Looking back at my recent output, I can’t help but notice a bit of a lack of horror on this here horror blog. I’ve had a number of works that are great but let’s say horror adjacent – a psychological crime thriller with uncanny horror vibes, a Japanese art piece full of existential dread, and an Italian neorealistic film dealing with the terrors of a traditional, superstitious small town. But each write up contained some sentence like, “while this might not be horror as traditionally understood, I think it warrants inclusion here because…” And I’m not putting those down – I loved all of those movies, but I think it’s time to dig into something grotty, something disturbing, something Fulci.
(A quick aside – I just re-read my previous posts on Fulci films, of which there have been four or five, and at least three of them begin with something like, “You know, I’ve been covering a lot of artsy stuff lately, but nothing really HORRIFIC, so let’s talk Fulci!” I guess old Lucio has made a very specific impression on me.)
Lucio Fulci is easily one of my favorite horror directors, though he did work across many genres. It’s hard to square this with his later reputation as the godfather of gore, but in his early career, he produced no small share of sex comedies and westerns. But when it comes to horror, he delivered pure nightmares. Often lacking in what some might call “logic.” Rarely budgeted above the B-level. Occasionally working contentiously with his cast, but creating works of resonant atmosphere and image and dread that operate on the brain just like you want, eliciting that delicious shudder of an encounter with that which cannot be understood/endured/overcome/defined. And so, I’ve written about his movies a bunch here (10 of them to date, plus one documentary about him), but it’s been a while since I saw something new of his.
So that’s the goal today – three Fulci’s that I haven’t seen yet. These will all be from his late period towards the end of his life when he was experiencing severely declining health, which clearly took a toll on his artistic output. I don’t think these will be his best films. There may be real weaknesses on display, but given my deep respect for his catalogue, I am sure that they will be rewarding to explore. Also (and here comes the hypocrisy following my first paragraph in this post), they may not all be strictly horror, but I believe they will all help to illuminate the themes and tendencies of the truly significant work he did produce in the genre.
I hope I like them, but that’s not entirely the point, so much as to see what there is to find and seek to understand how they shed light on his output as a whole. So even if I don’t love one, I still plan to at least write something about it.
And so, without further ado, let’s get into The Devil’s Honey (1986), Demonia (1990), and Door to Silence (1991). And then as a bonus, I’ll touch on the written by Fulci, produced after Fulci’s death by Argento, and directed by neither of them, The Wax Mask (1996) as a fun coda. There will be spoilers for all.
Demonia (1990)
So I’d like to start out of order, basically to get this one out of the way. This is, sadly, the weakest Fulci film I’ve seen to date, and is probably a really good illustration of where his later career went and how tragically he suffered, spending his final years in what must have felt like artistic exile. Honestly, it is sad to engage with this artifact of his decline, but it is what happened. In short, as I’m sure I touched on when discussing a documentary about his life and work, as well as another film from the same year, the superior, darkly comic meta-exercise, Cat in the Brain (1990), Fulci’s final period of creative output had two long shadows looming over it: ill health and lack of money. In 1984, he first got sick, though he did recover and have another couple more good years, but by the end of the decade, he was fighting chronic Cirrhosis, Diabetes, and Hepatitis. He was constantly fatigued and it was inordinately difficult for him to complete a movie (though he still worked fairly prolifically). Furthermore, he was having great trouble securing financing. Partly, this was because producers didn’t trust that he was still a safe investment in his weakened state, but largely this was to do with unfortunate trends in the Italian film industry.
Since the 50s, Italy had been a powerhouse of genre cinema, flooding the market with affordably produced flicks that made up for low to mid-range budgets with a surfeit of style and panache: westerns, cop thrillers, gialli, and of course, horror. As I have read, homegrown viewers really subsidized these movies as there were only 2 TV stations and people would go to the cinema a couple times a week for entertainment. Then, with the introduction of commercial TV stations in the 80s, the bottom dropped out of the domestic genre market. There was still money for prestige pieces with higher budgets. But a lot of the money was being siphoned into cheaper TV production, which demanded safer content than a director like Fulci was known for. Low cost direct to video work could still get made, but budgets were greatly reduced. Adjusted for inflation, Fulci was sometimes working with budgets 1/20th the size of what he’d had ten years earlier (and, you know, he hadn’t exactly been making Ben Hur back then), moving from mid-range projects that could expect to be shown in cinemas domestically and internationally, to truly micro-budget features (produced by companies that were in the active process of going bankrupt) which might be lucky to show up on video in Japan.
