Watch The House of Clocks For Free

I love this movie so much

Admirable film.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Three lowlife punks are trapped in a posh villa while trying to rob it and become at the mercy of the murderous owners whom have the power to stop and reverse time via their mystical clocks."The House of Clocks" is one of four films made for the Italian cable TV series House of Doom. Lucio Fulci himself would direct two films for the series (the first being "The Sweet House of Horrors"). Director Umberto Lenzi would also direct two films ("House of Witchcraft" and "House of Lost Souls"). Unfortunately the finished films were deemed too violent by producers and were never aired.Al Cliver is mostly memorable for starring in exploitation and horror films such as Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2, The Black Cat, The Beyond and Demonia. Here he plays a semi-blind handyman. Karina Huff, who is actually English, went on to appear in Fulci's "Voices from Beyond" (1991) and Luigi Cozzi's "Demons 6" (1989).This is by no means a terrible film. No one would deem it Fulci's best, but given the limitations of working in television, it seems rather good. I much prefer it to Argento's "Do You Like Hitchcock?", for example.

People unfairly bash this movie without understanding that it was originally meant for TV and it was made with a limited budget. In my point of view cinematography is actually very decent for a TV movie and it shows that Fulci really had a talent even with tight budgets. If this had been made with higher budget and better actors, then it could be an instant giallo horror classic of all time.The plot is very original and it's so bizarre that it has to be seen. The actual message is right there. It can be interpreted in several ways, for example the movie could have some symbolism to politics and it all depends on the viewer. Also the proverb in the beginning sums it all up what the film is mainly about.All in all this is very entertaining rare piece of cinema.

If you're still interested in watching any late 1980's movies by gore master Lucio Fulci, chances are you might want to add this to your list. Well, don't. It's another total turkey. As far as I can see, Fulci started a downward slide with "Manhattan Baby", and never recovered. I have seen "Aenigma" (a joke) "Touch of Death" (pitiful), "A Cat in the Brain" (nonsensical), "Voices From Beyond (snoozefest), and even sat through "The Ghosts of Sodom" (run as far as you can from this abomination), so I have no-one else to blame but myself for even giving "House of Clocks" a try. The plot is roughly this: An elderly couple inhabit a large mansion, and they are more than a little eccentric, by which I mean that from the very outset they are both seen to have homicidal tendencies! Into this situation drop three young petty criminals who have designs on stealing some loot from the treasure laden house. The twist is that the treasures of the house are all clocks, and when the violent youths meet the crazy old couple, the clocks themselves play a big part in what happens next... OK so what's wrong with this movie? Well basically, most of it. As with all of Fulci's later works it's hampered by everything that could possibly make a passable horror movie into a disaster. The acting is really poor. I've never seen such amateurish mugging and wailing as we get here from the three central youngsters. They are just terrible. A really, REALLY bad dubbing job only makes things worse, and English speaking dubbing team don't seem to have a clue about matching dialogue up to lip movements, there is barely a moment when the cast look like they are using their own voices. The elderly couple are just as bad, even though they don't ham it up, they are lumbered with an equally hopeless dub job. Sadly, the list of shame goes on. The direction and camera work are totally uninspired. Fulci has a few trademark images that he continues to roll out over and over again. Cameras mount staircases, zoom in on shadows or doorknobs, jump rapidly in focus from foreground to background and back again, etc etc. I've seen all these tricks a hundred times and the novelty has long since worn off. Worse still, the effects are now beyond lame. All the gore scenes (brief and not very explicit) are really poor, the effects are very shoddy and they just don't work. The non-gore special effects are equally terrible, and sadly this film relies on a few trick shots for important scenes, all of which are botched. It's like Fulci doesn't know how to make anything pass for realistic, or just doesn't care. But the very worst offender of all is the plot. Oh my god. Words fail me in trying to explain what's going on here. The film has a major supernatural twist and from the moment that everything in the house goes pear shaped (you'll know when), the film just unravels totally. Nothing works, nothing makes sense, nothing gets explained. Don't think I am just not getting it. I love surreal cinema and being made to think. But this is an insult. As stupid event followed stupid event I was almost laughing, but by the time the end credits rolled, I was wondering how this was ever passed off as serious entertainment, it's such a mess it's just not funny. Take my advice and don't go near this. I'm sorry to be so negative about Lucio Fulci when he has produced some of the genre's finest shockers, but his later films never repeated the success of the golden days, and this is just another example of him churning out pot-boilers when he had long since lost the ability or interest in making a good product.

I had been a Fulci fan from watching Zombi, but I had never seen this title before. I saw the trailer on another DVD and thought it looked good. But, unfortunately, the trailer is better than the movie. It also gives away a lot of the gore.The basic plot: There is a really strange couple living in a big mansion filled with clocks and the bodies of their niece and nephew that are rotting in an odd chapel room. We soon discover that the maid has found the bodies and is so creeped out, she decides to leave. But she never makes it as the old woman kills her. And we find out she was maid number three. So right way, we know this couple is not what they appear to be.Then we have three con artist thieves who come along hoping to steal from the house. And that's when things get interesting. They kill the couple and their handyman only to find that no one ever really dies in that house.I thought a lot of the plot was good. Some of it was awful. There's one scene I just hated where the thieves suffocate a cat. And I found that to be irredeemable for this film, even though Fulci tries to make up for it at the end with an "undead cat's revenge" scene. I still hated it. And felt that was a real faulty script area. The entire ending seemed tacked on.The gore is excellent. And it's interesting that this was a made for TV movie in Europe in 1980 since it would never have made it past the US censors. We don't even get anything near as gory today. That alone is reason to watch this film.The creepiness of the house and the old couple was very good. The thieves were badly cast, stupid and inept.If you're curious about Fulci's other works, I would say watch it for that. I wouldn't really go so far as to call it an old gem, but it will keep you amused for awhile.I would like to see this remade at some point, updated. I think it has a lot of potential.