When a family moves into a home with a shocking secret, their lives become a nightmare of homicidal hallucinations as their young son begins to communicate with the spirits of the dead. Remodeled in madness and painted in blood, they soon discover that domestic bliss can be murder... when home is where the horror is.
Daria Nicolodi stars in a role where she doesn't just get killed off violently, and with her are John Steiner, David Colin Jr. and Ivan Rassimov. This is director Mario Bava's final film.
I really enjoyed the boy grunting out "Pigs! Pigs! Pigs!" and his weird fetish for shredded underwear. And there is a really cool shot in bed with hair flying every which way.
Howard Maxford calls it "unwatchable", "childish" and "unfortunate", completely in contrast to Luca Palmerini, who thinks it is a "splendid artistic testament" that anticipates "A Nightmare on Elm Street", full of "high tension". I, personally, enjoyed it.
The script was written by Lamberto Bava along with Sacchetti, Lamberto's first script. Lamberto has said the film is more his than his father's, and stylistically that is quite true. Critics comparing this to Mario Bava's other work may be surprised, but I found it was in many ways in the same vein as "Macabre".