This meant a drop in money to pay for materials, film, special effects and actors, of course, but I think what took the biggest hit on Fulci was that he could no longer afford some of his closest collaborators, whom he had worked with for years, who got his sensibilities, and who could deliver on his vision. Thus, his later work just doesn’t look/sound/feel right.
Which brings us to Demonia. It is not exactly a bad movie, like some fun trashy Z-grade “so bad it’s good” curio. Rather, it is simply flat. The beats of the story are there, but it feels empty, without depth, without surprises, listless, without joy (not a word you would generally associate with his movies, but still). Maybe in a different era, Fulci could have made something of it. But it just doesn’t do very much and doesn’t feel like it’s his. I think even when I’ve watched some of his stuff that was made on the low end of the budget scale, there has always been a sense of intentionality, and that is lacking here.
In short, a group of Canadian archeologists in a small town in Sicily set up camp near an old convent that the locals shun. One archeologist, Liza, feels particularly drawn to it though and she discovers, hidden in the basement, a secret chamber where long ago a group of nuns had been crucified. Apparently, they were “Satanic,” carrying out all manner of wicked rituals, like their so-called “orgies” (which in the one scene we’re shown consisted of two couples having sex on either side of a large room – you know your film is in trouble when you can’t scrounge any more for the orgy budget), and the good townspeople had stormed the convent to put a stop to their shenanigans (which, to be fair, beyond lame, underattended orgies, also included baby sacrifice).
Anyway, spectral nuns start picking people off (I enjoyed one scene where a headless ghost nun shoots a guy with a harpoon gun – just your typical medieval Satanist), and there’s a bit of a procedural as the cops try to get a handle on what’s going on. By the end, Liza’s been possessed by the evil sisters and wanders around burbling yellow goo out of her mouth for some reason before the current townspeople show up and burn everything, including poor Liza, down.
Again, it’s fine. It isn’t a disaster, but it has no verve, no seeming reason to be. That quality only surfaces once or twice in brief, wild moments of typically Fulci-esque gore. Notably, there’s a scene were an exposition dumping old cat lady is devoured by her cats (her only crime being sharing the exposition she’s in the movie to share – sometimes you just can’t win), some of them pulling out her eyes for an early snack (even at his lowest, Fulci could still enjoy delivering grotty eye trauma – and there is a satisfying pop as at least one of the wet orbs slips free of its socket), and also a pretty fun moment where a guy is, for some reason (it’s pretty sudden and random), stuck in a trap that goes on to tear him in half like a chicken wishbone (it isn’t particularly realistic, but is still pretty gross and pretty cool). As is so often the case, what Fulci’s film lacks in sense or verisimilitude, it makes up for with audacity.
But it is not a good movie, and I think it doesn’t really reflect much on the strengths of Fulci’s career, so much as it gives us a taste of how far he had fallen by this point. It is honestly quite sad to look at from that perspective.
The Door to Silence (1991)
It is easy to read into the timing of a final work, suggesting that the creator had been particularly focused on his mortality at the time. I think of Leonard Cohen’s You Want it Darker or Tony Todd’s recent turn in the most recent Final Destination flick. We look back at a piece, knowing that the artist was essentially dying at the time of production, and can’t help but interpret a meditation on their upcoming passing. That is surely the case with Fulci’s last completed work, Le Porte del Silenzio. And I am happy to report that while this hardly stands among his very best films, there is something here – some real feeling, an atmosphere, an inescapable dread worthy of his artistry. Fulci didn’t die until about 5 years later, but he never managed to work again after this, and it really feels like the filmmaker knew that his time was limited, felt that he was already living his own death.
