(1988)
Overall: MEH
Lucio Fulci spent the last two years of the 1980s working in the direct-to-video/television film market and the first of these projects was Sodoma's Ghost, a pretty lackluster, borderline softcore pornographic bit of sleaze. Utilizing a story that both Fulci and screenwriter Carlo Alberto Alfieri concocted of several years earlier, it has a silly enough premise of a haunted house inhabited by hedonistic Nazis that make people horny. The end product though is more dull than amusingly tasteless and is hampered by cheap production values. Plot wise, it is a monotonous cliche fest with stupid characters supernaturally trapped in a single location who slowly get picked off and/or sexually tempted. The days go by, they argue, they try to leave, a few pairs of naked boobs are shown, there is some typical Fulci-worthy gross out gore, and the ending is very lazily underwhelming. Even Fulci himself considers it his weakest film and allegedly walked off during the shoot, resulting in Mario Bianchi stepping in to finish it.
(1988)
Overall: MEH
Though it is comparatively the best and most unique out of Lucio Fulci's late 80s television/direct-to-video output, Touch of Death, (Quando Alice ruppe lo specchio), is not without its shortcomings. Part of the I maestri del thriller series as was his previous Sodoma's Ghost, (and filmed immediately after it), it has no supernatural elements and is instead a psychological black comedy which was an area Fulci seldom explored in his filmography. The attempts at humor are pretty amatuerish and the filmmaker's script plays out like a less clever, much smaller budgeted Tales from the Crypt episode if it were stretched out to ninety-odd minutes. This pleasantly differentiates it from his usual haunted, single location, quasi-slasher movies as we instead witness a crazy, causally cannibalistic con-man who hooks up with comically unattractive, wealthy women with little to no effort before killing them and feeding the scraps that he does not keep for himself to his stable of pigs. It is all a bit too monotonous and poorly paced to benefit the silly premise, plus gore and nudity is less prominent than one would expect so it ends up being forgettable.
(1989)
Overall: MEH
The first of two television films that Lucio Fulci made for producer Luciano Martino's series The House of Doom, (La case maledette), was the therefor appropriately titled The House of Clocks, (La casa nel tempo), a largely messy endeavor that borders on incoherent. Shot on 16 mm, primarily in one location, and within four weeks, the ambitious plot revolving around a wealthy elder couple who somehow manage to rewind time or something is rather poorly conveyed. What are meant to be creepy supernatural occurrences instead come off as just confusing and unatmospheric which is partially due to the low production values. Fulci manages to pull off one or two gore sequences that are fun, but the soft lighting, lousy, misplaced romantic music, and uninteresting setting provide nothing remotely otherworldly to go along with the typical Euro-horror, nightmare logic. Something possibly could have been made with a better script and more time to put the whole project together, but wherever the fault lies, this is hardly Fulci at his most engaging.
(1989)
Overall: MEH
Filmed immediately after shooting on The House of Clocks wrapped up, Lucio Fulci's second movie for Luciano Martino's The House of Doom television series suffers from the same visual and narrative issues as its predecessor. The Sweet House of Horrors, (La dolce casa degli orrori) fares a tad better with proper macabre atmospherics and unintentional weirdness, but the somewhat cutesy approach is relentlessly unfrightening. Sans an opening kill sequence that is particularly gruesome, the rest of the film focuses on two obnoxious, incessantly crying and/or whining children who eventually cheer up when the ghosts of their murdered parents manifest themselves as either tiny flames or in their normal human appearance. There is also a blue light that represents some other kind of spirits, (or something), but such details hardly matter. The final set piece involving a hammy spiritual medium and others trying to bulldoze the kid's house is just laughably stupid and overall, the film stumbles between clumsy slapstick, light sentimentality, and uninteresting storytelling. Both this and the filmmaker's previous TV installment were shelved for a number of years which was probably for the best, but Fulci fans may only appreciate the infrequent gore as everything else going on is hogwash.
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