AENIGMA (Italy/Yugoslavia - 1987) Directed by Lucio Fulci. Written by Giorgio Mariuzzo and Lucio Fulci. Cast: Jared Martin, Lara Naszinski, Ulli Reinthaler, Kathi Wise, Riccardo Acerbi, Sophie D'Aulan, Jennifer Naud, Mijlijana Zirojevic, Dragan Ejelogrlic, Lijlijana Blagojevic, Franciska Spahic, Dusica Zagaric, Lucio Fulci. (Unrated, 89 mins) Having exhausted everything there is to say about Lucio Fulci's early '70s gialli and his trailblazing 1979-1982 gore galore glory days, cult film scholars have reached the point in Fulciology studies where it's time to begin re-examining his much-maligned late-period of 1986-1991. Peak Fulci came to a close after his falling out with producer Fabrizio De Angelis during the making of 1982's underappreciated MANHATTAN BABY, but he did some decent journeyman work on 1983's CONQUEST and the 1984 films THE NEW GLADIATORS and the FLASHDANCE-inspired slasher MURDER ROCK. Health issues kept Fulci sidelined through the rest of 1984 and all of 1985, and 1986's erotic thriller THE DEVIL'S HONEY was the start of what's considered "latter-day Fulci." Aside from gory throwbacks like 1988's ZOMBI 3 (which he left midway through production, citing health concerns, and the film was finished by an uncredited Bruno Mattei) and TOUCH OF DEATH and 1990's meta, self-referential CAT IN THE BRAIN, this period was almost completely dismissed by all but the most devout Fulciphiles. Other than THE DEVIL'S HONEY turning up in US video stores in 1991 as DANGEROUS OBSESSION, none of these later Fulcis made it to America until the post-2000 Eurocult DVD explosion after years of only able to be seen stateside via bootlegs and gray market means. But as the '00s kicked off, all of the late-period Fulci titles began appearing on DVD, courtesy of labels like Shriek Show, Image Entertainment, and Severin. And for the most part, they were as bad as we'd heard during that previous decade where they were difficult to see. None of these films are essential Fulci, but some indeed have their charms and deliver the gory goods, even if they lack the polish and financial backing that he was getting during his heyday. A pair of these later Fulci titles--1987's AENIGMA and 1990's DEMONIA--have just been given 4K restorations and are out on Blu-ray from Severin (because physical media is dead), and while neither are where any Fulci newbie should begin their exploration, they're both worth second looks for the die-hards.
Playing like a bizarre mash-up of CARRIE, JENNIFER, PATRICK, and Dario Argento's PHENOMENA, AENIGMA opens at the fictional St. Mary's College in Boston--though at no point does this Beantown look like anything other than Sarajevo, where this Italian/Yugoslavian co-production was shot--with a group of students, along with lecherous gym instructor Fred (Riccardo Acerbi) plotting a cruel prank on shy, awkward Kathy (Mijlijana Zirojevic). This results in Kathy being run over by a car and left brain-dead on life support at a local hospital, where she's looked after by neurologist Dr. Anderson (requisite American export value Jared Martin, best known for his recurring role as J.R. Ewing nemesis Dusty Farlow on DALLAS). Meanwhile, new transfer student Eva (A BLADE IN THE DARK's Lara Naszinski, niece of Klaus Kinski) gets settled into St. Mary's as she recovers from a nervous breakdown, though she soon becomes a sort-of psychic conduit of Kathy who, with the help of her occasionally glowing-red-eyed mother and school maid "Crazy Mary" (Dusika Zagaric), uses Eva to enact vengeance upon her tormentors.
When you think of Lucio Fulci set pieces, you probably go to the shark vs. zombie clash or the eye-splinter scene in ZOMBIE or maybe the intestine-barfing or drill-through-the-head scenes in THE GATES OF HELL or the razor blade-through-the-nipple bit in THE NEW YORK RIPPER. AENIGMA offers its own memorable sequence with the awesomely gross "death by snails" suffered by Virginia (Kathi Wise), who's eventually covered head-to-toe by snails and slugs in her bed. Fred is attacked by a double that materializes out of a mirror where he's admiring himself and his death is written off as a heart attack, while others are killed by a statue come to life or decapitated, or thrown from a window. Eva--enacting the desires of the comatose Kathy--seduces Dr. Anderson, and their constant fooling around makes Eva's roommate Jenny (Ulli Reinthaler) a third wheel. That is, at least until Eva has another breakdown and gets committed, after which Dr. Anderson starts sleeping with Jenny. Almost all of the characters in AENIGMA are varying degrees of shitty, with horrible teacher Drop Dead Fred and lecherous would-be sugar daddy Dr. Anderson really lowering the bar on male authority figures one should be able to look up to.
AENIGMA isn't top-shelf Fulci by any means, but after many years away from it, it has its entertainment value, even if some if it comes in the form of unintentional laughs, be they the Yugoslavian prop team's attempt at Massachusetts license plates, a shot of a miniature cityscape that could pass as a Lego "Antonio Margheriti Action Playset," the theme song "Head Over Heels" being listed as "Head Over Meels" in the opening credits, or a poster of Yoda on Jenny's wall demonstrating that Fulci really had his finger on the pulse of dorm life for late '80s American college girls. There's also the clarity of HD revealing oopsies like the timing of a red-filtered light during an overhead shot of an oil-slicked Martin/Naszinski sex scene offering a view of Naszinski that's perhaps a bit more proctological than anyone intended. But as it stands, AENIGMA is a not-bad second-tier offering from the waning days of Italian horror. It was produced by corner-cutting Ettore Spagnuolo, who spent most of the second half of the '80s trying to turn Harrison Muller into an action star in films like THE VIOLENT BREED and GETTING EVEN. Spagnuolo managed to get known names at cheap prices, like Henry Silva for THE VIOLENT BREED and Richard Roundtree for GETTING EVEN, but despite his visibility on DALLAS and other American TV shows going back to the late '60s (with requisite stops on FANTASY ISLAND and THE LOVE BOAT), Martin, who didn't even stick around to dub himself, wasn't enough to secure any kind of US distribution deal for AENIGMA, which didn't legitimately appear in America until it was released on DVD by Image Entertainment in the summer of 2001.
