The House by the Cemetery is the final installment in Italian director Lucio Fulci’s unofficial “Gates of Hell” trilogy, following City of the Living Dead and The House by the Cemetery. Released between 1980 and 1981, the three plots are unrelated, but they explore similar themes and share a leading lady in Catriona MacColl, who takes on a different part in each film. It’s generally agreed upon that they rank alongside Zombie as Fucli’s strongest efforts.
The House by the Cemetery’s script - penned by Fulci and his The Beyond co-writers Dardano
Sacchetti and Giorgio Mariuzzo, based on story by Elisa Briganti (Zombie) - follows Norman Boyle (Paolo Malco, The New York Ripper) and his wife, Lucy (MacColl), and young son, Bob (Giovanni Frezza, Manhattan Baby), from New York City to the Boston suburb of New Whitby. They move in to the infamous Freudstein House to continue the research of Norman’s former colleague, who murdered his mistress before committing suicide.
“In some places, such as Nri, the royal python, éké, is considered a sacred and tame agent of Ala and a harbinger of good fortune when found in a home. The python is referred to asnne ‘mother’ in areas where the python is revered, it is a symbol of female beauty and gentleness. Killing of the python is expressly forbidden in these places and sanctions are taken against the killer including the funding of expensive human sized burials that are given to slain pythons.” (x)
“A public levy is made for giving elaborate burial rites when the python dies from natural causes. Every python has a human soul within it; this must be liberated by ritual after the death of the reptile. Any offence against the snake is an offence against the ancestor.” (x) p15
THAT’S. SO. SWEET.
Okay, want to know the practical reason for this:
What do ball pythons eat?
Rodents.
Ball pythons are sacred in central Africa for the exact same reason cats are in north Africa and the middle east.
They are guardians of the granary.
That and they’re docile. They curl up into a ball when scared rather than biting or feinting biting. (While constrictors aren’t venomous, some may behave like a viper and mock strike to drive off threats if startled). While they can bite, accidental bites are less common, they’re not going to strike you for accidentally reaching or stepping too close.
So they not only protected granaries, but they didn’t pose a threat to people as compared to other sorts of snakes which may bite or in the case of venomous ones, pose a threat to people and live stock.
So they fulfill the two key things humans like in other animals
1) Helpful to us 2) Not harmful.
They were called “Royal Pythons” because they’re calm enough that you can wear them like jewelry, which some royalty did. It’s human nature to like animals that let us touch them, hold them, use them as we see fit and don’t hurt us. Even among Christian Igbo the snakes are seen as a positive animal, a gift from god, because humans tends to see animals as “good” or “bad” based on if they pose any threat to us.
And that actually is fairly practical for humans to do, to distinguish ‘dangerous’ from ‘non dangerous’ and develop negative prejudices against ‘harmful’ and positive feelings towards “non-harmful/helpful” animals.
