Casa, Dolce Casa: The Italian Flavours of Evil Dead

Ah, the American grindhouse! Where would we be without this idyllic haven from another era? Where cult horror and violent exploitation was allowed to simmer gently behind neon lights, straddled by adult bookstores, traffic pollution, sex shows and the grimy eventide business hours of 42nd Street. For those of us not born in that time or place, this idealised fantasy can only be conjured up somewhat from watching specific contemporaneous movies that depicted it, or by consuming documentaries about the subject. But one of the longest lasting poster boys of such a vibrantly sleazy institution in film history is arguably that of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead. 

Shot on a low budget with limited resources, this wicked tale of earthen spirits, demonic possessions and flesh-tearing monsters was a new paradigm in how to take the audience for a visceral thrill ride, featuring disturbing camera dynamics, an unrelenting aural assault, and a perpetual torrent of severed limbs, stabbings, flesh-ripping, eye gouging, etc… and of course, the infamous sexual assault involving a tree. The film’s effect was unprecedented, earning almost universal acclaim from audiences and critics alike. Today, the film is appropriately idolised, cited as one of the most successful independently-produced horror films in history with a faithfully devoted generation of fans who laud its legendary status. Such a rave success however couldn’t stay contained for too long, which ultimately led to 1987’s Evil Dead II (released in some territories as Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn). Continuing the story of the first film with equal aplomb, the sequel featured updated reprisals of the glorious splatter and demonically-charged mayhem that made the original material so memorable, though this time it would be blended with an even darker humour and off-kilter comedy moments that birthed the ‘splatstick’ movement, responsible for paving the way for 1992’s Dead Alive, 2004’s Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland in 2009. The new comedic direction cemented the tone of future Evil Dead instalments, such as the third entry (1992’s Army of Darkness) and the future TV adaptation Ash vs Evil Dead (2015-2018), but it was around the time of Evil Dead II’s release in ‘87 when somewhere else in the world, a new phenomenon was about to be given life…

The release of Sam Raimi’s gruesome twosome in Italy was just as lucrative as it was elsewhere, making big bucks at the box office and proving popular with audiences in the country. The release title however was changed; Evil Dead became La Casa (The House in English), while Evil Dead II became La Casa 2, in a trend that was fairly common at the time of retitling certain works to include references to a house, mostly due to the popular Italian giallo movement. Italian filmmakers were no strangers to spotting trends and cashing in on potential money-making plots for their own markets, and with such a household name being established by Sam Raimi’s duo of debauchery, it was an opportunity too tempting to pass up on. Thus began the La Casa series, a sequence of mostly unrelated projects that became an unofficial franchise outside of the wider Evil Dead franchise. Gone were the groovy one-liners, boomsticks and winged Deadites; in their place were malevolent clown dolls, witchy curses and spectral possessions, stewed long and hard in typical Italian excess and seasoned with both strangeness and charm. 

By the early ‘80s, the horror genre in Italy was in relative stasis due to the overall decline of Italian cinema. Gone were the halcyon days of Antonioni, Fellini, Rossellini and Visconti, and though the spaghetti western (popularised by Sergio Leone) and the Italian ‘giallo’ thriller movements (popularised by Mario Bava and Dario Argento) had their spot in the limelight, the overall popularity and success of homegrown Italian fare couldn’t compete with higher budget blockbusters from America and the rise of Italian TV stations. In response, a large influx of low budget exploitation or horror films were produced, having to mainly rely on outside markets in order to make money, exporting their product to the rest of Europe, the Americas or Japan. To benefit the most from this strategy, productions began to take heavy inspiration from those trend-setting blockbusters from the rest of the world which Italian audiences were favouring. This tactic had been employed in the past with some notable success, namely that of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead which inspired Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (Italian title: Zombi 2) and an array of other Italian gut-munchers. While this stratagem wasn’t always a guarantee, it nonetheless led to a rich crucible where Italian knock-offs and unofficial sequels were not only rife but joyfully zany in their style and execution. Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws led to Tentacles, Killer Fish and Cruel Jaws, Ridley Scott’s Alien led to Alien 2: On Earth and Contamination, The Exorcist led to Beyond the Door, and so on and so forth. Almost no subject was out of bounds, which is why it wasn’t unusual that the Evil Dead franchise was appropriated by Italian film-makers to funnel some of that money to their own market. 

