Despite having a loyal legion of fans and cementing his name as one of the pioneers of Italian splatter, the work of the so-called 'Godfather of Gore' (a title I reserve for Herschell Gordon Lewis and nobody else), Lucio Fulci, has never completely won me over. Arguably his most popular film, Zombie Flesh Eaters, left me struggling to stay awake, and the likes of The Black Cat, The New York Ripper and Warriors of the Year 2072 range from piss-poor to tedious at best, although it could be said that these are minor works in an extensive filmography. However, I adored The Beyond and City of the Living Dead, and there is something quite spectacular about his early gialli. A Lizard in a Woman's Skin was dazzling and truly weird, and Don't Torture a Duckling, made the following year, stands on its own as one of the strangest and most engrossing thrillers to be found in the genre.
In a remote Italian village, three young boys spy on couples about to engage in sex through a barn door and later torment the local idiot and peeping tom Giuseppe (Vito Passeri). Soon enough, the boys start turning up dead, murdered and discarded in the surrounding areas. Giuseppe is arrested, but is soon released when another boy is killed while the simpleton is in custody. A media circus descends on the town, while intrigued journalist Andrea (Tomas Milian) and police chief Captain Modesti (Ugo D'Alessio) search for clues. Tongues start to wag as the beautiful Patrizia (Barbara Bouchet) arrives in town with a shady past and skimpy outfits, as she is quickly viewed with suspicion. Yet with a town full of eccentrics and loners, it's difficult to figure out just who the killer is. Is it the old nut at the top of the hill, or are the murders the result of black magic performed by demented witch Maciara (Florinda Bolkan)?
The village of Accendura and its surroundings are a beautiful backdrop for the carnage and unspeakable horror playing out in the story. The ignorance of isolated small-town folks and the dangers of pitch-fork-waving mentality seems to be the main theme, something that Fulci explored later in his zombie movie City of the Living Dead. However, themes tend to take a back-seat in a film this bonkers, and Fulci has fun lining up the band of possible suspects and weaving in convoluted red-herring sub-plots to keep the audience guessing. There are many strange moments, including a scene in which Patrizia seems unnervingly comfortable displaying her naked body in front of a nervous young boy. Fulci can't resist dabbling in a bit of gore, and it's here that Don't Torture a Duckling stutters, climaxing with an unintentionally hilarious death featuring some diabolical special effects. Still, it's up there with the director's best work, and a must-see for fans of the more out-there gialli.
Carol Hammond (Florinda Bolkan), the daughter of a wealthy politician and lawyer, sees a psychiatrist to help deal with her increasingly bizarre and possibly prophetic dreams. In the dream, she is running down a corridor filled with naked, writhing young bodies to meet her neighbour Julia (Anita Strindberg), only to stab her to death. When Julia is found dead for real, stabbed repeatedly with a letter opener, chain-smoking Detective Corvin (Stanley Baker) is brought in, and pulls Carol's prints off Julia's bed and corpse. In what at first becomes an open and shut case, soon develops into a complex mystery where everyone is a suspect.
Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci is better known for his splatter-fest horror and zombie films, some of which are excellent, some of which are distinctively below par. But his early giallo output is where he seemed to excel most, and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin is one of the finest of the early giallo's, showing Fulci's (and the genre's) flair for beautiful Italian women, gorgeous cinematography, paint-red gore and a mysterious killer. But here there is only one murder, which in itself sets the film aside from most other giallo's, which more often than not revel in their blood-letting. This is slow-building and driven by atmosphere and mystery above all else.
With a jazzy score by the great Ennio Morricone, the film dazzles with two beautifully realised dream sequences, which show Fulci's unrecognised eye for the visual. With the naked flesh of beautiful women combined with the bold colours of the set design and splashings of blood, evoke an LSD trip - with Fulci here dabbling in the hippy scene. But behind it all there is a gripping mystery, one that will keep you guessing until the very, very end. Red herrings pile on top of red herrings, and alibi's are proven and then disproven. It all gets a bit too much, up to the point where you wonder whether the baffled Corvin is just going to give up and arrest himself. But that is the joy of the giallo, pushing things so far to the extreme that they go beyond ridiculous and into sublime surrealism, and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin is one of the finest examples.
It has been stated before, here on 'The Wrath of Blog', and no doubt it will be said again, that Italian genre cinema (particularly through the 1960's, '70's, '80's and '90's) has had a tendency to emulate (or rip-off, if you like) successful American cinematic tropes. From the imitations of Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977), to the multitude of "re-imaginings," mainly of lucrative box office horror's, Italian film producers would regularly ask of a proposed project, not what the script is about, but what Hollywood film is the script like. Whilst Zombie Flesh Eaters' screenplay was conceived and written before the release of George A. Romero's uber-special zombie masterpiece, Dawn of the Dead (1978), the script was altered to "cash-in" on the success of it's American counter-part.
