Demonia (1990)

Demonia is about as confusing and esoteric as anything Fulci's done, with the possible exception of Manhattan Baby. Any real narrative coherence is localized in the dull characters; but it is essentially a series of odd happenings that aren't odd enough to be interesting.

At the heart of the story is Liza (played by the very beautiful Meg Register). She's an archaeology student who goes to seances to gain knowledge the easy way: directly from the inhabitants of the past. Before going to a dig in Sicily she has a seance that affects her in profound ways. Although she's supposed to be investigating an Ancient Greek settlement, she now finds herself supernaturally drawn to an old Catholic monastery where a group of nuns had been crucified. The more interest she shows in this monastery, the more the surly Sicilian townsfolk become hostile. And then strange deaths begin to occur.

Demonia is Fulci's approach to the Battle of the Sexes. The head of the dig, Paul, keeps ordering Liza to forget the monastery and she keeps disobeying. The Sicilian townsfolk are all men, with one exception; they are all obsessed with keeping the secret of what happened in that monastery, except, of course, the one woman, who reveals all. The nuns, as it turns out, had turned to Satan. At least, that's what this woman says; inside the convent, 'Azathoth' is seen carved into a doorway, giving the story some Lovecraftian tones. The nuns have been conducting orgies and then murdering the men. So a group of men murder the nuns. Now a woman has brought back the spirit of the nuns, or the prioress anyway, and men are being murdered again--and the woman who blabbed. One murder is particularly shocking, involving a boy forced to witness his father torn in half like a wishbone. So it's really all about these tensions between men and women; not that it matters much.

The film's problems begin with the dull characters. All these events are happening, but the characters aren't very interesting, so who cares? The mystery of the convent is spelled out in the opening scene, so the story doesn't draw one in. The supernatural goings-on are themselves not particularly inspired, either, so there's not even the setpieces to recommend. The nunsploitation angle is covered in one flashback to nun-humping action. The few gore scenes are well-done, however, and the sets/locations are very nicely photographed, with some atmosphere, though not much.

Demonia, in my view, is Fulci's weakest film. It is a failure, albeit an interesting failure for those who like Fulci's nearly-plotless late works as I do. To sum up: the story just isn't good enough, the setting has a bland feel, Fulci's inspiration stylistically and visually is lacking, and the setpieces aren't very creative.

Bonus points:
Ghost boobies
Warning: cat puppets may result in injury to the eyes
Tongue-stab
Worst Irish accent ever

Manhattan Baby (1982)

Manhattan Baby is Fulci's greatest instance of obfuscation. Beyond The Beyond, House by the Cemetery, or Sodoma's Ghosts, Fulci has placed aside coherent narrative altogether in favour of a hermetic world of occult connections expressed in visual, poetic linkages. It is a film that is analogical rather than logical.

What there is if a plot is best made out thus. An archaeologist, his magazine photographer wife and daughter are all out exploring some Egyptian ruins. The area being investigated is a temple older than the known Egyptian religion, when a cult dedicated to an evil and now forgotten god of darkness and destruction flourished. Opening this temple was a bad move, because the powers within infect the family by giving the daughter a strange amulet. They head back to their apartment in Manhattan, where strange phenomena begin surrounding the daughter.

Equal parts The Tenant and Poltergeist, Manhattan Baby thrives on the sheer lack of logic in the face of mystical powers. People disappear and reappear, scorpions and asps come out of nowhere, lasers shoot from thin air. In the midst of all these events, a finely woven tapestry of symbols reveals itself, particularly in eyes. Originally titled The Evil Eye (Il Malocchio), the film is full of close-ups of eyes, the archaeologist is blinded by lasers, the ghostly old Egyptian woman has totally white eyes, the amulet is shaped like an eye, and the symbol of the cult is an eye. Pits, sockets, and camera lenses expand the symbol. Images of scorpions and snakes, doorways and confined passageways, amongst others add to the visual motifs.

One influence Fulci pays homage to is Polanski, naming one of his characters after the villain of Rosemary's Baby: Adrian Marcato. It can be seen as an extension of Polanski's apartment horror, somewhere between Rosemary's Baby and Poltergeist III. The Egyptian motif brings to mind The Tenant and The Exorcist. And it can be enjoyed in the spirit of these films, as a perplexing and occult work, eschewing narrative coherence. However, as the imdb rating indicates, it is perhaps too obfuscating for some to enjoy at all. I thought it was an excellent and visually complex film, far exceeding its sister film Demonia (also about the dangers of archaeology, of the living disturbing the evil and dead). Manhattan Baby probably yields more on re-watching, although there probably isn't much intellectually, beneath the visually thoughtful surface. It's also fairly entertaining, if you can let go and enjoy the ride.

Bonus points:
"Bob" returns with a decent dub
Egyptians had lasers
Stuffed bird attack

The Sweet House of Horrors (1989)

The films of Fulci's late career are generally considered to be hit-and-miss-and-miss-and-miss. I've tended to like his later works, finding them more indulgent of his intuitive and experimental approach. It's easy to neglect that Fulci studied film theory and knows his avant-garde cinema and theory very well. While Fulci is stylistically on form here with lots of great ideas, I'm afraid The Sweet House of Horrors is a miss for one wretched reason: CHILDREN.

