Haunted House (film, 1987, Italy)

On his birthday, nine-year-old Henrietta (allegedly obsessed with the devil) kills a domestic cat. In punishment, her father closes her in the basement with her big toy clown, and that very night Henrietta’s parents die at the hands of an unknown killer.

20 years later, in Boston, radio amateur Paul catches and records a strange radio signal - a male voice asking for help and a female scream. After calculating the location of the signal source, Paul, together with his girlfriend Martha, decides to find it. Having brought up the joker-hitchhiker Pepe along the road, a couple arrives at the place - an abandoned house from the beginning of the film. At the house they meet an unfriendly watchman, and rising to the attic, they find a transmitter. It turns out that he belongs to a certain Jim, who stopped at the house along with his sister Tina, brother Mark and his girlfriend Susan. Paul plays a tape recording to Jim, and he recognizes his sister's voice and his own on the tape, but cannot give any explanation. Paul and Jim go to check the roof antenna. Left alone, Martha descends into the basement, where she sees a different devilry. Paul and Jim resort to her cry, but they find nothing unusual.

The company decides to split into two groups: Paul, Martha and Susan drive off some distance in the hope of catching the signal again, while Jim and his brother and sister stay in the house. At night, paranormal activity resumes. Hearing a strange laugh from the basement, Jim goes down there, sees the ghost of Henrietta with her clown and dies from a fan blade that has broken and cut his throat. Running into the basement, Tina sees Henrietta and her brother's body. Mark cries to her cry in the basement, but the ghostly Doberman blocks him off. Having got out of the house through the window, Mark sees that the guard is chasing after Tina. Having beaten off his sister, Mark rushes after him in pursuit and with the help of Paul who has arrived in time, neutralizes the watchman in the barn. Paul goes to the house, finds Jim's body, and upon returning to the barn finds out that the watchman still managed to escape.

Paul, Mark, and Susan drive into the city for the police, leaving the shocked Tina in the trailer at the house under Marta's supervision. After some time, Martha sees the light illuminated in the window and goes into the house. In the children's room she finds a box with toys, and in it is a photo of Henrietta and a clown doll that comes to life and attacks her. Martha manages to fight off her, after which the doll disappears.

In the morning, a police lieutenant tells Paul and the rest that a couple of Bakers were killed in this house 20 years ago, and their daughter was found dead in the basement. The case was never solved, after which the house was abandoned. Regarding the death of Jim, the lieutenant expresses confidence that he was killed by the same watchman Valcos, previously observed in a psychiatric hospital. Returning to Boston, Paul, not satisfied with the explanations of the police, decides to figure it out on his own. Meanwhile, Tina meets at the ill-fated house of the hitchhiker Pepe, who is in search of a place to sleep. It also turns out that Mark, Tina and Susan cannot leave due to a broken trailer.

Upon learning that Baker worked in a funeral home, Paul meets with his former colleague and he reports that Baker had a habit of appropriating some things that belonged to the deceased, and shortly before his death, he took one doll because he liked his daughter. Finally, he advises Paul to speak with a local cemetery employee. After Paul leaves the funeral home, Valkos is declared and liquidates the informant.

After Mark goes to the city for repair parts, Tina and Susan return to the house (the first to find Pepe, the second to take a shower). On the second floor, Tina is cut in two by a severed improvised guillotine. The ghost of Tina comes to the bathroom to Susan, already frightened by the blood flowing from the water tap, after which she turns into a toy clown, then disappears.

In the evening, Paul and Martha arrive at the cemetery. While the clerk tells Paul that the house is cursed because of the restless souls living in it, Martha Valkos attacks the remaining Martha in the car. Fleeing from him, she takes refuge in a crypt in which, Henrietta is ironically buried. In the cemetery, Paul finds the hanged (hanged?) Valkos, after which he rescues Martha from the crypt.

Mark, who returned from the city, goes to look for the girls and sees Henrietta on the second floor with a doll and Tina’s corpse, after which she falls through the floor into the basement, falling into some kind of toxic white liquid. Running along the corridors in an attempt to get out of the house, Susan finds Pepe's corpse and accidentally kills Mark who got out of the trap. Hiding in one of the rooms from a ghost Doberman, Susan sees Henrietta, who directs a half-decomposed sinister figure in a black hoodie at her. Meanwhile, Paul, hearing Susan screaming at a radio transmitter in the car, fills with Henrietta’s body and her doll, which lies in the cemetery’s crypt, and sets fire to them. Henrietta and the cloaked figure disappear at the last moment, and Susan manages to remain unharmed. Seeing Susan leaving the house in the morning, Paul tells her that the sinister doll that subjugated Henrietta was to blame.

The final film takes place in the city, after some time. Marta comes to meet Paul, to her horror, she notices the same toy clown behind a glass of one of the windows, and almost immediately an accident occurs - a bus crosses the road crossing Paul.

• Lara Wendel - Marta
• Greg Scott - Paul
• Mary Sellers - Susan
• Ron Hawke - Mark
• Martin Jay - Jim
• Kate Silver - Tina
• Donald O'Brien - Valkos
• Willie M. Moon - Pepe
• Susan Muller

• " Haunted House ” on the Internet Movie Database
• Comparison of dvd releases

• 1989 - Haunted House 2 / La Casa 4 (Director: Fabrizio Laurenti)
• 1990 - Haunted House 3 / La Casa 5 (Director: Claudio Fregasso)