DEMONIA (Italy - 1990) Directed by Lucio Fulci. Written by Piero Regnoli and Lucio Fulci. Cast: Brett Halsey, Meg Register, Carla Cassola, Lino Salemme, Christina Engelhardt, Pascal Druant, Grady Thomas Clarkson, Ettore Comi, Michael J. Aronin, Al Cliver, Isabella Corradini, Paola Cozzo, Bruna Rossi, Paola Calati, Antonio Melillo, Francesco Cusimano, Lucio Fulci. (Unrated, 89 mins) Like AENIGMA and most other latter-day Fulci, DEMONIA was a staple of the bootleg VHS circuit in the '90s, finally getting a legit US release when Shriek Show released it on DVD in 2001. It was lumped in with the generally dismissed stretch of product that Fulci was cranking out, like THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS, THE SWEET HOUSE OF HORRORS, and what most consider his worst horror film, SODOMA'S GHOST. And like AENIGMA, time has been kind to DEMONIA while still being unquestionably lesser Fulci. Much of that is due to the presentation on Severin's Blu-ray, which really makes both of these films look better than they ever have. Both have that sort-of "gauzy" look that was common with a lot of Italian horror of that time, particularly the product coming off of Joe D'Amato's Filmirage assembly line, but DEMONIA's outdoor scenes--the film was shot on location at Sicily's Capo Bianco and at the San Pellegrino monastery in nearby Caltabellotta--really benefit from the 4K restoration and help at least those portions of the film look a lot better than most of the stuff that was being bankrolled by budget-conscious producer Ettore Spagnuolo.
A frequently nonsensical mix of Michele Soavi's THE CHURCH, Marcello Avallone's SPECTERS, with a little of John Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS, with some bonus nunsploitation thrown in for good measure, DEMONIA deals with a team of Canadian archaeology students led by Prof. Evans (veteran American actor Brett Halsey, a late-period Fulci regular at this point after THE DEVIL'S HONEY and TOUCH OF DEATH) on a dig in Sicily. The locals, led by pissed-off butcher Turi (Lino Salemme from the DEMONS movies), don't want them there, but they proceed with their work anyway. The dig has a profound effect on student Liza (Meg Register), who takes part in seances (a shout-out to Catriona MacColl's character in THE GATES OF HELL) and believes in all manner of psychic hooey despite Evans reminding her that she's a scientist. Liza explores the dig on her own and finds a walled-off crypt with the skeletal remains of five crucified nuns. Lilla (Carla Cassola), the local medium--doesn't every superstitious village have one?--fulfills her Basil Exposition duty by informing Liza that in 1486, the five nuns were accused of holding orgies and committing deviant sexual acts in the nunnery after making a pact with Satan, prompting the villagers to crucify and execute them. The spirits of the five nuns now seek vengeance on the town and have established a psychic connection with Liza, which somewhat thematically ties it to the Kathy/Eva situation in AENIGMA. Various gory deaths ensue, including an Evans rival (Fulci stalwart Al Cliver of ZOMBIE, appearing here long enough to get spear-gunned by a topless apparition) whose decapitated head prompts an investigation by the local cops, represented by Lt. Andi (Michael J. Aronin) and his boss Inspector Carter, played by none other than Fulci himself in a prominent supporting role (dubbed by Robert Spafford) that gives him more screen time than his usual cameo.
DEMONIA has a lot of atmosphere in the foreboding catacombs and Fulci even breaks out a Steadicam for a show-offy tracking shot at one point. He also doesn't skimp on the gore--highlights a woman's eyes being clawed out by possessed cats and a graphic wishboning of one of Evans' team--though the shoddy effects are pulled off by the aptly-named Elio Terribili. Co-written by Fulci, Piero Regnoli (BURIAL GROUND), and an uncredited Antonio Tentori (CAT IN THE BRAIN), DEMONIA drags a bit in the middle before all hell breaks loose, and even taking the dubbing into account (no one voices themselves, not even Halsey, who's dubbed by Ted Rusoff), the performances seem stilted and awkward. That's not helped by scenes that drag on without going anywhere--there's a lot of padding to get DEMONIA to feature length, especially the time-killing way Aronin's Andi hems and haws in his prolonged and ultimately pointless confrontation with Halsey's Evans, then Fulci just cuts away and never wraps it up--and Salemme's character is underdeveloped, as Fulci kills him off before the villagers raid the excavation site with torches like an angry mob from an old Universal FRANKENSTEIN movie.
Halsey, who was groomed as a leading man back in the '50s but went to Europe in the '60s after it never panned out, remained a busy character actor who found himself back in Italy in the late '80s, appearing in three Fulci films (four if you count recycled footage in CAT IN THE BRAIN), along with others by the likes of Jess Franco, Antonio Margheriti, Luigi Cozzi, and Bruno Mattei, and the same year he starred in DEMONIA, he landed a supporting role as the second husband of Diane Keaton's Kay Corleone in THE GODFATHER PART III. Despite his long career in Hollywood and abroad, Halsey's name, like Jared Martin's with AENIGMA, wasn't enough to secure any interest in DEMONIA from US home video distributors, nor was Fulci's by that point. Though he looked better here than in his haggard appearance around the time of AENIGMA, Fulci's health would soon take another downturn. He only made two more films--VOICES FROM BEYOND and DOOR TO SILENCE, both in 1991--before being sidelined by diabetes and other related medical issues. He attempted a comeback when it was announced that he would write and direct THE WAX MASK, a HOUSE OF WAX redux produced by Dario Argento, but he died at the age of 68 shortly before production began in 1996. Argento handed THE WAX MASK off to Italian FX master Sergio Stivaletti, with a dedication to Fulci in the opening credits.
