One of the hundreds of horror movies that claims to be based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft (with a name like that it’s too bad he was never a sex ed teacher), this 2003 no-budget production opted for the author's 1924 tale about a decayed house in Providence Rhode Island that was known for the multiple owners it's likely had a hand in killing since it was built. Of course it's not just bad luck that led those folks to their deaths, but something more sinister (and gelatinous) that lay resting underneath. You can check out the whole story by clicking the rolling head at the bottom of the page. The movie also borrows from two other H.P. yarns though, "The Music of Eric Zann" and "The Dreams in the Witch House", the second of which many of you might remember as being a story that Stuart Gordon adapted for his first season contribution to Showtime's "Masters of Horror" series. As for those of you who have either already read said stories or just came here for a slightly entertaining movie review and not an English Lit lecture, let's make like Grape Ape and, uhm, put on a stupid hat and a green vest and step on things... hmmmm, that could've gone better.

Italian accented (and I mean genuinely Italian accented too, not "American mafia goomba stereotype" accented) ghost hunters-slash-authors Alex (or "Halix" as his girlfriend calls him) and Rita (who smokes more than a coal mine fire) are investigating the supposedly haunted remains of an old abandoned inn known as "the Shunned House". Its former occupants apparently all went crazy or died of mysterious illnesses and violent murders. Three times the place has been destroyed since it was built and three times it was rebuilt with it's original plans, but putting up new timber on the old grounds didn't stifle the craziness, hence why it's currently abandoned and why A&R are now poking around... with those horrible accents! Would it have been so hard to just film the movie in Italian and subtitle it into English afterwards? Instead of waiting for morning to do their poking, the duo opts for a late night cruise through evil's motor lodge. It's not long before Rita starts seeing druids and speaking French in her sleep while we're put through the flashback wringer with brief glimpses into the house's history and former occupants, including a woman in a cloak leading a be-hatted guy around some catacombs, a sleepwalking mathematician named Luigi and his self-playing chess board and strobe light, and a shy young journalist named Marco who falls in love with a tongueless violin player. See what happens when you try to play the violin with your tongue? Stupid kids.

After spending the first night in the house, Rita starts to feel stick, blaming the dust and mold that are prevalent throughout the dump. Alex insists that they need to continue staying there so he can get his work done unabated. And no matter how many times she tells the man to go fuck himself, Rita continues to stay and suffer, likely for the free Chinese takeout he gives her. Well, if we have to stick around I guess it's only fair that she has to too. Back in Luigi's story, he wakes up one morning to find himself covered in blood while a local child was found murdered, likely with an axe... and likely by Luigi. I wonder if Luigi's also responsible for the abominable dubbing monster that seems to be living in the throat of the inn's female owner, making her words not match up to her lips. As for Marco and the violinist, he's still shy and she's still got no tongue. Wow, compelling... as in, "compelling me to fast forward right the fuck through it". Elsewhere, a woman bangs her bloody head slowly against a wall... I sympathize, I really do. Oh yeah, and that chick in the cloak finally leads the guy wearing the hat out of the basement and into the house's front yard...

Back to Rita and Alex, while she's taking pictures of the house she sees somebody stabbing someone else to death. I think it might've been Luigi doing the stabbing, but with that damn strobe light blasting in my eyes I couldn't really tell. Back again to Marco, he finally gets the nerve to introduce himself to the violinist, only to start having nightmares about her straddling him and slitting her wrist with a straight razor. When she comes to him asking if he'll help her fix her window (it has a tendency to open menacingly at night), we learn that although everyone in the movie speaks English, they apparently write in Italian or French or whatever it is they're writing in. Hey, gimme a break, I was raised in upstate New York where we were lucky to get Spanish, let alone any real foreign languages... not that three years of Spanish class helped me understand that any better anyway. Jumping over to Luigi once more, his girlfriend doesn't believe he killed the child, so she sets out to prove he's not guilty of sleepmurder, but instead he has a nightmare about being attacked by a crazy bald dude in a surgeon's mask wielding a straight razor in what has up until this point been the first real scare moment of the flick. Well, at least there's one, which is better than most movies can say anymore.

