Carla (Stefania Orsola Garello, King Arthur) has a doozy of a nightmare that features a monk (Hal Yamanouchi, 2020 Texas Gladiators, 2019: After the Fall of New York) attacking a statue of Buddha (which in turn oozes blood), a skeleton in a wheelchair, a tarantula legging it across a stiff, and a child with bloody hands.
But fuck that for now, as we then join Carla and her geologist friends… not to mention Carla’s ridiculous scamp of a brother Gianluca (Costantino Meloni)… as they head out to a remote village that is one fart away from suffering a rather severe geological disaster!
After investigating, our heroes find themselves needing to spend the night in the area… and since they are rock smart and nearly everything else stupid, they decide a dilapidated hotel in the middle of nowhere is a safer bet than finding lodging in town.
As Carla and the gang stay longer and longer at the hotel, it becomes apparent that no one else has stayed there since 1969… and worse yet, the building has quite the reputation having been the home to multiple homicides and all.
Naturally the place is haunted to hell and back… and as heads begin to roll, Carla finds her friends list ever dwindling…
Following The House of Witchcraft, Umberto Lenzi (Cannibal Ferox, Nightmare City) returns to the Houses of Doom (a collection of films originally intended for Italian TV broadcast… but the material’s extreme content stopped that dead in it’s tracks) with the final film in the series (which also included Lucio Fulci’s (The Beyond, The House by the Cemetery) The House of Clocks and The Sweet House of Horrors), The House of Lost Souls.
Written and directed by Lenzi, The House of Lost Souls is exactly what I want from an Italian fright flick; it’s gory (although not as intense as it’s cinematic peers), derivative, and completely surreal!
Comprised of a whole lot of Kubrick’s version of Stephen King’s The Shining with a light dash of Poltergeist and a hint of The Amityville Horror, The House of Lost Souls cherry picks elements such as the haunted hotel, a few ax attacks against women and children, a character with a psychic connection to the supernatural… and adds plenty of that ol’ fever-dream logic and severed heads to keep things spicy!
As with all the entries in The Houses of Doom, the location utilized here is perfect as the hotels lost grandeur makes it a crumbling ghost in it’s own right, and the fog-shrouded forests that surround the demonic dwelling add immeasurably to the ambience of the piece.
All these ghoulish goings-on look crisp and clear thanks to the 2K restoration/1080p presentation utilized here by Cauldron… so much so you’ll marvel at the bright red t-shirt of whoever was portraying a demonic arm in a scene.
As for special features, you can view The House of Lost Souls in English (with optional subtitles… and I really recommend this for the powerful hilarity of some of the lines/readings), Italian with English subtitles, or with a choice of info-packed audio commentary provided by film historian Samm Deighan or film historian Adrian Smith & podcaster/Lenzi fan Rod Barnett.
Also present are interviews with composer Claudio Simonetti, FX artist Elio Terribili, an an archival, career-spanning interview with Lenzi.
Full of atmosphere, lower-scale gore, and a whole monstrous mess of off-the-wall ghostly goodness, The House of Lost Souls is a devilishly delightful dish of Italian fright flick lunacy!