THE WAX MASK (Italy/France - 1997; US release 2000) Directed by Sergio Stivaletti. Written by Lucio Fulci and Daniele Stroppa. Cast: Robert Hossein, Romina Mondello, Riccardo Serventi Longhi, Gabriella Giorgelli, Aldo Massasso, Umberto Balli, Valery Valmond, Gianni Franco, Antonello Murru, Daniele Auber, Massimo Vanni, Omero Capanna, Goffredo Unger. (Unrated, 98 mins) 1997's THE WAX MASK began life as a heavily-hyped collaboration between Italian horror legends Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, the latter ailing and inactive since 1991's little-seen DOOR TO SILENCE, and far removed from his furiously prolific 1979-1984 glory days that gave us the likes of ZOMBIE, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, and THE BEYOND among others. After scrapping plans to make a new version of THE MUMMY, producer Argento and director Fulci settled on THE WAX MASK, a new take on the 1953 classic HOUSE OF WAX, itself a remake of 1933's MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM, with some elements of Gaston Leroux's short story "The Waxworks Museum." The writing process and pre-production--delayed while Argento finished THE STENDHAL SYNDROME--brought numerous disagreements, with Fulci unexpectedly wanting to go for atmosphere, while Argento wanted more splatter, since that's what established Fulci's fame, but Fulci's already precarious health took another downturn and before filming could even begin, the Godfather of Gore died on March 13, 1996 of complications from his long battle with diabetes. With the script already written, Argento pressed forward as a tribute to Maestro Fulci, assigning directing duties to renowned makeup effects wizard Sergio Stivaletti, whose trailblazing work was a highlight of latter-day Italian horror classics like Argento's PHENOMENA, Lamberto Bava's DEMONS and DEMONS 2, and Michele Soavi's THE CHURCH, THE SECT, and CEMETERY MAN. Making his directing debut, Stivaletti was given some wide latitude by Argento to tailor the project to his own vision. As a result, he significantly reworked Fulci's initial script--written with Daniele Stroppa, with some uncredited contributions from Argento--and the end result is a bizarre hodgepodge of giallo, gothic horror, and steampunk, almost like HOUSE OF WAX and Mario Bava's BARON BLOOD mashed up with a looney tunes third act that veers unexpectedly into sci-fi territory.
It's not very good, but it's better than anything else Fulci made after 1988 and it's better than Argento's next project, his career nadir THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, for which THE WAX MASK occasionally feels like a stylistic test run. In Paris in 1900, a little girl witnesses a black-clad figure murder her parents, with police determining that her father's heart was ripped out with a claw-like instrument. Cut to Rome in 1912, and the girl has grown up into Sonia (Romina Mondello, later seen as Rachel McAdams' obnoxious friend in Terrence Malick's TO THE WONDER), who went to live with her blind Aunt Francesca (Gabriella Giorgielli) after being orphaned. Shy Sonia gets a job as a costume designer at a new wax museum operated by Boris Volkoff (Robert Hossein), whose villainy should be obvious the moment you hear that he's named "Boris Volkoff," and has not one but two super-creepy assistants (Umberto Balli, Antonello Murru). The wax museum has made news before it's even opened, as a local man took a bet that he could spend the night in it and ended up dying of a fright-induced heart attack over something he saw (that's the plot of the Leroux short story). Volkoff is very protective of his exhibits and refuses to allow them to be photographed, and while a pestering reporter (Riccado Serventi Longhi) investigates the local man's death while also trying to make time with Sonia, the body count increases along with the number of Volkoff's exhibits, as a black-clad figure in a hat murders various people--mostly prostitutes from a nearby brothel--and transforms their corpses into new wax museum figures.
Anyone who's seen MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM and HOUSE OF WAX knows who's responsible, especially once a new exhibit echoes the Paris 1900 murder scene, triggering traumatic memories for Sonia (Volkoff doesn't initially know who she is) while attracting the attention of French detective Lanvin (Aldo Massasso), who's been obsessively chasing clues for the last 12 years and is especially interested in Volkoff's Paris 1900 exhibit since it includes details of the murder scene that were never made public. It's at about this point where Stivaletti steers THE WAX MASK to Crazytown in ways that are best discovered by going in cold, but even then, it still won't make a whole lot of sense. Veteran French actor/director and RIFIFI co-star Hossein--whose career dates back to 1948 and is still working today at 91--is appropriately sinister without hamming it up, though one wishes he would cut loose a little more, especially considering how batshit things get by the end.
Then again, it's really difficult to judge anyone's performance in this if you watch the English dub, which is absolutely atrocious, filled with florid line readings like Balli's character telling Sonia about his childhood abuse: "My father beat me until I bled...my skin carries the scars and my heart carries the hate which I shall always bear." Though venerable dubbing stalwarts like Carolynn de Fonseca and Ted Rusoff are briefly heard voicing some minor characters, most of that old gang had died or moved on by this point, leaving relative amateurs to do much of the heavy lifting, and anyone who watches enough of these Eurocult movies will instantly hear that the dubs on these later Italian genre titles just don't have the charm, the chops, or any sense of quality control. While there is some striking production design and some eye-popping colors, the entire film has a television feel to it, starting with the video-burned title and some stagy interiors. The climactic fire at the wax museum tries to emulate the exteriors of the witch houses burning at the end of Argento's SUSPIRIA and INFERNO, but Stivaletti can't pull it off with primitive CGI that already looked dated even by late '90s standards. THE WAX MASK opened in Italy in April 1997, just over a year after Fulci's death (he gets a dedication at beginning of the opening credits, which is a nice touch). As expected, it skipped US theaters and went straight-to-DVD courtesy of Image Entertainment in September 2000 in a non-anamorphic, early-days-of-DVD transfer that left much to be desired. While the dubious One-7 Movies released it on Blu-ray in 2016, Severin's new extras-packed Blu-ray set (because physical media is dead) is a huge improvement if you've only seen the Image DVD. Plus it offers an Italian track with English subtitles, though Hossein spoke French on set and is still dubbed in Italian, and everyone else speaking Italian sounds dubbed as well.
