People often ask me in person what would be a good Italian movie to get started on or what giallo they should watch or recommend the movies of a certain director. I’m not an absolute film expert. I do, however, get asked a lot of questions. I’ve decided to start posting a few of these […]
This is Fulci’s next to last movie, dedicated “to my few real friends, in particular to Clive Barker and Claudio Carabba.” At this point, Fulci was shooting TV movies and direct to video stuff, often lending his name to lesser directors. Giorgio Mainardi lies dying, surrounded by his uncaring family, wondering why. He has an internal […]
Whenever I’m watching a Fulci movie — or even discussing him — I turn to Becca and often speak in an Italian accent and say things like, “Can I stab the woman in the eyeball now? I’m bored.” If we’re to believe this meta-biographical film, my impression is not far off. Fulci plays himself, a […]
Imagine Fulci making a cop movie. Imagine that the budget ran out two weeks in. Imagine that real mobsters paid for the film, asking for a title change and for more violence (like Fulci was going to say no). Don’t imagine. All of these things are wonderfully true and make Contraband such a weird addition to […]
When will young kids learn that you can’t pull murderous pranks without supernatural reprisals? Take the girls of St. Mary’s College, for example. They set up skinny, unattractive Kathy with Fred Vernon, that hunk of a gym teacher. But it’s all a trick — the minute Kathy starts jumping Fred’s bones, cars surround them and […]
Sicily. 1486. A bunch of villages descend on five nuns — suspected of being witches — and drop the witch hammer on them. Each is crucified and then nails are driven into their chests. Blood sprays everywhere. Fulci is pleased. Toronto. 1990. Liza is at a seance where she sees the crucified nuns and collapses, […]
If Touch of Death was simply the poster filmed for 70 minutes, it’d be such a better movie than what I just watched. Lester (Brett Halsey, Demonia) is a cannibal serial killer who meets, dates and eats various women, sometimes giving parts of them to his pigs. He also talks to a tape recording of his own voice […]
Lucio Fulci wanted to make a giallo. But then Flashdance happened and the producers knew Keith Emerson (yes, the Keith Emerson from Emerson Lake and Palmer) and the result was…Murder Rock! Or Murder-Rock: Dancing Death! Or Slashdance! Or The Demon Is Loose! We start at the Arts for the Living Center in New York, where Candice (Olga Karlatos, the […]
Also known as Dangerous Obsession, this movie was intended to be Lucio Fulci’s comeback after more than a year of dealing with hepatitis. It’s a return to the giallo (or at least sexually related drama) that he was creating in the early 70’s instead of the gore that he’d become infamous for throughout the 80’s, but […]
The New York Ripper is the hardest, roughest, bloodiest and sleaziest of Lucio Fulci’s films. That’s saying a lot. It has a lot to live up to, with the horrors that had come before. If you backed off of the gore and roughness of the film, you’d be left with a somewhat decent detective film. […]
