Seven classics (well...) by Italian director Lucio Fulci (1927-1996).


Seven Notes In Black
Italy 1977.
Cast: Jennifer O'Neil, Marc Porel, Gabriele Ferzetti, Jenny Tamburi
Aka: The Psychic, Sette Note In Nero

Contrary to what many non-fans believe, Lucio Fulci was a full-fledged genre filmmaker long before he made movies about dead guys standing up and walk. Seven Notes in Black is proof of his early capability as good as any, although perhaps not up to par with the even earlier Don't Torture a Duckling. It was also the first movie in which Fulci worked with what would become his very own creative team in the following years to come, like writer Dardano Sacchetti, musical composer Fabio Frizzi and cinematographer Sergio Salvati.

A young girl has a vision of her mother taking her own life by jumping off a cliff, smashing her face against the rocks on her way down. Many moons later the girl is now grown up, played by Jennifer O'Neil (looking good in hat) and plagued by strange visions of something terrible going on in the house she and her husband have just moved into. Is she going crazy? What exactly is a skeleton of a woman doing hidden behind a wall in the living room? Perhaps the handsome shrink played by Marc Porel can straighten things out. Eventually it turns out that the visions are actually premonitions of her own approaching death. Rightly so, her husband is planning to have her off, killing her by burying her alive behind a wall in their house.

Beautifully shot by Sergio Salvati, Seven Notes In Black is a fairly restrained and straightforward little thriller. Tame by later Fulci standards even, not very much gore, except for the smashed face at the beginning (and that isn't very convincing either). It may also be a little short in zombie attacks, but that's okey. Instead the film rely heavily upon Fulci's characteristic atmosphere and suspence, keeping you glued to the screen from beginning to end, all indicating the direction Fulci and his friends were about to take very soon with the addition of graphic special effects. It's highly recommended for Fulci fans who've grown tired of his post-zombie movies and need a another fix.

As of the cast, for those who keep track, extraordinary leading lady Jennifer O'Neil was in Howard Hawks' Rio Lobo but became famous for Scanners ten years later. Elizabeth Turner from Cannibal Apocalypse plays the mother jumping the cliff. Jenny Tamburi made a couple of cheapos for Joe D'Amato (Peep Show) and Alfonso Brescia (Bloody Avenger) while Marc Porel ended up in Sensual Murder.

Luca (Fabio Testi) and his brother Mickey (Giulio Fanese) are smuggling cigarettes into Naples. Trouble comes knocking when big bad mobster Frenchman Jacois (Marcel Bozzuffi) want to use their route and their network for harder drugs and has Mickey killed in slo-mo. Luca is not interested in doing any such dirty business however, and before you can say The Godfather all of Naples' mafia leaders are also killed one after another. But Luca is a hard nut, he wants revenge for his brother, and eventually it all ends with everyone gather in a blind alley and starts shooting at each other.

Make-up wizard Franco Di Girolamo must have worked overtime here, as The Naples Conncetion is almost as bloody violent as Zombi 2, only when a guy is killed here he definitely don't stand up a walk again. People are blown-up in their appartments, heads are exploding, skulls are crashed, people are sodomized and a young girl have her face blow-torched in grossing detail, all dragged-out and framed for maximum sadism by a frenzied Fulci in peak-form. Production wise the film is very uneven, though. There's some very classy shots and frames by Fulci regular Sergio Salvati, but there's also some very horrible zooming and editing, especially the soundtrack is messily put together even though the score by Fabio Frizzi is okey, all suggesting that the film was done very quickly and shipped out fast. It's helped a lot, though, by a good story and good actors. Pretty boy Fabio Testi is clearly the brightest shining star here, but Marcel Bozzuffi is wicked also as the Frenchman. Bozzuffi, of course, played the French assassin so memorable in The French Connection (a role here occupied by Romano Puppo) and he meets a similar fate here as well, shot down in cold blood with his arms in the air. A tribute to a classic movie scene or an unashamed theft, it doesn't matter. Because while Lucio Fulci may not be William Friedkin, he hits just as hard in the stomach.

It's difficult to decide what to make of this latter day Fulci effort. Is it meant to be taken seriously as a horror movie? Maybe. Or is it meant to be a black comedy? Because it's certainly very funny in places. Or is it just another typical misogynistic expresssion? Well, let's just say that women doesn't fare well. It's extremely violent towards women (and bums) and everything is ugly or deformed as if that was the whole point. Touch of Death is definitely not easily digested, but not half as bad as it could have been either. It works, if seen as a comedy. If expecting a return to glory for director Fulci it most surely comes across as utter crap.

About seven minutes into the film I fell asleep. That isn't anything to go by, though, Demonia isn't all that bad. Meg Register (Boxing Helena) is okey in the lead, if not great. The part was, according to Fulci legend, originally written for Katherine McColl, but Meg Register is passable I guess. And Al Cliver (billed as "Al Clever", someone must have had fun) is back on ship as well. Director Fulci himself does a surprisingly big role as a police inspector.

Much has been said about the weird and inconsistant cinematography by Luigi Ciccarese (a Bruno Mattei regular), even Fulci himself has claimed that it ruined the film. I really want to say that it's exaggerated, because there's much about the film I really like, but the photography here is admitedly peculiar. Sometimes it's gorgeous, sometimes it looks like apeshit. It's as if someone couldn't decide upon which lens to use, or which filter, so he grabbed whatever he had at hand. Particularly the outdoor scenes are often strangely foggy and oddly lit, while most indoor scenes works okey at least, if only because Fulci proves to have lost very little of his ability to shoot great suspence and create his trademark atmosphere.