One of the film companies born out of this cinematic free-for-all was Filmirage, acquired by pornmeister Aristide Massacessi (known more colloquially as Joe D’Amato) from film producer Ermanno Donati who’d passed away in 1979. Filmirage ended up being used by D’Amato for his non-hardcore porn projects, opening with the characteristically different Anthropophagous and Absurd, two heavily graphic slasher pictures starring George Eastman. A handful of peplum ‘sword-and-sandal’ pictures, Ator the Fighting Eagle and its sequel Ator 2, were then released, as were two Mad Max-inspired post-apocalyptic action flicks, Endgame- Bronx’s Final Fight and 2020 Texas Gladiators. As the ‘80s wore on, D’Amato began to open up Filmirage’s doors to fellow Italian directors who were also struggling to find work, helping by producing them and assisting with directing on occasion as well. Some of these have become memorable in their own right, such as Michele Soavi’s debut giallo-slasher Stagefright, Killing Birds (released as Zombie 5 in the US) and the infamous Troll 2 and its follow-up Troll 3 (released as The Crawlers in other territories. As you can see, Filmirage’s copybook was heavily reliant on whatever was popular contemporaneously to secure its survival, seemingly producing an unofficial sequel or rip-off for every theme that came up. It was around this time in the late ‘80s that a project known as Ghosthouse went into production.

Sometime in 1987, Ghosthouse was greenlit with Umberto Lenzi at the helm, known more infamously as the director of ‘nasty’ cannibal flicks like Eaten Alive and Cannibal Ferox, giallo examples like Eyeball and Seven Bloodstained Orchids, machismo-oozing ‘poliziotteschi’ crime films like Almost Human and Violent Naples, as well as gory cult oddities like Nightmare City. It was released in 1988, retitled as La Casa 3, designed to ride the coattails of Sam Raimi’s independent films. The film essentially tells the tale of young Henrietta, a disturbed young girl who clings desperately to a toy clown which her father gave her. After being reprimanded when the family cat turns up dead and locked in the basement, Henrietta’s parents are killed by supernatural forces, leaving Henrietta to perish alone. Many years later, two teenagers Paul and Martha manage to catch a radio signal in which a young man calls for help. Paul tracks the signal down and finds Henrietta’s house, where a small group of teenagers (Jim, Susan, Mark and Tina) are vacationing, only for them all to fall prey to the house’s violent past in the form of Henrietta’s doll, which exerts a seemingly endless malevolence. 

Despite obviously having no continuity with Sam Raimi’s work, it’s interesting just how La Casa 3 cherry-picks certain elements from the screenplay of the Evil Dead films; a girl named Henrietta dies after being locked in the basement and returns as a malevolent spirit to torment the teens, inanimate household objects become possessed and act oddly, including a mirror in the film’s grisly opening, Tina is constantly disbelieved about the supernatural happenings and the arrival of Martha and Paul is only due to a strange temporal distortion caught on an old-fashioned ham radio, luring them to the house. These elements are present in some way in the Evil Dead films, meaning that at least tangentially, the films have some loose connectivity, as well as the overarching theme of the horrors unfolding within a house.

What’s refreshing about La Casa 3 is that it’s an almost unseen approach from director Umberto Lenzi, whose filmography is often signified by a cynical roughness and acerbically sleazy style, frequently peppered with nasty set pieces and uncomfortable gore sequences. Ghosthouse by comparison is actually quite a clean, surprisingly un-grimy production with a bright palette, crisp photography and no sleaze to be seen. Even though the film contains all the charms of Italian low-budget films, it’s a distinctly Americanised approach to proceedings that is in part due to the film’s inspirations which it wears blatantly on its sleeves. The film’s antagonist is a demonic toy clown, which is strikingly reminiscent of the nightmare-inducing harlequin from Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist. La Casa 3 even goes so far as to recreate the sequence of animated toys flying around a child’s nursery and an attempted strangulation by the evil doll. Apart from this, other American influences are clear within the film’s events such as 1982’s Superstition, in which a young girl’s persecution by superstitious religious folk in the past creates a supernatural murderous entity in the present, and thematic lifts from both The Amityville Horror and The Omen. Not just content with celebrating American horror however, Lenzi also throws in generous lashings of Italian inspiration too, most notably those of fellow director Lucio Fulci. The film uses the same titular house from Fulci’s House by the Cemetery and an array of tropes from his Gates of Hell trilogy, such as the sight of Valkos hung from a tree in a cemetery, Mark having his flesh painfully melted off, Henrietta’s mother having an eye gouged out with glass and her throat slit, the sight of tarantulas creeping across a crypt, etc. All of these images are featured in some way in Fulci’s work, but other Italian notes are detected in the form of a spectral vicious dog (a la 1981’s Madhouse) and a genuinely uncomfortable childish ditty that plays when the clown is active, in the same vein as Deep Red’s creepy childhood music. 

