80's Lucio Fulci Part Two

THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY
(1981)
Overall: GOOD

The finale in Lucio Fulci's "Gates of Hell Trilogy", The House By the Cemetery, (Quella villa accanto al cimitero), is the Italian gore-meister's take on the haunted house film more or less.  Gory ghost movies are not a massively saturated genre, though if they were, Fulci's maggot-infested, blood-oozing crack at it would be a landmark entry.  That said, its a somewhat more subdued affair for the filmmaker.  Long stretches go by without any nastiness and just some subtle, (if cliched), creepiness taking its place.  When the blood and guts do make an appearance, one can hardly be disappointed though.  Knives through the brain and out the mouth, throats being ripped out, heads being cut off, and maggots spewing from stab-wounds, (all in splendid detail no less), certainly deliver.  Homely and goofy looking child actor Giovanni Frezza is surprisingly not as distracting as many children in such genre outings, which is also a plus.  The flaws here are the same ones in all of Fulci's great, good, or poor offerings though which includes so-so pacing, monsters slower than senior citizens driving with Wisconsin license plates, and any kind of logical sense being thrown right out the window.  With a consistent tone and mood in place though, it is still rather satisfactory.

MANHATTAN BABY

(1982)

Overall: MEH

 

The second Lucio Fulci film in a row to be shot on location in New York, the appropriately dubbed Manhattan Baby, (The Possessed), is a far weaker and different entry by comparison than his The New York Ripper which was released several months prior.  Fulci himself was not a fan of the finished product, one whose once substantial budget was cut in half at the last minute and most likely suffers because of it.  It still features a solid share of arbitrary, supernatural happenings that follow no decipherable logic, (a Fulci staple to be sure), such as the floor to an elevator giving out, people not being visible in Polaroids, people disappearing through portals and then the script completely forgetting about them, and reptiles showing up dramatically and doing things.  While these are all fun on paper, the pacing is utterly horrendous.  Several of the characters are so unmemorable that you cannot even recall if they have showed up already in a previous scene.  As the bulk of the movie follows them around doing lots of talking, good luck being all that interested in anything except the random, weird moments.  Speaking of weird, that unfortunately creepy looking kid from The House by the Cemetery also returns and is dubbed more distractedly hilarious than even usual.

AENIGMA
(1988)
Overall: MEH

Not a particularly strong effort from Lucio Fulci, Aenigma serves as his Italian-flavored hybrid of Richard Franklin's Patrick and Brian De Palma's Carrie.  The premise is simple enough to provide ample footing for the filmmaker's trademark, bizarre supernatural set pieces and a moment where a girl gets eaten to death by snails in her bed, a man's reflection emerging from a mirror to murder him, and a statue at a museum coming to life to kill another girl certainly qualify.  There is also some primo-hilarious dialog like "I may have a fat ass but if you slap it again, I'll slap your face" and "A successful semester to me means making out with as many cute boys as possible."  Of course the horrendous dubbing makes said line readings even more silly than they already are on paper.  The movie's more slightly, (and unintentionally), schlocky qualities are really the only things that break up the kind of hum-drum story that unavoidably comes off as a lesser variant of the films that it is narratively tailored after.  This late into his career, Fulci was still able to put his mark on the project to warrant it fitting as a curiosity, but calling it a memorable movie in its own right is not entirely accurate.