LA CASA NEL TEMPO/House of Clocks (1989)

I admit that I'm not much of a Lucio Fulci fan. I've always felt that he had a poor grasp of story. This film was made for Italian Cable Television but still manages to include a fair amount of Fulci's signature gore. Three young wasters break into a secluded mansion and are responsible for the deaths of three of the inhabitants - an old couple and their handy-man. As the victims have already been revealed as murders themselves we don't have to waste too much sympathy on them. The owner of the house collects clocks and when he is killed the clocks all stop and then start to run backwards - a signal that all kinds of weird and bloody stuff is going to happen to the three young intruders. Despite seeing the double twist at the climax coming very early into the film I was quite surprised to find myself enjoying the creepy proceedings. Based, it seems on a novel, it is stronger on narrative that most Fulci films I'm and it seemed rather closer to the world of Mario Bava than his other films. Rating ***