The House of Clocks Blu-ray Review

Cauldron Films

Blu-ray Release: May 13, 2025 (following a 2024 limited edition four movie set)

Video: 1.66:1/1080p/Color

Audio: Italian and English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono

Subtitles: English, English SHD

Run Time: 83:35

Director: Lucio Fulci

Note: This is a review of Cauldron Films’ standalone release of The House of Clocks. In preparation, I researched and wrote about both it and Sweet House of Horrors, and wrote the reviews in tandem. There will be significant overlap in the contextual sections of each review.

Three young thieves looking for a big score set their sights on the most lavish house they can find. Little do they know that this house and its inhabitants have murderous impulses of their own. Will they make it out alive? Only time will tell… (From Cauldron’s official synopsis)

Over the first three decades of his long career, Lucio Fulci deftly navigated the waves of Italian cinematic fads. Unfortunately, when he finally found himself at the forefront of one of those fads – the gore-soaked horror trend that grew out of Zombie (Italian: Zombi 2; aka: Zombie Flesh Eaters, 1979) – the entire industry began to crash. The already low budgets cratered and the distribution market for exploitation films began favoring home video over theatrical releases (not to mention Fulci’s own declining health). The quality of all Italian horror suffered, but the disparity in Fulci’s work from masterpieces to listless disappointments in a matter of two or three years is still quite stark.

The HD and 4K era of home video has been kinder to Fulci’s waning years, revealing more artistry and craft than could ever be seen on bootlegs of European VHS tapes and Japanese Laserdiscs. I’ve even surprised myself with my positive reevaluations of a number of his post-New York Ripper (Italian: Lo squartatore di New York, 1982) films. With that in mind, I’m (separately) revisiting two movies the maestro made for Italian television in 1989 – The House of Clocks (Italian: La casa nel tempo) and The Sweet House of Horrors (Italian: La dolce casa degli orrori).

House of Clocks and Sweet House of Horrors were developed as two parts of a six-movie series under producer Luciano Martino (brother of director Sergio, ex-husband of starlet Edwige Fenech). Martino had, in 1986, found modest success with a different made-for-TV horror anthology, entitled Brivido Giallo, and the plan was to build a second series, entitled Houses of Doom (Italian: Le case maledette), around the theme of haunted houses. Lamberto Bava, who directed all four parts of Brivido Giallo, was expected to return and would be teamed with Fulci and Umberto Lenzi with each man directing two of six feature-length movies.

In the first of many production hurdles, Bava checked out, due to scheduling issues, and was replaced with Marcello Avallone, director of Specters (Italian: Spettri, 1987) and Maya (1989). Then Avallone also left the project (likely a mix of budget cuts and other commitments), leaving Fulci and Lenzi to make four, rather than six films*. After production was completed, the project was shelved for an as-yet-unknown reason. Most fans and critics assume it had something to do with the movies being too gory for television, but the industry was in such rough shape that it could’ve been financial. It took until 2000, four years after Fulci’s death, for the films to have a video release in Italy and another six for them to finally be broadcast on satellite television.

Of the two films, House of Clocks has the better concept, the more coherent script, and a pair of fun performances from Paolo Paoloni and Bettine Milne as the elderly owners of the titular residence. It was made in the spirit of the EC comic & Amicus anthologies with their modern Gothic imagery and the ironically gruesome fates of their contemptible antagonists. Later in the same year, the HBO network proved that there was a healthy interest for this type of thing when they directly adapted EC stories into 30-minute episodes and kicked off a seven season run of Tales from the Crypt. In fact, House of Clocks would’ve worked better, had it been chopped down to 30 minutes and reframed as a piece of a larger anthology. 

Despite budgetary constraints and a bloated runtime, House of Clocks has endeared itself to fans with its spooky tone, too-hot-for-primetime gore, and because, in a roundabout fashion, it counts as a zombie movie. At the very least, it feels more like vintage Fulci than the previous year’s Zombi 3 (1988), which had more in common with replacement director Bruno Mattei’s Hell of the Living Dead (Italian: Virus - l'inferno dei morti viventi, 1980) than Zombie. Attentive viewers will likely notice visual self-homages to Zombie and House by the Cemetery (Italian: Quella villa accanto al cimitero, 1981) and even the time loop concept itself matches similar existential traps seen at the ends of The Beyond (Italian: ..E tu vivrai nel terrore! L'aldilà, 1981), House by the Cemetery, and Fulci’s final film, Door to Silence (Italian: Le porte del silenzio, 1991).

