Low-budget Italian flick tackles the unenviable task of adapting Lovecraft and somehow succeeds... to a point. Alex, in the process of researching for his new book, drags his constantly smoking photographer girlfriend Rita with him to what remains of the Crossroads Inn. The former lodging house, currently a dilapidated crap-shack, has a history rich with murder and suicide. It’s the handful of unexplainable deaths which has brought Alex to the uninhabitable building and he plans on getting to the bottom of the mysteries. The stories behind each death play out while the research commences and eventually get tangled up in the present day narrative. The short stories Dreams in the Witch House (a sleepwalking mathematician becomes obsessed with the unearthly geometry of his rented room but curiosity only leads to tragedy) and The Music of Erich Zann (a mute composer’s music fascinates a young man but he comes to find the haunting melody works as protection against something from outside our mortal world) work as the meat of the story (along, of course, with The Shunned House) but a few other morsels of Lovecraft slip in as well. The writer and the photographer become part of the nightmare when the house’s evil seeps into their reality. There’s some added tame sex, a prominent female character for each story and the film wisely doesn’t even attempt to bring any of Lovecraft’s impossible horrors to the screen. The eldritch vibe is sustained for most of the runtime but sadly falls apart as the final minutes tick by. It’s not great but it should be commended for being an oddly fascinating film instead of an abject failure.
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