MANHATTAN BABY aka EYE OF THE EVIL DEAD (Italy - 1982; US release 1984) Directed by Lucio Fulci. Written by Elisa Livia Briganti and Dardano Sacchetti. Cast: Christopher Connelly, Martha Taylor (Laura Lenzi), Brigitta Boccoli, Giovanni Frezza, Cinzia de Ponti, Laurence Welles (Cosimo Cinieri), Andrea Bosic, Carlo De Mejo, Lucio Fulci, Martin Sorrentino. (R, 89 mins) Released to US drive-ins and grindhouses in 1984 by 21st Century as EYE OF THE EVIL DEAD, this 1982 Lucio Fulci film is best known by its original and subsequent home video title, MANHATTAN BABY, and while it's far from the director's best effort, it's better than its reputation. Viewers of the much-maligned MANHATTAN BABY are usually disappointed that it's not as gory as most titles from Fulci's unstoppable 1979-1982 classic era, but it does have its charms. It's also noteworthy as the last collaboration between Fulci and producer Fabrizio De Angelis after several years of trailblazing gore classics like ZOMBIE (1979), THE BEYOND (1981), THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1981), and THE NEW YORK RIPPER (1982), the duo having an irreparable falling out over some eleventh hour budget cuts on this film, which co-writer Dardano Sacchetti estimated to be in the neighborhood of 75%. After this, De Angelis started calling himself "Larry Ludman" and concentrated on directing Italian ripoffs of popular American action films, and though he kept working with other producers throughout the '80s on films like CONQUEST, MURDER ROCK, and ZOMBI 3, Fulci never scaled the glorious heights of his De Angelis years, his prolific golden era effectively coming to a close by the time MANHATTAN BABY and THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY hit US theaters in 1984.
One big problem with MANHATTAN BABY is that Sacchetti, his co-writer and wife Elisa Livia Briganti, and Fulci can't seem to settle on what they're ripping off: there's elements of 1980's THE AWAKENING, a little of 1982's POLTERGEIST, plus a climax that seems like a tamer version of 1973's THE EXORCIST. Gore is minimal, confined mainly to a ridiculous bird attack near the end. Christopher Connelly (around the same time he played the hapless Hot Dog in Enzo G. Castellari's 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS) is archaeologist George Hacker, who uncovers a mysterious force in Egypt and is temporarily blinded, and his daughter Susie (Brigitta Boccoli) is given a strange medallion by a blind old crone who vanishes into thin air. Back in NYC, Susie is slowly possessed by the force, sand turns up in Susie's and little brother Tommy's (Giovanni Frezza, best known as THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY's "Bob") bedroom, colleagues start getting killed, and a pervasive Evil seems to be taking hold. This leads Hacker and his wife Emily (Laura Lenzi, credited as "Martha Taylor," for some reason) to consult mysterious antiques dealer Adrian Mercato (MURDER ROCK's Cosimo Cinieri, billed as "Laurence Welles") who seems to know something, and lucky for him the Hackers apparently never saw ROSEMARY'S BABY, since Mercato shares the name of the title hellspawn, for no particular reason.
US theatrical poster. "George" Frezza?!
The pace is a little slow, there isn't the level of gore one usually associates with early '80s Fulci, and the title is terrible, but it's atmospheric, the NYC and Cairo locations are very well-shot by cinematographer Guglielmo Mancori (SPASMO), and though the bulk of the score is simply older Fabio Frizzi cues from the Fulci classics CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD and THE BEYOND (thanks to the budget cuts), the composer's main theme ranks among the best of his career. MANHATTAN BABY is definitely not the place for aspiring Fulciphiles to begin their explorations, but time has been kind to it, and even its biggest longtime detractors are slowly coming around to admitting that it's not deserving of its bad rep. Blue Underground's new Blu-ray is a three-disc special edition that includes a cd of Frizzi's score, and should further make the case for MANHATTAN BABY's belated acceptance.
CONQUEST (Italy/Spain/Mexico - 1983; US release 1984)
Every few years, I feel compelled to revisit Lucio Fulci's bizarre contribution to the 1980s sword & sorcery craze, thinking "I'll figure it out this time," and I never do. There's no making sense out of CONQUEST, an acid-trippy ripoff of CONAN THE BARBARIAN by way of EL TOPO, shot in the most gauzy, foggy, smeary lens filter this side of Robert Altman's QUINTET. About as coherent as fragments of a barely-remembered dream, CONQUEST has young Ilias (Andrea Occhipinti of BOLERO) sent by his people on a quest to defeat the nefarious Ocron (Italian CONAN ripoff fixture Sabrina Siani, billed here as the more American sounding "Sabrina Sellers"), an iron-masked, topless overlord who spends most of her time writhing with snakes, eating the brains of her victims, and ordering around her army of talking wolf/dog creatures who walk upright. Ilias gets some help from mercenary warrior Mace (Jorge Rivero, during his "George Rivero" phase). who becomes his mentor in their quest to defeat Ocron, who's later joined by her own masked co-conspirator Zora (Conrado San Martin). Mace and Ilias then spend a lot of time walking around and encountering various creatures of undetermined origin before their final, fateful laser arrow showdown with the evil Ocron and her minions.
Coming soon after the end of his unstoppable 1979-1982 run of iconic gorehound classics like ZOMBIE, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE BEYOND, and others, Fulci had grown into enough of a genuine auteur by this point--even if it hadn't yet been recognized--that you can see him attempting to imbue CONQUEST with his unique stamp. Claudio Simonetti's score is mostly then-trendy synth material, but there are some cues that are strikingly similar to Fabio Frizzi's work on CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, and it shares with it the same hazily nonsensical, anything-goes dream logic, plus Mace has a mark on his forehead that looks very similar to the "Eibon" symbol from THE BEYOND. From the laser arrows to the wolf/dog army to a drowned Mace being brought back to life by dolphins, there's no way to predict what will happen next in CONQUEST. Fulci also doesn't skimp on the trash and the gore: Siani is topless every moment she's onscreen, and there's plenty of gore, from cannibalism to scalping to one unfortunate female victim being ripped up the middle like a broken wishbone and disemboweled. His partnership with Fabrizio De Angelis over after the producer slashed the budget of 1982's MANHATTAN BABY by 75%, and his relationship with frequent screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti in tatters, Fulci is in hired gun mode on CONQUEST even with his attempts to personalize it, brought in by Italian producer Giovanni Di Clemente after the latter entered a co-production deal with Mexican producers/screenwriters Carlos Vasallo and J. Antonio de la Loma.