Back in real time, Alex seems to think he's found out why the place is cursed: it was built by a woman who was rumored to be a witch... and everything gets crazy from here on out. Marco's tale ends on a reeeeeeeally freaky scene (two words: arm violin), Luigi finds out what's really going on with his would-be girlfriend Nora, I still have no idea who the girl banging her head on the wall was, and we finally find out what the deal was with the dude in the hat (though we still have no fucking idea who he is or why he's doing what he does). As for Alex and Rita, the end to their story isn't nearly as exciting, but it's an ending and that's what's important.

What started off as a boring, hard to understand stroll through bland land eventually works up to a crescendo of crazyocity the likes of which I was ill prepared for! Could it be that the low budget and uninspired acting are just there to lull us into a false sense of security just so an ape-sized fist of fury can swing out from the darkness and cracks us one in the mouth?! Well, I doubt that part, but oh man did this turn into a pleasant surprise. The sad part is there are probably unsuspecting people out there who will turn this movie on, only to turn it off after the first half hour or so and miss the whole pay-off. Sometimes diligence is worth it kids, so try and always stick it out till the end credits.

Though I did enjoy the crazy visual shit at the end, I also have to commend the writer(s) who managed to toss a few Lovecraft tales onto their proverbial loom and weave us a throw rug of epic proportions, crossing back and forth between the three main stories and throwing in a few sidebars with other strange happenings to keep us asking, "who is that and what's he have to do with whatever the Hell is happening with the other three stories!?". Though I think "The Shunned House" could have easily been stretched out into a full feature on it's own, the well crafted combination of the three stories together bakes into a three-cheese macaroni dish that surprises at times like a dog's shock collar wrapped around your thigh. I do think that the actual parts taken from the title tale are a little scant to be naming the movie after it, but what the Hell, just go with it. The thing I've notice in a number of other reviews people made about this flick, they all seemed to fall asleep or shut it off within the first 30 minutes, not unlike I said I was about to do myself. The word "boring" was tossed around three or four times in each comment too. Well, I hate to say it people, but in many ways this flick actually sticks with the Lovecraft method of writing. Ol' Howie P.'s stuff always starts off really slow, establishing nothing but background and mood and tiring out his readers. But, for the folks who stick through the whole thing (and don't just skip to the last few pages), it pays off with horrors the likes of which few people could have even dreamed of (without spending the rest of their lives in a straight jacket) before his time. That's the way the movie is: it makes you earn the ass kicking that the last 20 minutes give you if you make it that far... not unlike Death Proof now that I think about it...

Although the story and even the direction redeem themselves by the finale though, there's still the question of the technical trappings of this low-budget field trip into mindfuck town. Between the less than stellar recording equipment and the hodge podge of heavy accents everyone seems to have, I really could've used a few subtitles here and there. The gore effects were good for the most part, but the more mechanical shit like the strobe lighting and the straight razor that pours blood could've used a little tweaking. Overall the movie looks pretty good too, but definitely could've rocked (and I mean 12 carat rocked) on good ol' fashioned film. The acting wasn't great, but amidst the mild-to-miserable performances I gotta hand it to Emanuele Cerman (who played Luigi) for being the resident diamond in the rough. I really wish Rita hadn't been such a wholly unlikable cunt though...

What else is there to say? Normally I'd push for a mediocre Lovecraft movie to be remade with a bigger budget by the likes of Stuart Gordon, but shockingly enough I'm going to pass on kissing Stu's ass this time around and just ask some would-be producer type out there with an extra million sitting in his sock drawer to give Zuccon and Saletti a call and see if you can't get The Shunned House redone into something epic. It could seriously give movies like Dagon, From Beyond and Re-Animator a run for their money as "Best Lovecraft Inspired Movie Ever", and that's a title I don't whore around lightly.