(1980)
Overall: MEH
It may be the first, but Lucio Fulci's City of the Dead, (aka The Gates of Hell), is easily the weakest in his "Gates of Hell Trilogy". Pick any of his other exertions into this genre and you are going to find plot holes and nonsensical moments galore, but this one seems to do nothing else than pounce from one wacky scene to the next. A woman puking up her own entrails when a demon/zombie looks at her and makes her eyes bleed is indeed a memorable horror movie moment if ever there was one though. A few others like the hurricane worthy gust of maggots and Catriona MacColl, (who appeared in all three "Gates" films), waking up after being buried alive are also on point. Naturally, Euro-horror needs not a rhyme or reason all the time for its showstoppers, (Dario Argento has made a career out of mostly gruesome death scenes that can hardly be classified as "realistic"), but here, Fulci mixes the illogical moments with dull pacing and just too haphazard of a script. Still, that guts puking scene is pretty damn awesome.
(1982)
Overall: MEH
A lot of mileage is gotten out of the premise of a slasher killer who talks like Donald Duck in Lucio Fulci's raunchy, abundantly misogynistic The New York Ripper, (Lo squartatore di New York). It is probably the most blatantly sleazy film in the director's career. On top of all of the extreme violence towards women serving as its main objective, it also indulges in prolonged, odd sex scenes like watching a couple bang on stage in some kind of typical, "New York City sure is wild and weird isn't it?" scenario. Also, another woman gets her gentiles massaged by a guy's foot in a bar. The dialog is lots silly and it fittingly paints females in an unflattering manner, ("You women should stay home where you belong. You're a menace to the public. And you got the brains of a chicken!" and "Your overpowering touch shorts out my brain circuits." spoken by a woman). Fulci may have been attempting to make a statement about chauvinism, but his violent, cinematic quirks distract such a potential message. On that note, the duck-quacking murderer has to be seen, (or heard), to be believed though and that very odd detail alone gives it a memorable edge amongst other more conventional giallos and slasher movies.
(1983)
Overall: GOOD
Lucio Fulci may not have ever kicked up the camp value into higher gear than he did with the hilariously strange, B-movie ham-fest Conquest. A caveman/sci-fi/adventure/fantasy/sword and sorcery hybrid that still found time to include hideous beast men and filthy zombies, (as well as lots of boobs, torso-ripping, head-smashing gore, and a retro soft focus the entire film), it is pretty endlessly wild and fun. It is also clearly done on a shoe-string budget, and filmed in both Mexico and Italy with an international cast of dubbed actors from both countries as well as Spain. This is part of its charm though since as a piece of derivative barbarian fiction, its primitive and silly production values enhance the camp level tenfold. The story is so elementary that the entire plot can fit on a single piece of paper even if your writing is huge and in crayon. Similar to the low-budget nature being a plus, it is likewise not a detriment how simple the narrative is since scenes of bloody carnage with monster henchmen and He-Man-clad alphas liquefying bodies with weapons interrupt every scene of dialog only about every eleven seconds or so anyway. This leaves nothing really to follow, just lots of Italian-flavored, Neanderthal-warrior mumbo jumbo and carnage to sit back and devour the popcorn while laughing with/at.
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