* In the late ‘80s, a collection of (at least) six horror movies that had a “Lucio Fulci Presents” label slapped on their box art. Among them was Giovanni Simonelli’s TV movie Hansel and Gretel (Italian: Hansel e Gretel, 1990), which Fulci has long been rumored to have co-directed without credit. In Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1980-1989, author Roberto Curti briefly points to similarities between Hansel and Gretel’s screenplay (credited only to Simonelli) and that of one of Avallone’s unfilmed segments, The Best Friend’s House (Italian: La casa dell’amico del cuore).

Bibliography:

• Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci by Stephen Thrower (FAB Press, 1999)

• Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1980-1989 by Roberto Curti (McFarland, 2019)

Video

As I already mentioned, the Houses of Doom movies were shelved upon completion and didn’t get an official Italian release until 2000 (I’ve read conflicting reports of a small theatrical release around that time). House of Clocks and Sweet House of Horrors were released on UK and Japanese VHS tape, and I distinctly remember bootleg copies being offered to US viewers in the backpages of Fangoria, Gorezone, and early internet message boards. Both of Fulci’s entries made their official stateside debuts in 2002 from Shriek Show/Media Blasters. These were part of a larger Lucio Fulci collection and the only anamorphically enhanced copies available.

House of Clocks made its way to Japanese Blu-ray in 2021, while the rest of the Houses of Doom collection had its US HD debut via a four-movie set from Cauldron Films (it was beaten to market by a matter of weeks by German company Retro Gold 63). The limited edition featured new 2K restorations of the films and is now available as standard edition, stand-alone discs with the same A/V and extras. Fulci was experimenting with soft focus, smoke, lens flares, and diffusion effects at the end of his career. The most extreme version of this is seen in his barbarian fantasy, Conquest (1983), which appears to have been filmed through a dollop of Vaseline. House of Clocks downplays this a bit and ends up looking sort of like a macabre daytime soap opera, something magnified by the fact that cinematographer Nino Celeste was forced to shoot on 16mm.

Cauldron’s Blu-rays are an across-the-board upgrade over the DVDs, which had a shot-on-video look to them (perhaps they were mastered from a video source?). The extra resolution and clarity draws out the textural qualities of the 16mm sources, making for a grainy, but overall more cinematic appearance. The sickly palette (another trademark of this era of Fulci productions) are also warmed up, revealing pinker skin tones and richer reds.

Audio

House of Clocks presented with Italian and English dubs, both in uncompressed DTS-HD Master Audio mono. The Italian track has a crisper quality, but also applies a lot more echo to the vocals. I’m not sure if this was an attempt to make things spookier or to make the titular house sound larger. The English track is cleaner, but with softer effects and particularly unconvincing lip sync. Vince Tempera’s music contrasts the haunting opening title theme with rock-infused villain motifs. The final effect is a sort of Fabio Frizzi Fulci score meets a post-Goblin Claudio Simonetti action score that sounds pretty good on either track. 

Extras

• Commentary with Eugenio Ercolani, Nathaniel Thompson, and Troy Howarth – Howarth, the author of Splintered Visions: Lucio Fulci and His Films (Midnight Marquee Press, 2015), Mondo Digital head Thompson, and prolific retrospective featurette director Ercolani explore the final part of Fulci’s career, the director’s various controversies (going back to his early comedies), the making of the Houses of Doom series, and the careers of the cast & crew (emphasizing collaborations with Fulci).

• Lighting the House of Time (24:45, HD) – Cinematographer Nino Celeste looks back at his career from extra to director of photography, his collaborators, some of his better remembered films, working with Fulci (they got along) and the cast, shooting both of the director’s Houses of Doom entries, and the sorry state of Italian film.

• Time and Music (28:26, HD) – Composer Vince Tempera talks about his collaborations with Franco & Carlo Bixio, Fabio Frizzi, and Fulci, some of his other film work, and the technical and production processes of writing film music. 

• Working with a Master (23:56, HD) – First assistant director Michele de Angelis discusses befriending Fulci while working on the Lucio Fulci Presents movies as a personal driver and assistant, despite the director’s fiery temper, television’s ill effect on theatrical releases, media piracy in post-internet Italy, and his opinion on the continuing Fulci vs. Argento discussion.

• Time with Fulci (19:18, HD) – Effects artist Elio Terribili closes out the Cauldron exclusive interviews running down his career and relationship with Fulci.

• Paura: Lucio Fulci Remembered Vol. 1 interview gallery – These shorter clips were all conducted by Mike Baronas and Kit Gavin for the 2006 DVD collection:

  • Actor Paolo Paolini (5:28, SD)

  • Actress Carla Cassola (9:32, SD)

  • Actor Al Cliver, aka: Pierluigi Conti (1:32, HD)

• Promotional trailer

The images on this page are taken from the Blu-ray and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.