And you really don’t have to dig deep to find that reading (in fact, it’s pretty explicitly what the movie is about). The story here follows a man, Melvin (John Savage) trying to drive home, a journey consistently frustrated, sidelined, and delayed. He has one kind or another of car trouble. His wheels spin hopelessly in deep mud. His engine breaks down. He gets stuck behind a hearse carrying a casket for someone also named Melvin, and just can’t overtake it. At one point, he almost has a tryst in a motel room with a mysterious attractive woman who’s been following him, but she explains that it isn’t yet the right time for them to be together and that she will meet him at his destination. He finds himself in a funeral home where every casket contains a Melvin and one is indeed his match. He gets arrested for breaking into the back of the hearse to rip open the casket, later explaining to the judge that he’s not crazy – he was just scared that the casket was carrying his own corpse (nope, not crazy at all, pay a fine and back on the road with you). A tarot card reader tells him he’s been dead for hours, and he keeps driving and driving and driving and driving. Each detour seems to loop him back on his route. He can’t progress – the clock in his car is frozen and he doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere. The road seems inescapable and inevitable. Finally, one more time trying to overtake the portentous hearse, he crashes headfirst into an oncoming truck and that’s the end of him. The loop is closed, the cycle finished. The mysterious woman is on the scene and her license plate reads “DEATH” (da da duuuuun!).
I will say it opens very engagingly – the atmosphere of New Orleans, infused with jaunty funeral jazz sets us off on a good start to our journey. And the sense of mystery and doom is heavy and effective. Sadly, as time goes on, it does get to feeling repetitive and like it’s running long, even though it’s a pretty short movie. I guess it’s just so obvious from a pretty early point that he is dead and this is his road to oblivion, and the lack of suspense took a toll on my attention, but I do think the film works. It is a sad piece, a frustrated piece, and it is clearly being made by an artist with a strong feeling to express. The protagonist is already dead – though he doesn’t feel it yet, to the world he is. To his family, his career, his ability to have any effect outside of himself. And all that remains is a loop that feels never ending, but is clearly going in only one direction, and while there are many detours en route, he cannot turn back.
I could imagine that if he’d had a bit of money (which he absolutely did not), Fulci could have done more with this to make more of the experience – the episodes could have been stranger, more varied, in more locations, exploring Melvin’s coming death in other fashions. But even still, especially read in the light of what his life was at the time, I did find it a moving endeavor. It is not a “scary” movie. It features no gore or goo. But I think it is surely horror – the artist staring his own death in the mirror, and sharing with us the indignation, the depressing inevitability, the injustice of it all.
I mean, of course, considering the subject manner of Fulci’s catalogue, death is all over the place, but this is entirely about it. And however it might feel weak technically or underdeveloped narratively, it surely feels personal. To return to a criticism of the previous film, this one is wholly ‘intentional.’ There is a reason for it to be. It was a work the artist was driven to make.
And it barely even got to exist. I believe it was initially only released on VHS in Italy, where producer Joe D’Amato said it “didn’t even sell a single brochure.” It wasn’t until much more recently that is came to dvd and bluray.
Is it a forgotten classic? No. It is a spin on a tried and true formula. If you’ve read “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” or have seen Carnival of Souls, you know where we’re going. But the degree to which it feels important to its creator, an artist who really did significant work in his lifetime and died in poverty and despair, makes it feel important, something worth seeing if you’ve taken an interest in his oeuvre. I watched it on Youtube.
The Devil’s Honey (1986)
So, now that we’ve delved into the ignominious end of the artist’s otherwise noteworthy career, let’s rewind a few years to before everything fell apart, to a work that many consider Fulci’s last good movie (and that others belittle for its saxophone aided cunnilingus scene). Let’s dig into a weird, weird, weird softcore erotic drama with some solid horror mood and ideas, The Devil’s Honey. As I understand, though it wasn’t released until 1986, it had been filmed back in 1984, right around the time that Fulci got sick the first time. I don’t know if he completed shooting before falling ill, but if not, he clearly recovered after that first bout enough to operate at full strength when making this picture – it’s kinda great.
