What it's about, is a priest hangs himself and then a woman pukes her intestines and someone gets their head drilled and then a load of maggots fly in through a window and cover everybody. That would appear to be the gist of it.
What's important, though, is the truly claustrophobic sense of impending doom Fulci nails with the first shot, and carries on to the spectacularly downbeat conclusion. Some of those Post-modern Structuralists should really take note of this fella. Every scene is like some horrendous medieval painting come to life, with little or no bearing on the stuff what went on ten minutes before or after.
It's a masterpiece, is what it is. Like a Goddard flick, if Goddard had been less concerned with guns and smoking, and more with, y'know, guts and stuff.
But then the big twist, because he followed it up with another damn masterpiece, by the name of The Beyond (E tu vivrai nel terrore - L'aldila), made in 1981.
What The Beyond concerns itself with is the seven doors of Hell, one of which appears to be in a disused hotel in Louisiana. The film begins with a sepia-toned prologue, showing how a warlock, then residing at said guesthouse, was nailed to a wall and had a load of acid thrown on his face.
Those damn fundamentalists.
Anyhow, what follows is a load of meaningless nonsense which manages to be incredibly captivating and uniquely eerie. Nothing makes very much sense or relates very much to anything else. For example, at one point we are treated to a bloke falling off a ladder in a library and then having his faced picked off and eaten by tarantulas. What the library or the bloke has to do with anything is debatable, and where the spiders came from is up in the air as far as any logic of any sort is concerned.
Best not to worry about that, though, and instead let the whole thing wash over you like some bizarre, grotesque shroud. Extra points for having Hell appear, not as some flame drenched oven, but rather as a cracked-ice, frozen sea of the damned. Damned, incidentally, who were played by local winos, and were treated to top-ups of the old sauce in between set-ups.
Fulci has a number of obsessions when it comes to the old film-making, and several of them pop up over and over in the films discussed herein. Like eyes, for example. Fulci likes nothing better than a big old fork or knife or pen being shoved into the old eyeballs. Maybe it's all on account of the voyeuristic nature of these shenanigans, how we're looking on as people are torn and hacked and generally mishandled, how the camera distances us from it all, and so by destroying the lens, i.e, the eye, he's dragging us all kicking and screaming through that hypothetical fourth wall.
Article comments
1 - Trioptre
Great post except that _Hurt_ was by Nine Inch Nails, not Manson.
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Damn, man, The Duke always screws up. Sorry Nine Inch Nails. Sorry Marilyn Manson.
I hope i don't push Marilyn Manson over the edge with such bad research, i wouldnt want him to get that damn family of his on the road again.
Stay in jail, Marilyn Manson, you big old maniacal motherfucker.
Thanks Trioptre. You got a favourite Fulci you wanna throw into the old arena de critique?
I'm off to listen to Stacy's Mom by Ben Folds Five. What a great tune. Good for you, Ben Folds x5.
3 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Sorry, really the Hurt thing was a wee joke. I know it was old Trent and co. And ben folds five dont do stacys mom either, at least thats what they tell Stacy, but i dunno man, what the hell are they doing in her house through the day? stacys at school, man, what the hell you up to?
4 - Nick Jones
While I've only seen two of Fulci's films (the other being "New York Ripper"), I have fond memories of the first time I saw The Gates of Hell, AKA The City of the Living Dead. I caught it on HBO, '80 or '81 (on Christmas Eve, no less! Why are there no such genius programmers anymore?), and while I considered myself unfazeable up til then, I have to admit that I was horrified and revolted (in a delighted way, of course) by the Gut Puke Scene (see link below):
http://www.retrocrush.com/scary/73.html
To this day, I can either WATCH the scene, or LISTEN to the scene, but have difficulty doing BOTH without my gag reflex kicking in. I think it's the sound of the woman CHOKING on her own guts as she spews them into her lap that does it for me. Yum.
5 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Nick! Ha! I can't believe you put a link to the gut-puking. Good for you.
Ah, the old gut puking motif. How it would have improved The Phantom Menace. I haven't saw The New York Ripper myself. I think it was one the fulci flicks best described as Take The Money And Run, from what i've read on it. Is it really as offensively misogynist as some say? Incidentally, thats one of the things that distinguishes these flicks mentioned here from most other of their ilk. They are indiscriminate in their slaughter.
6 - Nick Jones
It's probably been nearly twenty years since I've seen NYR, and I didn't find it all that memorable. But one scene I did find unforgettable: while The Ripper holds down one of his victims, hand over her face, he brings a straight razor to her eye and cuts it. Now of course it was a mechanical effect, but Fulci upped the squeamishness quotient by having the eye dart back and forth in terrified panic as the razor comes toward it instead of just staring at it, as a less imaginative director might have done. Classic.
By the way, have you ever figured out a meaning for the end of "Paura nella citta..."? I mean, I'm guessing it's a "Whoops! Not in time!" moment, but I've never figured out WHY it is.
The rest of the list where I got the link from is worth checking out, too.
My personal favorite horror film? "Black Christmas."
7 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Nick, that sounds like an unpleasant slab of filmic mayhem right there. Also, it wouldn't be Fulci if he didn't get all hyperactive with the eye slashing. Like Un Chien Andalou, except with more innards. I havent saw Black Christmas as of yet, but must do shortly, and really, i have no excuse now that it's out on the old DVD. John Carpenter says its a tres big influence on Halloween. As to the end of City..., who the hell knows. It adds to its wonder by its very unfathomability.
8 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
Nick, just had a look at the list. Who woulda thunk it! Theres Un Chien Andalou at no.6 just seconds after i mentioned it. Coincidences, man. Gotta love em.
9 - Nick Jones
"Black Christmas" is a bit slow (as some have said) for today's post-MTV audience, even for me now, though I still think it's one of the more intelligent slasher films, and one of the first. And you can't go wrong with Margot Kidder, in her prime, as a sorority slut (who gets to do a great oral sex joke).
There is, of course, a website.
http://www.itsmebilly.com/
Although I'm not a connoisseur of giallo, the unfathomable endings of Italian horror films (as well as others) is something I appreciate; eg. "Cemetary Man."
10 - Antonella Fulci
You're definitely a genius. Thank you.