Written by Dardanno Sacchetti (but credited to his wife, Elisa Briganti), and originally titled 'Island of the Living Dead,' the film was at first conceived as an adventure yarn, with elements of horror. Sacchetti was influenced by older, pre-Romero zombie films, such as I Walked With a Zombie (1943) and White Zombie (1932), films that looked towards the Caribbean mysticism and the then largely unknown pseudo-religion of Voodoo. In these narratives, the zombie could easily be seen as victim rather than outright monster (like the somnambulist in the seminal The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)), who is ultimately under the control of sinister magic, and dominated for nefarious purposes. The screenplay's influences are further illuminated with Zombie Flesh Eaters's Dr. Menard (Richard Johnson), the mad scientist, who's original conception was taken largely from H. G. Wells's science fiction novel, 'The Island of Doctor Moreau'. However, much of these more "classic" horror devices were thrown aside in favour of an attempt to address the same audience that saw Dawn of the Dead (but more specifically for the more national cut that Dario Argento released in Italy as Zombi).
Whilst the majority of Zombie Flesh Eaters is set on a Caribbean island, the first and last scenes have the backdrop of Manhattan, New York. According to Sacchetti and director Lucio Fulci, these scenes were added to the script to attach it to Dawn, acting as the codification of American zombies. These scenes could either represent what the Italian producers would have called a sequel, but it could just as easily be reviewed as a prequel. The film opens as an unmanned yacht enters the waters surrounding the big apple. Coastguards board the boat finding a pit of decaying food, and eventually a zombie. It is a fantastic opening, creating tension through simple static camera shots. Fulci and cinematographer, Sergio Salvati, take their time to get to the gore in this opening, and seem to have been visually influenced by Sergio Leone's cinema of pro-violence. Like Leone, Flesh Eaters makes the audience wait for the violence that is inevitable, the masts and the New York skyline acting as the onlookers, or the eventual witnesses to the devastation to come.
The abandoned yacht leads its owners daughter, Anne Bowles (Tisa Farrow) and pushy British journalist, Peter West (Ian McCulloch), to the mysterious and locally vilified island of Matul, where Anne's father had been, and where they discover these zombie's originate from. The dead, it seems, are rising to "tear the flesh of the living". It would be impossible to talk about Italian horror cinema without discussing the graphic nature of blood and gore. Argento and Fulci are the masters of this kind of imagery, and Flesh Eaters delivers these moments with glee. From the ripping of flesh from the neck of a coastguard, to the infamous scene where Mrs Menard's eye is pulled towards a wood splinter (eye gauging being a particular relish for Italian filmmakers, acting - like Bunuel and Dali's eye-slicing Un Chien Andalou (1929) - as a literal assault on the audience, who's eyes are essential to the viewing of cinema), the excessive blood-letting of Italian horror will delight fans of the genre, but more specifically gives Italian Horror its raison d'etre, and (at the time) distinguished it from American horror - although the influence of these directors would inevitably transfer.
Whilst the cinema of Fulci is easily lambasted, with his narratives becoming increasingly incoherent, there is no disputing his visual flare (incidentally, Argento has been accused of the same unintelligible narrative structures). Seeing Zombie Flesh Eaters in its original aspect ratio highlights his love of the image. This was a problem for Italian horror in the 1980's, as it was served badly by pan and scan video releases. Whilst this is no cinema classic, it is a whole lot of fun. Fulci's zombies look fantastic, dripping with vulnerable flesh, clearly only recently exhumed from the dusty grounds, oozing with maggots, worms, and newly ripped flesh. As with the opening scene, the closing moments frames the Brooklyn Bridge, pointing towards the world famous city, as the marauding dead slowly move towards apocalypse. A chilling final image, as the sound of a radio presenter is devoured by the intrusion of flesh eating monsters.
Following the gruesome gore-fests of Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) and City of the Living Dead (1980), director Lucio Fulci toned down the violence and adapted the short story of the same name by Edgar Allen Poe. The film, that bares little resemblance to Poe's original story, has Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck) travel to a rural English village to investigate a string of strange deaths and occurrences. Also arriving is photography student Jill (Mimsy Farmer), who finds a strange recording device in a graveyard that traces back to the eccentric Professor Robert Miles (Patrick Magee, the vengeful assault victim from A Clockwork Orange (1971)). Miles is trying to contact the dead, but it is his strange black cat that seems to be committing the murders, and seems to be as murderous towards its owner than it is to its selected victims.
This is a huge change of tone from what I've experienced previously from the Italian 'Godfather of Gore' (surely that title belongs to H.G. Lewis?), and shares more in common with Hammer's horror output and the various Roger Corman adaptations of Poe's work. Yet although the tone makes for a refreshing change, this is still a plodding and silly film, and is far from the director's best work. I've already voiced my puzzlement at how a cat can kill a human in my review of The Corpse Grinders (1971), and the same happens here. A man gets attacked in the street repeatedly by a lunging cat, and I couldn't help but shout abuse at the screen as he flailed about pathetically.
The film is beautifully shot though, and if one thing can be said about Fulci, is that he knows how to shoot a smoky graveyard. His best works The Beyond (1981) and City of the Living Dead involved scenes of beautiful sepia and eerie widescreen shots of various spooky locations, and The Black Cat is no different. The early scene involving Miles attempting to communicate to the dead in a graveyard has a panning shot so beautiful that it almost cemented an extra star onto my rating. But the sheer silliness and tedium of the rest of the film brought me back to reality.