Kinda great and really weird – to a fascinating degree. This is in no way explicitly a horror movie (though erotic thriller could surely be argued), but I’d bet that it has just as many over the top, reason defying “what the hell am I looking at” moments as anything in City of the Living Dead or House by the Cemetery. There are sequences that just begin as absurd to the point of laughability, but which progress through that apparent zaniness to reach compelling extremities of both sexuality and psychological torment. All of this contributes to a horror vibe that makes the film feel at home in Fulci’s catalogue.
And it must be said, I think this is Fulci at the top of his craft. This film just looks and sounds so damn good – vibes on top of vibes – and it is so clearly controlled – we see what he wants us to see, whatever his intention behind that showing may be. We’ll get into it soon (and in some depth – so if you haven’t seen it, I really recommend seeking it out – it’s available out there, but you may need to do a free trial to see it – although if you’re sensitive to sexual violence, perhaps you should take a pass), but I find it striking the extent to which I feel this was made to be an uncomfortable watch – all of the relationships are at least toxic if not downright abusive and the notion of consent doesn’t even pop in for a quick coffee – and yet, the film is exceedingly watchable, magnetic even. So many character actions are honestly ugly and everyone is at least kind of terrible, but I was just totally enamored with it from start to finish, and then went back and watched it again. It is seductively captivating, even as it disturbs.
One final note – I watched it in Italian with English subtitles. As I understand, the text of the English dubbing is totally different and, from what I read, much worse, flattening the emotion and the rich ambivalence of much of the film. I haven’t watched the English dub to compare, but I will be referring to the Italian version (including using the character names from that version – they’re different in English).
Essentially, we follow two characters whose paths will eventually intertwine – Cecilia and Dr. Simpson. Cecilia is in a passionate, tumultuous, often abusive and toxic, but always intoxicating and deeply, deeply sexual relationship with the perpetually sweaty saxophonist, Gaetano (on rewatch, he’s not actually always sweating – but it feels that way). We’ll come back to them soon as their dynamic is really the heart of the story – the film belongs to Cecilia. On the other side, Dr. Simpson is a seemingly world class surgeon in a cold, loveless marriage – but don’t feel sorry for him. The impression is that his wife yearns for his affection, she’s desperate for it, but he can’t summon the slightest iota of desire for her, though he expends no shortage of lust on the prostitutes he regularly employs, with whom he can let his freak flag fly, such as in the one scene where we see him drooling like a maniac over the application of nail polish to the crotch of some pantyhose. Years of this emotional and physical neglect has made his wife understandably cold.
However, Cecilia and Gaetano are anything but cold. They burn constantly. And simmer. And melt. Everything hot. The opening scene, the most iconic in the film, finds them in the recording studio along with Gaetano’s producer, Nicky, and a few hangers on, as he’s laying down a sultry jazz track. For the entirety of the recording, their eyes are locked (Fulci and his eyes), and the whole sequence plays out as pure sex – lustful, teasing, desperate, hungry. Finally, it’s time for a break and though none of the staff have yet left for coffee, Cecilia is already licking Gaetano’s face and her breast is in his hand, so overwhelmingly do their bodies crave each other. Then, the moment the others are out the door, Gaetano rips aside her panties and shoves his saxophone between her legs, playing low rumbly tones as he makes cheeky bedroom eyes at her, leaving her crying and shaking as everyone else comes back from their break to record some more. In the beginning, it just feels ridiculous – hilarious – it is the infamous sax-sex scene that the movie is best known for, and it is funny, but damned if it isn’t also sexy as all get out, their desire being so palpable, the sex being so “true,” no matter how silly.
It should also be noted that she says ‘no’ to this multiple times and he ignores her. The film is full of similar scenes – she gets off each time and she does want him, even loves him, but he never respects a boundary, she is never allowed any agency (as long as he’s alive), and many scenes that on one level are hot and mutually satisfying, from another perspective, are easily read as assault or rape.
The film progresses for a bit, alternating between the hot and cold of the two relationships until Gaetano falls off his motorcycle because he’s riding in circles around Cecilia being a dick, hits his head, and a few hours later ends up under the knife of Dr. Simpson. The problem is that earlier that evening, Simpson’s wife had finally had enough of the jerk and declared that she wanted a divorce. Thus distracted, he botches the job, and fails to save Gaetano, who dies on his table.