While certainly not as mean-spirited or unsettling as Lenzi’s usual set pieces, the kills in the film do often surprise with their gruesome nature, ranging from a malfunctioning fan blade slashing someone’s throat, a guillotine bisecting someone in half and someone getting garden shears in the back. The introductory murders are particularly brutal, akin to the opening numbers of Spanish slasher Pieces or Fulci’s later effort The Sweet House of Horrors. The fact that the film’s violent scenes are peppered quite sporadically throughout almost makes it more shocking when they do occur. All in all, La Casa 3 is a gleefully unashamed love letter to a variety of American and Italian productions, rendered in a sleek and enjoyably silly package that offers the thrills for those willing to give it a chance.

Concurrently, production on another project had begun within the offices of Filmirage’s offices, since Joe D’Amato was always trying to stay three steps ahead of the trends with roughly five productions on the go at one time. After releasing Stagefright and Killing Birds with the assistance of Claudio Lattanzi, D’Amato had greenlit the production of Ghosthouse but wanted to ensure that if the film was lucrative, that another film in the same vein was on hand to follow the same trajectory. Hence, Witchcraft (known in the US as Witchery) was devised as the de facto Ghosthouse 2 and eventual La Casa 4. Umberto Lenzi was originally going to return as the director, with an initial idea of repurposing the plot of Psycho within a supernatural setting. He eventually left the project and when Claudio Lattanzi stepped in, a script was written with Lattanzi collaborating with screenwriter Daniele Stroppa, concerning a witch who sequentially kills victims in a gruesome ritual. Lattanzi too left the production and was replaced by Luigi Cozzi, but the project was again delayed when Cozzi found the story disinteresting. It was at this point that D’Amato chose an unlikely replacement in Fabrizio Laurenti, a young Super 8 filmmaker who’d recently returned to Italy from New York. After making the experimental vampire flick The Immigrant with a young actress Mary Sellers (who played the role of Susan in the aforementioned Ghosthouse), Laurenti began dating her and returned to his native Italy in hopes of returning to his previous role as a camera operator. When Sellers got a film role straight away in Michele Soavi’s Stagefright, she began to speak of her boyfriend’s talent and introduced Laurenti to D’Amato. Since Sellers continued to get work in D’Amato’s later productions like Ghosthouse, D’Amato eventually approached Laurenti with the offer to direct Witchcraft after the departure of Cozzi. Laurenti was understandably excited and eager, making some final changes to the script before commencing. 

Witchcraft follows a mysterious witch clad in black who is seeking to ensnare a group of innocent people into her control around an abandoned hotel on an island, to complete an obscure ritual related to one of the group’s unborn children. In a similar way to Ghosthouse, the screenplay does have some loose connective tissue with the Evil Dead films, namely that of the usage of tape recorders, an otherworldly sequence of sexual violence, and the usage of a charismatic, chiselled hero (David Hasselhoff doing his best Bruce Campbell). While the plot is a deviation from Ghosthouse’s malevolent clown doll narrative, Witchcraft nonetheless has some continuity with the previous production in the return of actor Robert Champagne and the re-use of certain shots from Ghosthouse’s finale. 