The work of prolific Italian director Lucio Fulci is most notable for his output in the horror genre, where he made some genuinely good films, such as The Beyond and The House by the Cemetery (both 1981), and some not-so-good, yet still fondly remembered, such as Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979). His entries into sci-fi are somewhat less well-remembered, which is almost a shame, as this, Warriors of the Years 2072 (also known as New Gladiators) is at least an intriguing idea. Set in a future where TV corporations seem to rule, airing gladiatorial battles in order to boost ratings, popular champion of the intelligently named Kill Bike, Drake (Jared Martin), has been framed for murder in order to lure him into a new to-the-death game show. Sensing the audience are desperate for blood and death, the ruthless TV network plan to set a band of Death Row prisoners against each other in a motorbike battle, complete with nasty weapons.
It plays like an earlier cheap version of The Running Man (1987), but with cardboard sets, dodgy costumes, and the guy that played Black Caesar. This is a pretty terrible film. The obvious budgetary constraints lead to a very slow build up that sees Drake planning and training with his new Death Row colleagues for a long time before we get to the climax. That said, when the finale does finally arrive, it's actually pretty exciting given the actors are clearly waving plastic weapons and merely karate chopping each other on the back of the head (which seems to be the standard exploitation fight move). Fulci seems unable to resist throwing in a splash of gore any chance he gets, which makes it obvious as to where his heart really lies. Sci-fi is not his forte, and it's clear that this was a quickie. But there are a few things to enjoy here, namely the basic idea which is, as I said earlier, although badly executed, is certainly quite interesting.
Often described and referred to as a 'master of horror', I've never fully taken to the work of Lucio Fulci. The City Of The Living Dead (1980) aside, which I found lots of fun and often appallingly violent, I usually find his films slow and plodding. The New York Ripper (1982)and Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979), both banned when they were first released up until not so long ago, were unimpressive and sometimes distastefully exploitative. The Beyond, the second film in Fulci's 'Gates Of Hell' trilogy (in between City Of The Living Dead and The House By The Cemetery (1981)), exceeded all my expectations. For me this is Fulci's crowning achievement - a colossal beast full of eye-gouging, human-eating tarantulas, possessed children, and most surprisingly, genuine beauty.
The film begins in 1927 in the Deep South of America, where a lynch mob arrive at the hotel door of a painter who they believe to be a sort of demon. They crucify and murder him, causing a door to hell to be opened that the hotel sits upon. These doors lie all across the world, one of which was opened and caused a city to be overflowing with the undead in the first part of the trilogy. Fast-forward several decades and the hotel is inherited by a young woman named Liza (Katherine MacColl) who is oblivious to the supernatural influence that surrounds it. Despite several warnings by a mysterious blind woman, she continues to renovate the hotel and unwittingly re-opens the door to hell. Soon, the town is in chaos, with the dead in the morgue re-awakening to tear the flesh of the townsfolk.
If this all sounds rather silly and unremarkable, it really isn't. Unlike his lesser films, The Beyond looks stunning. The prologue is filmed in an old-photograph style sepia, and it really helps give the film a sort of dignity. Dario Argento has always had the ability to shoot horror in a way that helps elevate the genre, and learned his trade alongside the great Sergio Leone, and here Fulci is on a similar level. The hotel interiors are shot in dark shadows and feels extremely claustrophobic, and helps create an atmosphere where you can feel the suffocation of Liza. And when the gore starts, all logic gets kicked out the window as eyeball after eyeball is gouged out of their sockets, and tarantulas emerge from a bookshelf to devour an unfortunately paralysed man investigating the hotel's history.
A lot of scenes are just confusing or plain ridiculous. Certain things don't have any continuation, such as a little girl seen earlier in the film being attacked by the dead is rescued, and after a while suddenly turns into one of them with only the colour of her eyes symbolising the fact she is one the undead. Yet the other living dead can't communicate, and are half-rotting, brainless animals. But with a film this bizarre, over-the-top, and so inventively horrific, who cares? It's worth seeing for the final scene alone, which is staggeringly filmed, and hauntingly realised. Just sit back, enjoy, and ponder as to why Fulci has such a fetishistic love of people's eyes being removed from their skulls.
In a remote Italian village, three young boys spy on couples about to engage in sex through a barn door and later torment the local idiot and peeping tom Giuseppe (Vito Passeri). Soon enough, the boys start turning up dead, murdered and discarded in the surrounding areas. Giuseppe is arrested, but is soon released when another boy is killed while the simpleton is in custody. A media circus descends on the town, while intrigued journalist Andrea (Tomas Milian) and police chief Captain Modesti (Ugo D'Alessio) search for clues. Tongues start to wag as the beautiful Patrizia (Barbara Bouchet) arrives in town with a shady past and skimpy outfits, as she is quickly viewed with suspicion. Yet with a town full of eccentrics and loners, it's difficult to figure out just who the killer is. Is it the old nut at the top of the hill, or are the murders the result of black magic performed by demented witch Maciara (Florinda Bolkan)?
