What makes it different from others?

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Seen this movie 3 times now and I think of this as a middle of the road horror movie from Lucio Fulci. Meaning I wouldn't put this on a list with the best of Fulci movies, but I wouldn't say it was one his worst either. One thing that is different about this movie compared to other Fulci movies I have seen is there are only a few gore scenes in this movie. For this was made for Italian TV rather than theatres so the violence, while still present is not as powerful as other Fulci films. Three dope-smoking young thieves are aware of this isolated house where some rich elderly people live. So they trick their way into the home to steal from these people, but the robbery goes horribly wrong as the elderly people are killed. This is when the mystery of the clocks within the house take shape and unfold a nice little horror story with some nice twists along the way.

Fulci's early horrors (THE PSYCHIC; ZOMBIE; CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD) featured protagonists that the audience could root for. Goofballs, in some cases, but you cared whether they got splattered or not. Most of his later works were just gore free-for-alls between detestable characters that you hated from Frame One. HOUSE OF CLOCKS definitely belongs in the last category.Sarah and Victor Corsini live with their servants in a remote mansion. We find out immediately that the rich old coots are not only murderers with two corpses stashed in a back room, but killers with elitist attitudes as well. Old Victor has filled the mansion with all manner of watches and clocks, which he talks to as if they were the children he never had, thank God. Into this happy household come two hoodlums and their girlfriend. (When she talks her way into the mansion with the old "broken down car" story, this young lady asks Corsini, in all seriousness, "Do you collect CLOCKS???" Well, Doy-EEEE!!!!) Brief comedy aside, the trio that's come to rob ends up committing mass murder; the Corsinis and caretaker Al Cliver end up as bloody messes on the floor.Then the clocks and watches start running backwards. You can probably guess what happens next.Unlike another late Lucio opus, DEMONIA, HOUSE OF CLOCKS doesn't have one person in it to root for. It does boast some good moments and creepy atmosphere which is more than can be said for SWEET HOUSE OF HORRORS. The ending is pure poetic justice, as a crime committed by the thugs early on catches up with them. And for those who want gore and nothing more, this film delivers blood and guts by the bucketful. Where else but in a Fulci flick would a character suffer a small stab wound and have her intestines come spilling out?Best of all, HOUSE OF CLOCKS is a perfect metaphor for Lucio Fulci's career. Long-time fans and newcomers alike should definitely watch his last films first and then work their way back.

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.

Lucio Fulci, infamous for his explicitly violent and downright gross films, surprises his fans (and probably his opponents even more) with this tense and mainly story-driven tale of terror. It is and remains a Fulci effort, so the House of Clocks does contain more gore than your average horror film but still it's awkward not to constantly see eyeballs getting poked out or throats being torn to pieces. This was a movie produced for TV-distribution (which probably also explains the gore-limitation) and script successfully attempts to go for supernatural tension. The House of Clocks revolves on 3 lowlife crooks that plan to rob and home-jack an obviously wealthy elderly couple living in an isolated mansion. This couple, however, isn't as indefensible as they look as they have a bizarre clock-fetish and they keep dark secrets hidden in their basement. When the robbery goes terribly wrong, and all the couple's beloved clocks suddenly stop and turn back; the crooks face unimaginable terror and payback. The film bathes in an uncanny atmosphere and Fulci makes great use of the cool scenery. I can't give a scientific explanation for it, but there's something naturally eerie about a collection of ticking clocks. The idea of showing seemly harmless old people who then turn out mentally deranged isn't exactly new, but it still works and it definitely unsettles you. Near the end, the plot-holes become bigger and bigger and the abrupt plot-twists are disappointing. So, hopefully, the very good first hour of House of Clocks already makes a positive impression on you before the ineptness begins to show. To me it did. Other disadvantages include wooden acting and a very bad case of English dubbing (the DVD I tracked down at least). This is definitely a movie worth checking out in case you're an Italian horror fanatic. For the fans of the more outrageous Fulci-work, he made "Cat in the Brain" one year after this and that certainly is one of the sickest movies ever.