Other than that however, La Casa 4 is an extraordinarily entertaining mish-mash of various inspirations with an equally grisly focus on supernatural demises and a thick cloying atmosphere of devilry and magic. Similar to Lenzi’s approach, director Fabrizio Laurenti depicts a very Americanised style of horror picture, replete with a flashback sequence at the beginning, a typical group of victims (including a family, a pair of lovers and a virginal ‘final girl’) and a supernatural entity to fight against in the form of the enigmatic Lady in Black. It’s a tried-and-tested formula that works and while Witchcraft doesn’t exactly tread new ground, it’s effective enough in its set pieces and overall atmosphere to successfully entertain its audience. Again leaving Deadites and boomsticks behind, the film’s antagonist is a mysterious witch who utilises dark magics to kill or possess her victims. She is most often seen with a dazzling jewelled hairpin, that she shines in order to perform spells, which is a clear lift from the imagery of Dario Argento’s Suspiria, as is the film’s suggestion that the witch is in fact merely possessing an old German actress to do her bidding, another reference to the German setting of Argento’s film. Her motivations are altogether unexplained, with the exception of a plan to open three gateways to Hell by fulfilling the terms of a macabre ritual. Similarly to Lenzi’s attempt, the screenplay liberally pilfers this concept from the work of Lucio Fulci, especially as the witch’s machinations are only achieved by sequentially dragging her victims into another dimension, where undead beings and humanoid demons are under her spell to commit her bidding. Fulci’s City of the Living Dead and The Beyond both heavily rely on the existence of an alternate dimension filled with dead spirits, as well as undead servants who spring forth from those dimensional gates. Other lifts from the Godfather of Gore’s filmography include a sinister bathtub with a surprise and the hotel setting (a la The Beyond), the mystical possession themes of Manhattan Baby and Aenigma and finally, little Tommy’s connection to the Lady in Black, similar to the dynamic of Bob and his ghostly friends in The House by the Cemetery. American chillers are also referenced in Laurenti’s work, such as The Slayer in Hasselhoff’s pitchfork demise, and of course, The Exorcist in Linda Blair’s presence (and eventual possession).

In sharp contrast to the ‘jack-in-the-box’ gory shocks of Ghosthouse however, the violence in Witchcraft is deeper steeped in a pall of suffering, lingering much longer on the infliction of pain of its unlucky protagonists. Suffocatingly wreathed in doom, viewers can witness some excruciating deaths including a woman having her mouth sewn shut before cooking to death in a chimney, a woman being brutally sexually assaulted by a scab-lipped demon, a woman being slashed in the neck before being lanced on a swordfish, a man being crucified alive and placed on a flaming pyre and in one of the most squirm-inducing moments, a voodoo doll causing a man’s veins to throb out of control until they burst. With such a great combination of sanguine set-pieces, a palpably cloying sense of dread and doom, with some enjoyable performances from established actors like Linda Blair, David Hasselhoff, Catherine Hickland and Hildegard Knef, it’s essential viewing for ‘80s horror fans.

Then we come to our final original entry in the La Casa series: 1990’s Beyond Darkness from infamous director Claudio Fragasso. The name may be familiar to some, most likely as he’s responsible for helming what is considered the most popular bad movie in the world, Troll 2. Fragasso actually dabbled in a whole host of Italian exploitation with his screenwriter wife Rosella Drudi, working on the scripts for several flicks with his friend Bruno Mattei, including Zombie Creeping Flesh (Hell of the Living Dead in some territories), Rats: Night of Terror and Zombie 2 (Zombie Flesh Eaters 2). He took the director’s seat on more than a few occasions however, on stuff like Zombie 3 (sometimes released as After Death) and Night Killer. Production on Beyond Darkness started in late 1989, with a script and concept that followed in the footsteps of both La Casa 3 and La Casa 4, combining several strong plots and narratives from popular US shockers with the European imagery and tones of Italian contemporaries. 

La Casa 5 introduces us to Father George, who is reading last rites to a bald serial killer named Bette, about to be executed following a spate of child murders. After handing over her book to him, George becomes a haunted man, losing his faith and becoming a drunk. When Father Peter, his wife Annie and their two children Martin and Carole move into their new house, the supernatural presence in the house begins to weave its spell around them, forcing the despondent George to help his fellow priest in defeating the evil. Unlike Ghosthouse and Witchcraft, Beyond Darkness is a much dreamier and somnolent example of Italian horror, focusing less on graphic bloodletting and violent set pieces and instead showcasing a variety of ethereal happenings and paranormal events befalling an innocent family. Almost knocking the first two out of the water however, is the exhaustive myriad of borrowings Fragasso uses in the film’s script and narrative; the family’s structure and situation is a blatant copy and paste of the infinitely more popular Amityville Horror, whilst the opening sequence in a prison are extraordinarily reminiscent of House III: The Horror Show and Wes Craven’s Shocker. After these initial set-ups, the plot becomes intrinsically reliant on various plot points from Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist; the daughter’s name is Carole, constantly lured towards a mysterious aperture in the house’s masonry where a spectral light beckons. Later in the film, son Martin is snatched and dragged into another world through this doorway, forcing Father Peter to enter this other dimension to rescue him. The plot even begins to riff on the imagery of Gary Sherman’s Poltergeist III, with Annie transported to the other dimension through a mirror, being chased briefly by a possessed car and an evil doppelganger of Martin entering the real world. As the film enters its third and final act, the film becomes a literal Exorcist clone, with the troubled George helping Peter to cleanse the possessed Martin of the evil presence within him, almost word-for-word with the unrivalled sequence in William Friedkin’s original. Of course, the film also has a decent amount of references to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films too; the sequences of doors opening is very similar to Raimi’s experimental camerawork, as is the image of the constantly rocking black swan in the children’s room. Bette’s character is also heavily inspired by Raimi’s source material, on death row for killing children and devouring their souls (a la Henrietta from Evil Dead II), gleaning her technique from a mysterious devilish tome she refers to as her ‘Book of the Dead’. Not content with leaving it there, the book also inspires a possessed radio to emit ghastly chanting and of course, the whole house of evil is defeated in the finale when this lexicon is set ablaze, causing the witches and the house itself to be razed to the ground in flames.