Honestly, on first viewing, I was shocked. Thus far, the Gaetano-Cecilia story had felt so primary, and I didn’t even understand why we were following the doctor at all. I was really startled when a third of the way into the flick, this main character died. It is as sudden and jarring in anything in a horror offering, but perhaps more so because this had not yet felt like a horror movie per se. When a mysterious hand appears behind someone in House by the Cemetery and rips their skull open, it startles and grosses out, but it doesn’t feel as shocking as this sudden loss of character.
Anyway, Cecilia completely flips out and starts stalking Dr. Simpson, demanding to know “Why did you let him die?” And finally, her grief is so powerful that it drives her across town in the rain, into the back of his car where she kidnaps him at gunpoint, makes him drive her to the house she and Gaetano had shared by the seaside, ties him up, and proceeds to torture him for days. But as this torment goes on, he starts to get off on it, becoming obsessed with this mysterious, often naked woman, who walks him on a leash through the waves until he almost drowns, feeds him leftover dogfood, and whacks him in the face with an axe before unzipping her jeans for him to smear his blood all over her belly as he kisses her in sexual fervor. Have I mentioned that it’s a weird movie?
But it really is all about her feelings towards Gaetano. Throughout the final act, we slip in and out of the present with the now subservient doctor and memories of the dominant, cruel, passionate Gaetano. Cecilia seems to promise every day that this is the day she’ll kill the doctor, but she never does. She wants to. She wants to ride that anger, that vengeance, to be satisfied by the violence, but it feels like she knows she wouldn’t be, as she processes her grief, her loss, and what must be her mixed feelings about Gaetano. The one time she does drown him, she immediately fights to bring him back.
Again, every scene between Cecilia and Gaetano is in equal measure hot as hell and deeply ugly and disturbing. How many times does she say “no” to his advances, to his demands, to his absurd bullshit? But also, how much does she crave him and get off on these interactions, though they hurt her or scare her or humiliate her? Even after his death, she watches old home movies where a teasing love scene becomes a rape, and she sobs not at the memory of his violence, but for his loss, rubbing his old sweater between her legs to retain something of his scent. She had and has every reason to hate this guy – he was awful – but she didn’t hate him. Beyond all reason, she loved him. And that is what the movie is about – this overwhelming, uncontrollable, utterly self-destructive desire, “love,” the “devil’s honey,” at once luring you to it and laying waste to you in every way. We see the same thing in how Simpson becomes obsessed and enamored of his torturer in the second half. It is honestly really, really dark.
And at the same time, so watchable, so alluring as a film. It does that thing I love in horror of making cinematic pleasure out of the most unpleasant experiences. There’s the weird pinch that only horror can give. But, while I really responded to it, this all leads to questions of what this film is – what it does. Is it misogynistic in its lascivious portrayal of the suffering woman addicted to a bad guy, or at least the way that bad guy gets her off? Is it an apologia for abusive relationships where a “man is a man,” taking control and satisfying the woman against her own will? Maybe. I honestly don’t know.
But my impression is that even if the film could be read in that way, Fulci was not really interested in psychology (he sure seemed to abhor the very notion of logos), and he didn’t make films with a “message.” Rather, he made films that dove into the deep end of unfathomable horrors. And I feel that even though this is not a work of supernatural horror or a slasher or anything like that, it is a strikingly similar work. It subsumes itself in an unhealthy obsession, in impulses of the self, of the body, of the mind, in pursuit of a satisfaction which could excuse away the worst behavior. And thus, so much of the material of the film is that obsession, that attraction, that desire. And it is compelling, provocative, erotic. The film arouses, but the darkness is always there, nothing is ever “nice” – there is no tenderness, no warmth, only heat.
Horror often involves an encounter with something not only bad, dangerous, or scary, but unknown and unknowable, and I feel that Fulci’s approach to these base human impulses posits the workings of the mind, the impulses of the flesh as similarly unknowable, similarly cruel in their demands that their hunger be met, regardless of the cost. This is an erotic drama with some thriller elements – it is not “horror,” but it rhymes.