A couple, in their palatial country house, are murdered when they surprise a burglar. The murdered woman's sister and her husband become guardians of the children and move into the house. When they decide to sell the house to get money for the children's future and because the house appears to be haunted. The ghosts of the murdered don't take kindly to the notion of being separated from their children and begin some pretty tame mischief.

The gore that was absent from Ghosts of Sodom is back in full force. The couple at the beginning are murdered in the most brutal fashion, with Fulci's trademark ocular damage. A gardener is later run over by a vehicle that leaves his chest split open like a melon, gushing blood. However, the creepy, nightmarish style of Ghosts of Sodom and the hell gate trilogy is abandoned for a plot that makes more sense.

There are some interesting setpieces involving a bizarre, black-cloaked German medium, the killing of the gardener, and the opening murder. These moments show Fulci stylistically in great form; his visual ideas are always a pleasure.

However, the major problem with the film is the children. The children are, of course, in cahoots with their ghostly parents. They're snotty little brats to begin with, calling adults stupid and generally being wretched know-it-alls. Once they have supernatural forces on their side, they become insufferable. These are children who need a good beating. Even when they're crying over their parents' death, they're blowing bubbles with their bubble-gum. Maybe Fulci intended them to be despicable, for them to be the sort of villains of the picture; in which case he succeeded all too well. They're so vile they defile the film itself.

It's worth watching to see the great Fulci at work with some interesting ideas. It is, formally, a good film. But the story leaves quite a bit to be desired, and not just abundant child-beating. It's missing a certain horrific core. This is more like an Italian Beetlejuice without Beetlejuice.

Bonus points:
Phony wax hand effect
Gratuitous abuse of the disabled
Flashbacks to gore scenes of only minutes earlier
Talking, animatronic duck
Dubbing children with adult voices

Sodoma's Ghosts (1988)

Come the '80s, Fulci wasn't too keen on logic, internal or otherwise. Or at least, if there is internal logic, it's much more internal than anyone is likely to get; a logic that exists only in Fulci's brain, now eaten by zombies in an Italian graveyard. Sodoma's Ghosts belongs alongside House by the Cemetery, The Beyond, and City of the Living Dead for generally working on a level beyond, or beneath, logic; it has the same sort of arbitrariness to the events.

Six college students go driving through the French countryside. The driver, goofing off, takes a shortcut, which lands them at some abandoned, but strangely well-kept mansion in the woods, where, we saw in an introductory sequence, some decadence Nazis having a party with some whores were bombed into oblivion. They stay the night, as it's getting dark, enjoying the vintage wines, food, and old records; then they try to depart the next morning, but find they can't leave. The house doors seize shut, the windows won't break, and they begin experiencing hallucinations and feelings of aggression. The plot is more or less a clothesline on which to hang strange imagery (a decaying body erupting with black sludge) and suspenseful setpieces (a protracted Russian roulette game).

I'm not sure why Sodoma's Ghosts is so loathed. It's just like Fulci's hell gate trilogy, except without the gore. The various tensions and relations amongst the characters, their weaknesses and their desires, are exploited by the ghosts, leading up to the climactic moment returning to the bomb. What happens then I won't spoil for you, but it leaves a lot of questions in one's mind, much like the end of The House by the Cemetery.

There are even some moments of brilliance, such as when a Nazi lines up a shot and hits a pool ball at a woman's vulva, the house is bombed at the very moment the ball would be hitting the 'pocket.' The second explosion is also keyed to a moment of entry. This is what I mean about Fulci working at a level different than narrative logic.

Overall, I think this is quite a good instance of Fulci's later career and the unusual, intuitive approach he took to storytelling. It feels like he got his hands on the script for a French arthouse film and did some rewriting to make it a Fulci film. It won't please the gorehounds and the end will love some dissatisfied, but it's still a provocative supernatural horror.

Bonus points:
Gratuitous Wagner
Lesbian seduction using flowers
Nazi orgy
Some beautiful girls, especially Teresa Razzauti
Breasts caving in

The Psychic (1977)

Wow! The Psychic is where Fulci shows he can be a truly good director. Not an odd but brilliant director with niche appeal to people like us, but a really good director. The Psychic is the most competent Fulci film I've ever seen. The sometimes goofy zooms are here put to perfectly reasonable narrative use, the close-ups on eyes are meaningful, the music--which I usually loathe in Fulci films--is pitch perfect, enhancing the mood but never telling the viewer what to feel. This is Fulci's Deep Red.

If you've never read anything about this film, I must ask you not to read anything other than my review, because most plot summaries and reviews give away a major shocking plot point. Here's a spoiler free look at the plot: a woman who has had premonitions about deaths in her childhood suddenly gets a jarringly vivid vision of a murder in her adulthood. Coincidental events begin corresponding to her vision until she discovers a body. When her husband is held for the murder, she and a parapsychologist friend work together to solve the murder her vision lead her to discover in the first place.

The pace with which the film moves is downright masterful, slowly meting out the information to you as your heroine delves deeper and deeper. She is plucky, likable, and sympathetic, like David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi from Deep Red combined. The mood never falters for a moment. The moments of suspense left me nearly breathless.

The Psychic is an almost archetypal example of giallo filmmaking: there's a blackgloved killer and a fantastically complicated plot. What is odd, however, is the very few murders. There is really only one murder in the film's present and it occurs off-screen. I've never seen Fulci at this level of restraint, but it seems to have worked: he's channeled his energy into mood with great success.

Simply one of the best gialli I've ever seen.