Mexican actor Rivero likely came as part of the Vasallo/de la Loma package deal, as he starred in several of their past and future de la Loma-directed films, like the 1982 espionage thriller TARGET: EAGLE, the 1984 DEATH WISH-meets-CONVOY trucker revenge actioner KILLING MACHINE, the 1988 DELTA FORCE ripoff COUNTERFORCE, and the 1989 bare-knuckle brawler FIST FIGHTER. Rivero attempted to break into Hollywood when he co-starred with John Wayne in 1970's RIO LOBO and with Charlton Heston and James Coburn in 1976's THE LAST HARD MEN, but he never happened in the US. Instead, Rivero built a career in Mexico and overseas in Spain, with occasional appearances in a few straight-to-US-video titles in the 1990s, like the Traci Lords thriller ICE and the 1995 MST3K staple WEREWOLF. Released in the US by United Film Distribution Company in the spring of 1984, CONQUEST has its devoted defenders but is generally considered second, if not third-tier Fulci. It's not a good movie, but there's something to it that keeps drawing me back, whether it's the splatter and surrealism inherent to Fulci or some of the humor that seems intentional, like Ocron screaming "Stop him, Zora!" as Zora just emits an exasperated sigh and vanishes into thin air as if he can't even with this bitch anymore, or the closing credits caveat "Any reference to persons or events is purely coincidental." Thanks for clearing that up. (R, 89 mins)
Based on H.P. Lovecraft's 1927 short story "The Colour Out of Space," THE CURSE could ostensibly fit in with the Stuart Gordon-led Lovecraft revival that was going on at Empire Pictures (RE-ANIMATOR, FROM BEYOND), but probably belongs more with the waning, last hurrah days of Italian horror. A U.S.-Italian co-production shot near Tellico Plains, TN, THE CURSE was produced by noted Egyptian-born Italian schlock king Ovidio G. Assonitis (BEYOND THE DOOR, TENTACLES, THE VISITOR), who brought along a mostly Italian crew hiding under subtly Anglicized names (cinematographer Roberto Forges Davanzati goes by "Robert D. Forges," editor Claudio Cutry is "Claude Kutry," composer Franco Micalizzi is "Frank Micalizzi," and most notably, associate producer Lucio Fulci supervised the second unit and the gore effects team and goes by "Louis Fulci") to work for AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN and FIRESTARTER star David Keith, making his directorial debut. Keith hasn't had much to say about THE CURSE since a Fangoria interview prior to its release (when it was known as THE FARM), so little is known about whether Assonitis resorted to his usual "fire the director" routine, which he's best known for pulling with a then-unknown James Cameron on 1982's PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING, an experience that left debuting director Cameron so upset and bitter that he decided to devote all of his energy to finishing a script he was working on called THE TERMINATOR. THE CURSE is perhaps best known as the first movie young Wil Wheaton made after his breakout starring turn the previous year in Rob Reiner's STAND BY ME. There were probably an untold number of ways Wheaton could've capitalized on his success in Reiner's critically acclaimed, sleeper hit adaptation of Stephen King's coming-of-age story "The Body," and you'd have to think that starring in a cheap-looking, low-budget Ovidio G. Assonitis production where his name is misspelled "Will Wheaton" in the opening and closing credits wouldn't have been near the top of the list. As written on Wheaton's blog, his memories of THE CURSE are not fond ones: "Your Uncle Willie was just a young'un, and some really evil producers from a scary foreign country came to him and said, 'We have this movie for you to be in, and we want to give you lots of money to be in it.' And Uncle Willie didn't have the best advisers at the time, and nobody told him that this big pile of shit would be around forever."
To a point, THE CURSE, scripted by David Chaskin, who had just written the 1985 landmark in homoerotic fever dreams A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY'S REVENGE, is relatively faithful to Lovecraft's source story, in the sense that it involves a crashing meteor poisoning the land, causing grotesque mutations in humans and animals and driving them insane. Wheaton is Zach, whose widowed mother Frances (Kathleen Jordon Gregory) moved him and his little sister Alice (Wil's sister Amy Wheaton) in with her new husband, the stern and fanatically religious apple farmer Nathan (Claude Akins). Zach doesn't get along with Nathan's oafish, perpetually plumber's-cracked son Cyrus (Malcolm Danare), but that's the least of his troubles once the meteor crashes and all hell breaks loose. Soon, the vegetation is poisoned and the water causes hideous changes in everyone who drinks it and cooks with it. Zach and local doc Forbes (Cooper Huckabee) can't convince anyone outside of town that something's wrong, and greedy real-estate sleazebag Davidson (Steve Carlisle) is trying to keep the truth from Willis (John Schneider), a Tennessee Valley Authority surveyor who's there to greenlight a development project in which the scheming Davidson has invested tons of money. THE CURSE has some fleeting moments of colorful or foggy atmosphere that establishes a nice mood until the film's general sloppiness ruins it--you can clearly see the pole to which the meteor is attached when it crashes into the miniature set, just like you can see the arm of a crew member moving behind a miniature of Nathan's farm, or how actress Gregory flubs a line when she tells Zach "Eat your eggs, Wil" (or "Will," according to the credits), or that the film completely forgets about the copiously hirsute handyman (Steve Davis), who just vanishes from the movie after Nathan figures out he's sleeping with the sexually frustrated Frances. A lot of the positives of THE CURSE come from the technical experience of the Italians, and it has that distinct late '80s Filmirage look to it that reminds one of the Joe D'Amato and Claudio Fragasso films of the era. But Keith's work behind the camera is largely undistinguished and it's not surprising that he only directed one more film, the 1988 INDIANA JONES knockoff THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF TENNESSEE BUCK, where he cast himself in the lead. THE CURSE, probably the last Italian horror film from the glory days to get a wide release in the US, would become the first installment of an unexpected four-part franchise consisting of unrelated films that would be retitled with the CURSE moniker slapped on them. (R, 91 mins)
CURSE II: THE BITE
(Italy/US/Japan - 1989)
Though it didn't set the box office on fire, THE CURSE was enough of a minor hit in theaters and in video stores that in 1989, the Assonitis-produced THE BITE was turned into an unofficial and unrelated sequel when Trans World Entertainment rechristened it CURSE II: THE BITE. THE CURSE wouldn't be the first Assonitis production to be followed by bogus sequels cashing in on a recognized brand: his 1975 EXORCIST ripoff BEYOND THE DOOR led to Mario Bava's 1977 film SHOCK being renamed BEYOND THE DOOR II for its 1979 US release, and 1989's AMOK TRAIN was retitled BEYOND THE DOOR III for its 1991 debut in US video stores. Directed and co-written by Italian Federico Prosperi (under the name "Fred Goodwin"), CURSE II: THE BITE centers on Lisa (THE STEPFATHER's Jill Schoelen) and Clark (J. Eddie Peck, soon to star in Cannon's LAMBADA), a young New Jersey couple travelling across the country and out west in Nevada (the film was actually shot in Las Cruces, NM). Their vacation is derailed when Clark is bitten by a mutated snake that's poisoned with radiation from a nuclear test site. He's given an antidote by travelling salesman/amateur doctor Harry Morton (Jamie Farr in an Italian horror movie?!), but it turns out it's the wrong medication. As Harry frantically tries to locate the couple on the back roads and desert highways, Clark's left arm is slowly turning into a snake, with the radioactive virus infecting his entire body. This leads to some impressively slimy, oozy, and gnarly creature FX courtesy of Screaming Mad George (SOCIETY), and Prosperi doesn't really hold back on the gore and the splatter. Finally able to be seen in its proper 2.35:1 aspect ratio on Scream Factory's new Blu-ray (where it's paired with the correct 2.35:1-framed THE CURSE, no doubt to "Will" Wheaton's disapproval), CURSE II: THE BITE is revealed to be a well-shot film that really takes advantage of its wide-open desert locations and Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli's cinematography, especially in one legitimately famous scene (famous for fans of the movie, at least) where Clark and Lisa's Jeep speeds down a snake-covered stretch of highway, with snakes squashing and exploding under the tires. It's so visually striking that other than Clark slither-chasing Lisa while barfing up snakes as his body transforms into a giant one in the climax, it tends to be what people who've seen CURSE II remember the most. It owes a small debt to Cronenberg's remake of THE FLY, but it also fits in with Assonitis' trend towards rural or desert back roads horror in the late '80s, which also describes THE CURSE and 1990's immortal SONNY BOY.
CURSE II: THE BITE is an insane piece of work that should probably have a larger cult following than it does. It's spectacularly gross; Bo Svenson seems to be playing the same asshole sheriffs he played in the first two THUNDER WARRIOR movies; it's a reminder that Schoelen was an adorable scream queen in her day; there's a bizarre, out-of-nowhere appearance by a crazy, religious Swedish family with a mom played by Assonitis' girlfriend Savina Gersak and a kid played by a young, pre-ROSWELL Shiri Appleby; and Jamie Farr gets laid in the most unlikely horror movie appearance by a M*A*S*H vet until Gary Burghoff got a lap dance and went full batshit in 1992's SMALL KILL. It was only a matter of time before Christopher Lee ended up in the CURSE series whether he was aware of it or not, and a couple of years later, the 1989 Lee-headlined South African voodoo horror film PANGA was retitled CURSE III: BLOOD SACRIFICE for its straight-to-video US release in 1991. 1993 saw the release of CURSE IV: THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE, which was actually the long-shelved and incredibly dull 1988 Empire production CATACOMBS, which has since been released to DVD under its original title. Though none of the sequels have anything to do with the 1987 original, the gloriously disgusting CURSE II: THE BITE is probably the best "dude turns into a giant snake" movie since 1973's unforgettable SSSSSSS ("Don't say it...hiss it!"), and deserves to be the face of what's perhaps horror's most disingenuous franchise. (Unrated, 98 mins)
In the wake of the huge global success of Sergio Leone's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964), FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965), and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966) came hundreds upon hundreds of spaghetti westerns that were cranked out at an astonishing rate well into the 1970s. By the early 1970s, with the coming of nihilistic American westerns like Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH (1969), the genre segued into political westerns such as Damiano Damiani's A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL (1968), Sergio Corbucci's COMPANEROS (1968), and Leone's DUCK, YOU SUCKER (1971) before making a sharp turn towards the comedic with the success of THEY CALL ME TRINITY (1970). TRINITY made a star of Terence Hill, who had been working as a character actor for years under his real name Mario Girotti. Starting with 1967's GOD FORGIVES, I DON'T, Hill often teamed with burly Bud Spencer (real name Carlo Pedersoli) on a series of spaghetti westerns that ranged from lighthearted to outright slapstick. While American westerns got increasingly violent in response to the first wave of spaghetti westerns, this new wave, in which most characters seemed modeled after Eli Wallach's Tuco in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (Wallach even played a Tuco-like character in the 1969 Hill/Spencer western ACE HIGH), was more concerned with the lighter side of the genre. The success of THEY CALL ME TRINITY led to a sequel (1971's TRINITY IS STILL MY NAME!) and tons of offshoots and unofficial sequels (even an earlier Hill film was retitled REVENGE OF TRINITY). Spaghetti western experts like Howard Hughes, author of the genre analysis Once Upon a Time in the Italian West, frequently cite 1973's MY NAME IS NOBODY as, for all practical purposes, the end of the genre. A TRINITY-inspired western-comedy produced by Leone (who also directed parts of it, though Tonino Valerii is given sole credit) and therefore bringing the genre full circle, NOBODY paired Hill with Hollywood legend Henry Fonda for the story of a goofball gunslinger goading an aging cowboy into going out in a blaze of glory by taking on a 150-man posse singlehandedly. While the film's 1974 US release flopped (it was sold as a BLAZING SADDLES knockoff), MY NAME IS NOBODY was a huge hit in Europe, and led to a Leone-produced semi-sequel A GENIUS, TWO PARTNERS AND A DUPE (1975), which was also released as NOBODY'S THE GREATEST. A few more slapstick spaghettis were produced and the genre quietly passed on as other trends, like polizias and EXORCIST ripoffs, took over.