By the end, Cecilia has one more memory of Gaetano which seems to be the final straw, allowing her to finally leave him behind and the film ends with her making love to Simpson as the waves crash behind them. In the memory, she and Gaetano had been in a cinema in Venice along with his producer Nicky. Cecilia is making out with Gaetano when she is aghast to see Nicky going down on him. We never see what happens next – it’s the end of the memory, but I don’t imagine it was friendly and I think that explains why there was such tension between her and Nicky in the opening scene. I don’t know if we’re meant to be shocked by the bisexuality, but I’d felt we’d seen glimpses of attraction and jealousy in that first recording session, so this didn’t seem out of left field. Anyway, I suppose the memory of it on some level undermined her idealization of Gaetano’s desire – it was never exclusive to her. He never needed her like she did him. He just needed. He was just perpetually horny and she was there and into him. Finally, she can accept the adoration of her captive, her victim, whom she has no particular love for. An odd intimacy has grown between her and Simpson – notably, at some point, they both stopped wearing clothes, and it doesn’t feel like it was done to tease him, but they have just passed a level of formality with each other. Perhaps we see Simpson developing love/obsession for his torturer as a stand in for what had developed between Cecilia and Gaetano. A viscous cycle continues.
In the end, this is quite a film, and quite a peculiar one. It is sufficiently sexually explicit as to be sold as softcore porn, but though it frequently titillates, I don’t feel its primary intention is to get the viewer off. Rather, it really is trying to unsettle. And it does. It is dark and bleak and horny and feverish. The performances are top notch, and it is gorgeous in every technical aspect. Probably not for everyone, but I think a good example of Fulci’s artistry right before everything went south for him. I’m glad to have finally seen it.
Wax Mask (1997)
So this last feature today is not actually a Fulci film, but it bears mentioning, has an interesting history, a strong connection to Fulci, and is actually a heck of a lot more fun than I had remotely expected it to be. Also, given that the impetus for this current Fulci-thon was to get into something indubitably “horror” and then the most significant work was an “erotic drama,” I am happy to say that this is nothing but a horror movie.
As we’ve gone over in this post, the final period of Fulci’s life was sadly not a fertile time creatively, and he reportedly felt cast aside, abandoned, a great maestro who had made some of the best horror ever (among many other films) dying alone, disrespected, forgotten. Now, hopping back in time a bit, as they had both been big names in Italian horror, in the early 80s there had been a kind of rivalry between Fulci and Dario Argento. But as Fulci, once so prolific, had not managed any work since The Door to Silence in 1991, in 1994, Argento approached him with the idea of collaborating on a film together. Argento had been one of the few survivors (if not the only survivor) of the previously discussed death of Italian genre cinema, benefitting from his significant international fame which made it possible for him to go on funding his films with foreign money. I can imagine him looking at his once rival and feeling a pang of ‘coulda been me,’ and really wanting to help Fulci with this project. I don’t think they’d previously been close, but I believe the offer came from an emotional place.
They settled on a remake of “House of Wax,” taking elements from both the 1933 film and the 1953 Vincent Price vehicle. Fulci wrote a script and then … in March of 1996, alone in the Rome apartment he’d had to move into, having lost his house, Lucio Fulci died in a hyperglycemic diabetic coma.
Argento paid for his funeral and then proceeded to carry on producing the film they’d set out to make together. He hired one of Fulci’s daughters as an assistant art director, and ended up giving a first time feature directing gig to Sergio Stivaletti, who had previously worked primarily as a special effects artist, creating some of Argento’s most iconic effects in recent years (I’ve read that the needles under the eyes in Opera was his invention). The result is a film that honestly, doesn’t feel a whole hell of a lot like either Argento or Fulci, but if you squint, you can see Argento’s influence, and if you close your eyes and dream, you can imagine what it might have been if carried to fruition by Fulci at the height of his powers. But that sounds like I’m down on the picture, and I was really happily surprised how much I really liked it. It is colorful and creative and sleazy in a glossy 90s fashion, with no shortage of gleefully excessive gore and nudity. It suffers somewhat from 90s era visual effects (some pretty rough computer aided material there), but Stivaletti sure knew his practical effects, and there’s no shortage of impressive and really novel stuff on offer.
In a decently scary cold open, we witness the aftermath of a family being brutally murdered in 1900 Paris by a killer with what looks to be a robotic hand – all but one little girl who the inspector finds hiding under the bed. Some years later, having relocated to Rome, Sonia, the little girl, now a young woman, finds herself a job as a costumer at a soon to open, so good it’s scary Wax Museum, run by the enigmatic Boris Volkoff. Volkoff’s fearsome tableaus have a disturbing degree of verisimilitude, and I don’t think it should count as a spoiler that (given what this is a remake of) people are of course being hunted down and transformed into gruesome living dead statues of torture and torment. One adjustment here is that unlike previous incarnations, these are not preserved corpses, encased in wax, but rather artificially sustained living bodies, trapped in a deathlike state, suffused with a blue gooey waxy substance. Once disconnected from the solution being pumped through their veins, they seem aware of their horrific circumstances before they finally die. Solid. Things take a dark turn when Sonia sees a new scene unveiled, that of the death of her parents, featuring details never released to the press. Hmmm. Interesting, no?
I won’t get into the permutations of the plot too much. I mean, one could generally guess where it’s going, but still, there are some twists and reveals and this is actually one that I think most horror fans would enjoy seeking out, so why not go in without too much information? It’s available out there. I watched it on Tubi.
This is not the most amazing horror movie you’re ever going to see, but it is crisp and cleanly directed, with strong energy and an evident delight in its own bloody mayhem. It is a very colorful movie (and unlike many an Argento imitator, I’d say it works and looks pretty cool) and that is one of the places where people may cite Argento’s influence (although, I think the color thing is thrown around far too often when describing Argento’s style – I mean, it works if you’ve only seen Suspiria). However, I think that you can see a bit of Argento in some of the camerawork, and some tracking shots particularly. Stivaletti had worked on many films with him and had seen how he set up shots, and I can imagine him learning a great deal under that kind of tutelage.
But this post is all about Fulci, so where is he in all this? Hard to be found honestly. Whereas Fulci’s horror output was dreamlike, doom laden, advancing, sometimes quite slowly with the weight of creeping death, carrying images and moments that could shock the mind into submission with their extremity, and sometimes their absurdity, this is a quickly paced, very modern feeling, slick 90s flick, though it is set at the turn of the century. I understand Fulci’s script was much revised before shooting began, so even that doesn’t really communicate much of his proclivities.
However, I think you could imagine the potential of this scenario in his hands. In many ways it is unlike the films he’s best known for, but I think there are thematic elements he could have sunk his teeth into. Simply the image of the death in life of the wax figures – there is something really gross and disturbing in that. The aesthetization of death, in this museum where victims become art, is fertile ground. And there is a kind of detective procedural element here, which he had often dealt with before, so I think he would have known how to pay lip service to the business of “solving the crime” without that significantly impinging on the atmosphere of shudder inducing dread. I don’t imagine it would have been his best film, but I can imagine that it could have at least felt like “his” work. What could have been.
But again, this one is fun, worth checking out just as a cool 90s horror movie (an era that is often discounted for its dearth of good horror), and for Fulci completionists, an intriguing exercise in watching one film and imagining how it might have been completely different in other hands.
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And so that is a bit of Fulci for now, bringing the films of his that I’ve written about to perhaps fourteen, certainly more than any other director. And the great thing is, I’ll probably never run out. I mean, I don’t think any of his remaining horror flicks (that I haven’t seen) are reported to be “good” and the many “good” films of his that I haven’t seen aren’t reported to be horror. But one of these days, I may run down some of the other late-80s low points, or perhaps more interesting, I may get into some of his earlier thrillers in the mid-late 60s. I’ve read that one of them is said to be the root of later erotic thrillers such as Basic Instinct. Also, the westerns are supposed to be noteworthy. Could be worth exploring, but not sure if it should all get written about on a “horror blog” – we’ll see.
But I think that’s the end of the road for now, happily not because I’m driving, full speed, into an oncoming truck (but, I tell you, some days it may feel like it). See you next time.