Lucio Fulci made two movies in the Houses of Doom series of TV movies, this one and The Sweet House of Horrors, and both of them are totally his vision, and we’re all better for that.

House of Clocks brings several narratives together: Victor and Sarah are an elderly couple who live in the titular house and are very protective of what they own to the point that they’ve already murdered their money-hungry nephew and his wife, as well as the maid who grew suspicious. But hey, Al Cliver still loves them, even if he has one eye, and he protects the grounds.

Meanwhile, Diana, Tony, and Paul are shoplifting and killing cats — welcome to Italy — when they hear about the old couple and how rich they are. Diana talks her way into the house, but things unravel quickly, and before you know it, they’ve killed everyone in the house, and the clocks start moving backward, and the dogs that patrol the grounds have them trapped.

So they do what anyone else would: they get high and Diana and Tony make love, leaving Paul all sad and soon dead at the hands of the revived occupants of the house, with Sarah coming back to stab Diana’s hand directly to a . Tony Tony getting pulled into a grave before the nephew and his wife assert themselves.

The trio wakes up in their car and is sure that they must be really high and all of this was in their head, but then that cat comes back from the dead and kills them all. Well done, cat.

Everyone in this movie is horrible, and they all deserve to die, and they all do several times. The best part of all of it is that Fulci made this for TV, and it has multiple stabbings, geyser sprays of blood, old women being shot, murdered cats and someone stabbed so deeply through the stomach that you can see sunlight through their body. Suffice it to say that it never aired and eventually played Japanese theaters.

This Cauldron Films release is for the non-box set retail edition of The House of Clocks. It has a new 2K restoration and extras including commentary by Eugenio Ercolani, Nathaniel Thompson, and Troy Howarth, and interviews with cinematographer Nino Celeste, composer Vince Tempera, 1st AD Michele De Angelis, FX artist Elio Terribili, and actors Paolo Paoloni, Carla Cassola and Al Cliver. You can order it from MVD.

Bonus: You can hear me discuss these movies on my podcast: