The House of Lost Souls — The House of Lost Souls( Blu Ray)
From the late 80s, The House of Lost Souls is a decidedly wacky Euro horror take on the haunted house genre. It throws into the mix of crawling tarantulas, blood dripping light fittings, a selection of stabbing-to-decapitating murders, running wild killer washing machines, a baseball-capped boy ghost who likes misting up glass, and loads of camp/ OTT horror fun. Here from Cauldron Films is a recent region-free Blu-ray of the film, taking in a new 2K/ totally uncut print of the film, two commentary tracks from genre experts, and a mix of new and archive extras.
The House of Lost Souls ( aka La casa Delle Anime Erranti) was made in the year 1989. It was directed by the infamous Italian cult director Umberto Lenzi, who over his career helmed sixty-five full-length films, which touched down in most exploitation sub-genres. Going from Euro spy action drama 008: Operation Exterminate(1965), onto spaghetti western Pistol for a Hundred Coffins (1968), through to more than a few Giallo such as Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (1972), Spasmo (1974), and Eyeball (1975). He helmed two cannibal films, Eaten Alive (1980), and Cannibal Ferox (1981). And more than a few horror films, such as the fast-moving zombie-focused Nightmare City( 1980), spring break-focused slasher Nightmare Beach (1989), and psycho horror of Hitcher In The Dark (1989)
House of Lost Souls was originally meant to be part of La Case Maledette ( The Houses Of Doom) series, which saw infamous Italian horror directors making TV films- in total, there were four- the other three are The House of clocks directed by Luci Fulci( Zombie, The Beyond, The New York Ripper), The House Of Witchcraft also directed by Lenzi, and lastly The Sweet House Of Horrors also by Fulci (all of these have now been reissued by Cauldron Films )- for one reason or another none of the films where ever shown on TV, but landed up been released on the VHS market.
The film kicks off in a wonderful, jarring/ wacky manner as we see a rapidly cut together collage of a Tibetan monk hacking at a gold Buddha head making it bleed, a skeleton rolling along in a wheelchair, and tarantulas on a skull. This turns out to be a waking dream from our lead serious/ often set-faced psychic, Mary(Laurentina Guidotti ), who is part of a group of twentysomething geologists.
The group have just visited a site in the Italian mountains- but can’t get through the road as there’s been a rock slide. So they go looking for a place to stay, coming across a tall, stark, and seemingly abandoned lodge/ motel. They go up to the door- see a closed sign, but suddenly a light comes on, with a middle-aged man with a combover comes to the door- he ushers them in, hands them two room keys, says nothing, then disappears into a back room.
As the group settles in, things go awry. Starting with tarantulas scuttling over bed sheets & blood dripping chandeliers, and someone getting locked in a freezer with two hanged-up corpses. But fairly quickly things go even more wacky- with multiple decapitations, creepy kid ghosts, stalking grey killers, and most ridiculous a selection of murdering washing.
The just under one hour and a half romps by well, shifting between the euro camp, ghostly horror, and a fair selection of gore. The main motel/ tall mountain lodge is neat/memorable, it has a carved tree silhouette staircase, over down cobwebs, and a few fairly eerie moments.
Yes, The House Of Lost Souls isn’t doing anything terribly new/ inventive with the haunted house genre- but Lenzi throws so much into it, with the pace kept good & even. As you’d expect with this type of low-budget euro horror fair, the acting is not great, but largely passable, with the English dub adding unintentional humour here & there.
This Blu-ray is region free- it takes in a new 2k scan of the picture, which looks great with good clarity and nice colour range on display. On the extras side, we get large new stuff, with a fair selection of things.
First off, we get two commentary tracks with genre experts- the first is with Samm Deighan, and the second is with Rod Barnett and Adrian Smith- I played the first of these. And once again, Ms Deighan does a great job on the track. She starts off by talking about how the film appeared in an interesting time in Italian horror cinema. She discusses how the film brings together elements of different sub-genres. She goes in-depth about why she feels Umberto Lenzi needs more appreciation as a director, talking about themes in his work, and notable films from throughout his career. She discusses how this/ many of his other films go against genre grains, and how this film has a sense of nihilism to it. Later on, she talks about how the ghosts in this film are much more corporeal/ violent than past films in the haunted house genre. She talks about the real love put into the film's effects, and discusses notable crew members in the film.
Otherwise, we have the following new extras- The House of Rock ( 14.21), Interview with composer Claudio Simonetti. Working with Umberto (18.37) Interview with FX artist Elio Terribili. Lastly, we have a lengthy career covering interview with Lenzi from 2001( 52.13).
All in all, The House of Lost Souls is a great example of throw-everything-at-it 1980s horror, which is both eventful, entertaining, and at points, unintentionally amusing. This recent Cauldron Films release takes in a nice new scan, and a worthy selection of extras.