Moving on, the story doesn't make much or any sense, but who can honestly say they fully understood such muddled affairs like City of the Living Dead? It's the splatter that matter. Among the gory highlights here is a scene near the end where a man is ripped apart lenghtwise in graphic detail. In a world of DVD it maybe doesn't look too convincing in replay (on a washed-out third-generation VHS-tape it looked awesome), but the intention is honorable. Further on a woman has her both eyes torned out slowly by her cats and, grossest of all, a man has his tongue nailed to a table.

Despite its shortcomings I enjoyed Demonia the first time I saw it and I enjoyed it the second time. Fulci keeps the tension tight throughout, making it a fair last shot at classic eye-poking horror for the old maestro. It definitely stand out compared to some of the other turds the director dumped upon us during his last decade. But please don't expect it to be The Beyond, because it isn't and nothing's ever gonna be again.

Nightmare Concert
Italy 1990.
Cast: Lucio Fulci, Joffrey Kennedy, Veronica Zinny, Brett Halsey
Aka: Un Gatto nel Cervello, A Cat In the Brain

"A woman hacked to death... or drown in boiling water... buried alive... tortured... stabbed... sawn in two... cruzified..." Lucio Fulcio sits at his desk writing his latest masterpiece while the camera lens is zooming in on his balding head.

The first time I saw Nightmare Concert (on a washed-out 5th generation copy) I couldn't believe my fucking eyes. Old Lucio really swing the chainsaw in this sucker of a movie, assaulting his viewers with a vengeance, making up for all those toothless movies he forced upon us in his last years. Almost every single scene is filled with someone being killed in extreme detail. Of course we then learned that the film consists of choice bits from other people's movies with such nice titles as Bloody Psycho and Massacre, mixed with the best parts from his own work of recent years (Touch of Death, The Ghosts of Sodom etc).

Plotwise the film is part autobiography, part therapy session, full-time sex and violence. Fulci plays himself, a director on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Haunted by visions and nightmares he seek up a funny psychiatrist (Kennedy). The psychiatrist then in turn take advantage of Fulci's state of mind to commit some horrible murders, making Fulci believe that he may have done them.

It is a bit unclear exactly why Fulci made this film. One gets the feeling there is some kind of statement being made here, or at least a point, that horror directors are bound to be affected by their work. If the director is plagued by nightmares and has demons on his mind he must let it out on film, so the film becomes a reflection of its director and vice versa. Eh... well, okey, Mr. Fulci. Whatever you say. Probably true to some degree and in some cases. But to me Nightmare Concert feels more like a cynical give-in to the audience's demands for more gore and splatter, rather than some kind of personal cinematic exorcism. It also feels more empty and more pointless than many other Fulci efforts because of it. The non-stop violence quickly become tedious and effectively erases any substance there may be. Fulci look weak, tired and bitter when he wanders around without direction, imagining one pathetic thing after another. And the scene, although borrowed from Mario Bianchi's The Murder Secret, when Fulci in his delirious state of mind sneaks up upon Jessica Moore in shower and stabbs her like the maniac he is a little too explicit and gloating and set in this context it almost feels like some kind of personal expression reminiscent of some of the more misogynistic parts of New York Ripper. Fulci is definitely in bad need of a shrink here.

That said, Nightmare Concert isn't without merit. There are some intriguing and ironic twists here and there, especially when Fulci goes berserk because he is filmed by a crew doing a documentary about him. Suddenly it is he who is followed by a gloating camera. And when the female journalist then is brutally killed by Fulci in one of his fantasies she says that she loves to be butchered by such a famous horror director. The film would definitely have benefitted from more of such black humour. Or at least from a more distinct use of it. Ultimately though, Nightmare Concert's biggest merit is, in my eyes, that one gets to see a bit behind the scenes of Fulci World, with some of his trusty co-workers playing themselves. And if you're a fan and hasn't seen the film you do have missed something. Not something good, but something special at least.

After surviving a car accident John Savage is on his way home but is instead he is beginning to have strange encounters with a funeral hearse and an unknown beautiful woman (Sandi Schultz) appearing out of nowhere but who seem to know him. He drives around a bit but gets lost in the country and has several near-fatal incidents. He is almost shot by a hunter in the forest, he almost drives off a broken bridge and he is almost steered off the road by the funeral car that seem to follow him. As if this wasn't delirious enough, the coffin in the funeral car seem to have his name on it. By now Savage is completely lost and out of his mind. What does all this mean exactly? Why is his name on the damn coffin?

Door To Silence isn't as bad as its reputation has it to be. It's just that it doesn't look like an Italian film at all. It plays like any ordinary American lowbudget chiller, which is a compliment I think. The story, essentially told in real time, is nothing special, though. It's just a guy who's dead but doesn't know it yet. Sort of like a Twilight Zone episode, only about an hour too long. John Savage mostly drives around in his car looking confused but is getting absolutely nowhere. It's a tired performance by a tired actor, but somehow it adds to the deliriously dull tone of the rest of the film (and if you're watching it with an Italian soundtrack it gets even more delirious), made complete by a bizarre jazz score by Franco Piana. It's all competently done, but it could have been done by anyone. And of course, it isn't any Lucio Fulci movie like we want Fulci movies to be. There are no excessive gore effects, no zombies (if you don't count the sleepwalking Savage) and not much atmosphere to speak of. I still hold Voices From Beyond as the last "real" Fulci flick (although that one was still pretty foggy as well). Door To Silence is mostly for completists only.


© The Inzomniac's Movie Madness Review.