Most audiences moved on as the spaghetti western faded into the sunset, which explains why three noteworthy (and too late for their own good) examples managed to fall through the cracks, though there were others that certainly justified the end of the genre, like Gianfranco Parolini's dreadful GOD'S GUN (1976), possibly the worst spaghetti western ever made. Lucio Fulci's FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE (1975), Enzo G. Castellari's KEOMA (1976), and Sergio Martino's MANNAJA (1977) were about as far removed from the TRINITY school of spaghetti westerns as one could get, yet none of the three really fit in with the first or second wave of spaghettis, either. They're the kinds of bizarre, offbeat films that get made when no one's paying attention, from directors not normally associated with the genre.
FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE (Italy - 1975)
Directed by Lucio Fulci. Written by Ennio De Concini. Cast: Fabio Testi, Tomas Milian, Lynne Frederick, Michael J. Pollard, Harry Baird, Donald O'Brien, Adolfo Lastretti, Bruno Corazzari, Lorenzo Robledo. (Unrated, 104 mins)
FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE was directed by Lucio Fulci, then a jobbing journeyman just a few years away from cementing his place in cult movie history with 1979's ZOMBIE. Gambler and card cheat Stubby Preston (Fabio Testi) arrives in Salt Flat for his latest con game and is quickly kicked out of town by the sheriff (Donald O'Brien), along with three other miscreants: pregnant prostitute Bunny (Lynne Frederick), town drunk Clem (Michael J. Pollard), and the crazed Butt (Harry Baird), who claims to see dead people. Taking a coach and heading to Stubby's next stop of Sand City, the quartet are joined by depraved outlaw Chaco (Tomas Milian), who drugs them and rapes Bunny before shooting Clem in the leg and riding off. Vowing revenge on Chaco, Stubby pulls this odd "family" together as romance blooms between with Bunny and he decides to change his dishonest ways. There's very little in the way of action in this low-key, character-driven film, with most of the graphic bloodletting confined to the opening and closing sequences. With its odd characters and set pieces, its soft rock soundtrack, and its general eccentric quirkiness, it almost feels like Robert Altman, Arthur Penn, or George Roy Hill took a break from Hollywood and decided to go to Italy to make a spaghetti western just for the hell of it (it's probably not a coincidence that BONNIE AND CLYDE Oscar-nominee Pollard is in the cast). It's a film with surprising heart and shocking transgression, and the latter shouldn't be surprising given that it's a Lucio Fulci film. The bond that forms between the four outcasts feels genuine, and Fulci films rarely get more sensitively heartfelt than the moment when a dreary, depressed town filled with hard-bitten old bastards beaten down by life finds joy and hope in the cries of Bunny's newborn baby. It's moments like this that contrast sharply with Chaco's violation of Bunny, his horrific torture of a sheriff (perpetual victim Lorenzo Robledo, the Sean Bean of spaghetti westerns) and Butt's final meltdown after Clem dies, when Stubby finds out that the delicious meal Butt prepared for them is...Clem.
The four leads work very well together, though I wish Pollard's Clem had more to do and Butt's disappearance is abrupt and clumsily-handled (and may be due to British actor Baird's health issues; he was suffering from glaucoma and went blind around the mid-1970s--he died in 2005 but FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE was his last film and the character's vanishing act looks like a textbook example of an actor suddenly being unavailable). Milian doesn't have a lot of screen time but is a truly repulsive bad guy (and it's one of the rare instances where he's dubbing himself in an Italian film). The effectively American-sounding score was composed by Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera, with songs performed by European duo Greenfield & Cook with the Benjamin Franklin Group. FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE is a strange film that refuses labels. The brief, horrific foray into cannibalism and the emotional third act exemplify the kind of wild unpredictability that makes the film such a one-of-a-kind entry in both the spaghetti western genre and Fulci's filmography.
KEOMA (Italy - 1976)
Directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Written by Mino Roli, Nico Ducci, Luigi Montefiori, Enzo G. Castellari. Cast: Franco Nero, Woody Strode, William Berger, Olga Karlatos, Orso Maria Guerrini, Antonio Marsina, Gabriella Giaccobe, John Loffredo (Joshua Sinclair), Donald O'Brien, Leon Lenoir, Wolfango Soldati, Victoria Zinny, Massimo Vanni, Giovanni Cianfriglia. (Unrated, 101 mins)
Like many Italian genre directors, Enzo G. Castellari dabbled in a little of everything until he found his niche, first with Franco Nero-headlined crime thrillers like HIGH CRIME (1973) and STREET LAW (1974), and later with the Italian WARRIORS ripoff 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS (1983) and the post-nuke THE NEW BARBARIANS (1983). He made everything from macaroni combat adventures like EAGLES OVER LONDON (1970) and THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS (1978) to gialli like COLD EYES OF FEAR (1971), and had a few first-wave spaghetti westerns under his belt, like ANY GUN CAN PLAY (1967) and KILL THEM ALL AND COME BACK ALONE (1970). He also directed the dismal TRINITY ripoff CRY ONION (1976), one of the worst spaghetti westerns ever made despite a fascinating cast that included Nero, Sterling Hayden, Martin Balsam, legendary Chicago Bears linebacker Dick Butkus, and a farting horse. Perhaps to wash away the foul taste of CRY ONION, Castellari and Nero immediately reteamed for the more serious spaghetti throwback KEOMA.
KEOMA finds the Castellari-Nero alliance in fine form with Nero as the half-breed Keoma, who returns to his home after the Civil War to find the area a plague-infested wasteland ruled by the evil Caldwell (Donald O'Brien), a Confederate officer who took over the town and whose shady business dealings resulted in a polluted well that's killed off much of the population. Keoma immediately gets on Caldwell's bad side when he kills a couple of his flunkies who were terrorizing pregnant widow Lisa (Olga Karlatos). Things get even more complicated when Keoma must deal with his loathsome half-brothers (Orso Maria Guerrini, Antonio Marsina, and Joshua Sinclair), who never accepted Keoma as their father's (William Berger) son and now very inconveniently work for Caldwell.
