercings, rabid bat attacks, torn throats and bleeding, decapitated mannequins, House by the Cemetery fulfills the Fulci promise of spouting gore, but ultimately manages to transcend it. Fulci's work, despite its reputation among many horror enthusiasts, doesn't have the consistency of other fellow horror "auteurs" such as Dario Argento; his
films suffer less from their relatively limited financial means than from a certain cheapness of thought and expression. Narratively, Fulci's work is infected with cardboard scenarios mainly designed to facilitate the blood-letting.

However, House by the Cemetery is an exception. This film, perhaps Fulci’s finest, focuses on a university professor who moves into an aging, faded country mansion with his wife and son. His goal? To finish the research of a colleague who recently committed suicide in the house after supposedly taking the life of his mistress. The narrative, while somewhat confused and owing a debit to other works, such as The Shining and the under-appreciated Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, is unnervingly precise in its bizarre simplicity. And the performances, while bizarrely off-key at times(as Fulci's actors always tend to be), are more nuanced than usual, particularly that of Katherine MacColl as Lucy Boyle, the beleaguered professor's wife. But what really separates the film from so many of the director's other almost ritualistic exercises in the elaborate mechanisms of death is its surprising elegance of construction.

At times featuring shockingly delicate, graceful wide-screen
compositions, a subtle color palette and a dream like organization of spatial relationships, House by the Cemetery emerges as a stylish, dare I say poetically charged, horror film. On some level, part of the film's fascination comes from its very unusualness, its very novelty, within Fulci's body of work. When his films succeed, they seem to be doing so almost despite themselves, whereas House by the Cemetery feels far more intentional in its development of an atmosphere of enigmatic dread. The film's ambiguity seems compelling rather than frustrating, its narrative strangeness working to strengthen its mysteriousness instead of rendering the text incompetently obscure, opening up the dark spaces where monsters are waiting. This is not to say that the film doesn't have flaws, just that they are not as intrusive as in Fulci's usual work.

Anchor Bay, one of the companies which has done more than any other to make well-regarded horror films available on DVD, has made a policy of releasing titles under the banner of various "Director" collections such as Dario Argento and George Romero. Anchor Bay's "Fulci Collection" has seen a total of 7 DVD releases, and House by the Cemetery benefits from the same stunning remastering job on both the sound and image tracks as the rest of the series, the difference being that since the film is perhaps Fulci's most visually arresting, it cannot help but benefit the most from the remastering work.

The DVD itself is in the wide screen anamorphic format, a necessity considering the deliberately crafted wide screen compositions of the film. The bonus features themselves include the original theatrical trailers, both the American and international versions, a still gallery of production photos, the original running length of 89 minutes -- the American release was cut by 6 minutes -- and a special "hidden" extended scene. When you access the special features menu, you can switch around the directional button on your remote control until you highlight one of the blood splatters. Pressing it will allow you, after a brief textual introduction, to watch an extended scene.

The real significance of this DVD release is the astounding quality of the visual and audio remastering job. If you’ve seen the various older videotape copies of the American release, with its lost minutes and its washed out colors, let alone the pan and scan distortion of the cinematography, this new version will be a revelation. Admittedly, Fulci's films are not for everyone, and while House by the Cemetery is far less demonstrative in its bloodletting than most of the director's work, the viewer is given ample reason to squirm. In addition, the film presents a look at savage violence as a part of something more expressive than mere spectacle.

(Released by Anchor Bay Entertainment; not rated by MPAA.)