It wouldn’t be a true La Casa film though without some love for Lucio Fulci, and there’s plenty to be had for eagle-eyed fans. The film uses the same house from Fulci’s The Beyond as its main set, while there’s a few shots of both Peter and Annie that look like recreations of Norman and Lucy from The House by the Cemetery. The highly effective presence oozing from a small chink in a plastered-over wall is similar to the fetid basement in The Beyond, while the nightmarish sequences of the children being entombed alive in the other dimension has shades of the ‘buried alive’ sequence in City of the Living Dead. The film also re-uses the ‘gateway to hell’ mythology that was referenced in its predecessor Witchcraft, indicating that there was a real effort with these films to at least have an underlying ideas pool to draw from. Even when characters like Martin and Peter become overcome by the house’s evil forces, their eyes become white and cloudy, like the ghostly characters in Fulci’s The Beyond, cementing this connection even more. Most likely as a result of taking inspiration from Poltergeist, this entry is fairly mild in terms of on-screen violence, replacing the usual smatterings of blood and gore with more conventional scares and imagery, such as flying meat cleavers, possessed ornamental swans and radios, an otherworldly fog and mysterious voices, etc. One of the film’s more effective gambits are the several moments of invasion by the spectres of witches past, dark figures draped with black veils and shrouds, stretching their hands out from the mists. They look similar to the character of Parker Crane who would haunt the 2013 film Insidious: Chapter 2 and are surprisingly effective with the lack of a definable face. The whole premise of the other dimension is also fairly interesting, resembling a mirrored version of the house which is permeated by ghostly fog and veils. There’s also some fairly interesting faces that also turn up in the movie, namely that of David Brandon who was in Michele Soavi’s theatrical slasher Stagefright and Joe D’Amato’s sexploitation rip-off Caligula: The Untold Story. Annie is played by Barbara Bingham, known for her role as Miss Van Deusen in Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. Michael Stephenson (the little boy from Troll 2) appears as Martin, while Gene LeBrock stars as Peter, who appeared in Metamorphosis, an Italian riff on Cronenberg’s The Fly. While it is certainly muted in terms on on-screen carnage, Beyond Darkness still remains a curious little oddity that is worth checking out for the serious amounts of artistic license it takes with other more recognisable franchises, especially as it contains the charming little dashes of Italian flavours that we’ve all come to grow fond of.

Thus ended the original material produced for the Italian market. The La Casa series wasn’t quite finished however as subsequent sequels did appear in the same year (1990). Instead of producing new motion pictures however, re-releases of 1987’s House II: The Second Story and 1989’s House III: The Horror Show were retrospectively retitled as La Casa 6 and La Casa 7, despite the fact that both instalments were released prior to the Italian-produced La Casa 5. Amusingly, House III’s involvement was quite justified, as it was itself haphazardly shoehorned into the House franchise simply because it shared crew members with House and House II. In the US, the film was released as simply The Horror Show which was likely the original intention. In an even stranger twist of fate, it would seem that a legitimate sequel to the entire off-shoot franchise may be in the works, as ‘retrosploitation’ filmmaker Dustin Ferguson was granted the rights to remake Umberto Lenzi’s entry Ghosthouse a few years back. There are whispers however that it may be entitled La Casa 8 in the Italian tradition, but who knows what we will really be served up… all we can hope for is that the dish will be just as tasty as these unofficial Evil Dead sequels. Groovy!

Read the original article at Daily Grindhouse!