"Lemme hear ya say KEOMA!"
Even though it arrived three years after the effective end of the spaghetti western, KEOMA was well-received by European fans eager to see Nero back in DJANGO mode after ten years. As far as I can tell, KEOMA never got a US theatrical release, which seems odd considering that even CRY ONION made it to a few US theaters in 1980. There's definitely a post-WILD BUNCH Peckinpah feel to the directorial style Castellari uses here, not so much in the violence (which is plentiful but not particularly bloody), but in the frequent use of slo-mo in the action scenes. Also notable is the imaginatively-staged finale with Keoma taking on his brothers while Lisa gives birth--as the mayhem ensues, we don't hear the gunfire but rather, the pained screams of Lisa and nothing else as Keoma's brothers are murdered. It's an initially disorienting effect that's ultimately a very creative use of sound and editing by Castellari and his regular editor Gianfranco Amicucci. There's also some crucifixion/resurrection symbolism and a witch (Gabriella Giaccobe), who may not be real and could represent Keoma's conscience. Nero, dubbing himself, is at the top of his game here, and KEOMA also benefits from the unusual casting of career badass Woody Strode as the disgraced and bullied town drunk who was once an idol to a young Keoma and sees the battle against Caldwell as his one shot at redemption. If there's one thing that's prevented KEOMA from becoming a legit spaghetti western classic and made it a target of ridicule, it's the absolutely terrible score by the usually-reliable Guido & Maurizio De Angelis, filled with badly-croaked songs that function as a Greek chorus warbled by singers for whom English is a second language. Sure, most of these films have goofy scores and silly songs, but the tunes in KEOMA are exceptionally godawful. Aside from that, KEOMA is top-notch.
MANNAJA aka A MAN CALLED BLADE (Italy - 1977)
Directed by Sergio Martino. Written by Sauro Scavolini, Sergio Martino. Cast: Maurizio Merli, John Steiner, Philippe Leroy, Martine Brochard, Sonya Jeannine, Donald O'Brien, Salvatore Puntillo, Rick Battaglia, Nino Casale, Enzo Fiermonte, Nello Pazzafini. (Unrated, 96 mins)
Maurizio Merli began his career in Italian genre fare as a second-string Franco Nero but briefly became a superstar in the mid-1970s with a string of extremely violent police thrillers like Umberto Lenzi's incredible ROME ARMED TO THE TEETH aka THE TOUGH ONES (1976). Usually playing a hard-nosed cop with anger management issues and a tendency to play by his own rules, Merli's Harry Callahan-like characters (he played different cops with names like Tanzi, Berni, and Betti, but they were all basically "Maurizio Merli") made him a sort-of Italian Clint Eastwood, but as the polizia films went out of style by the early 1980s, so did Merli. He drifted into Italian TV gigs and had a supporting role in the 1981 British drama PRIEST OF LOVE with Ian McKellen, but he never broke into American movies and never got to have his big Tarantino comeback: Merli was only 49 when he died in 1989 from a sudden, massive heart attack while playing tennis.
Merli's day in the sun was relatively brief, but he's become a beloved cult figure with fans of 1970s Italian cop thrillers. It's possible that the only reason MANNAJA got made was because Merli wanted to make a western and became a star after the genre faded away. MANNAJA was pretty much last call for the spaghetti western cycle. It's the last noteworthy one (though Fulci managed to sneak in SILVER SADDLE in 1978), and by this time, even the comedic TRINITY knockoffs had ceased being made and Italian genre fare was moving in a different direction, namely ripoffs of blockbuster American movies. MANNAJA was directed by Sergio Martino (1973's TORSO), who had one spaghetti western to his credit (1970's ARIZONA COLT RETURNS), but was known mainly for his early 1970s giallo collaborations with the stunning Edwige Fenech. Martino, like Fulci and Castellari, pinballed around the Italian B-movie scene for years but found his niche relatively early, and when gialli became passe, he tried his hand a bit of everything: cop thrillers (1975's SUSPECTED DEATH OF A MINOR), sex comedies (1976's SEX WITH A SMILE), cannibal horror (1978's MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD), and post-nuke (1983's 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK), and almost everything in between. MANNAJA is stylistically interesting for its excessively foggy look, and Martino shoots some scenes as if he were making a horror movie (also helping this is a recurrent pulsating electronic music cue that sounds like it belongs in a zombie flick). It's a pretty standard western overall, but there are interesting touches throughout that make it a unique entry in the field.
Blade!
Blade (Merli) is a tomahawk-hurling, fur-coat-wearing bounty hunter who arrives in Suttonville to claim the reward for the wanted Burt Craven (Donald O'Brien, a fixture in these last spaghettis). Blade lets Craven go when he finds out that Suttonville has no marshal and the only law is McGowan (Philippe Leroy), a puritanical, religious fanatic mining magnate who rules the town and whose irresponsible business practices have created a smoggy, foggy pollution and a sick but practically enslaved work force (a "job creator," if you will). Blade irritates McGowan's top strongarm Voller (an expectedly hammy John Steiner) by jockeying for his job, but Blade has an ulterior motive: McGowan ran Blade's father off their land in the process of building his empire, and inadvertantly caused Blade Sr's death. Sick of taking orders from McGowan, Voller kidnaps his boss' daughter Deborah (Sonya Jeannine), setting off a chain of events that will, of course, lead to Maurizio Merli kicking all sorts of ass.
John Steiner as Voller
Merli tones down his rageaholic act a tad for MANNAJA, but he's still a solid hero and it's a shame his career didn't last longer. Martino achieves a nicely foreboding look to the film with all the fog and mud, and the way Blade emerges from the fog for his showdown with Voller is a great shot. Other than that, there's not much about MANNAJA that's very innovative, but it's an enjoyable actioner and a worthy eulogy for the genre, even if it gives us another batch of ill-advised Greek chorus songs from Guido & Maurizio De Angelis illustrating obvious plot points, this time with the croaking singer from the KEOMA soundtrack trading verses with a guy who's trying way too hard to sound like David Bowie.
