Lucio Fulci

[Mr Sausage]

Contraband (1980)

Another Frankenstein of a film, a patchwork of various crime, mob, and police movies, put together without verve, excitement, or basic coherence. Procedure and action, the linchpins of a good crime thriller, are not among Fulci's strengths. Gruesome violence is more his speed, and this film is filled with absurd scenes of gore and splatter. A smuggler whose brother is killed because of labyrinthine criminal workings goes on a half-hearted revenge mission. For every chase or torture scene, there's one of someone just hanging out watching tv or laying in bed staring at the wall. That's the film, fits and starts, with a streak of cruelty the only constant. The only surprise is that the strong anti-drug message is pushed not by the police, as you'd expect, but the criminals themselves. The upright, moral Italian smuggler against the degenerate French with their drugs and violence. Wikipedia indicates the film was mainly financed by Italian smugglers, so that explains the comical propaganda and nationalist sentiment.

[dwk]

Grindhouse announced they are releasing The Beyond on UHD and Cauldron Films announced they are releasing City of the Living Dead on UHD.

Cauldron also has a listing for a future release of House of Clocks

[Glowingwabbit]

Grindhouse announced they are releasing The Beyond on UHD and Cauldron Films announced they are releasing City of the Living Dead on UHD.

Cauldron also has a listing for a future release of House of Clocks

This was definitely the best news of the day.

[black&huge]

House of Clocks! But really I love that one. Today's triple Fulci annuncements between grindhouse and cauldron is huge to me.

[therewillbeblus]

I’ll join the chorus who finds A Lizard in a Woman's Skin to be easily Fulci’s best. It’s so shamelessly overplotted and aesthetically sensationalized, and moreover somehow manages to sustain interest for far longer than it has any right to. I loved the twist, which cheekily maximizes the potential of artistic tampering, sticking a big fat divider between the viewer and the narrative entry point we thought we could trust the basics of to baldly declare that the phantasmagoria was for us and us alone. What could be a snide taunt of ‘gotcha’ manipulation is revealed as a present: the characters don’t matter, never mattered, nor did their motives or sexual kinks or psychological depth or defenses shielding them from it, whatever they may be. The denouement asks, ‘Who Cares?’ while reducing the purpose of its labyrinthine narrative to a simple rollercoaster ride of entertainment. But Fulci executes it with enough care and ambition in that lucid domain to earn the ethos that commitment to style matters in a vacuum; that it’s okay for an audience to indulge in surface level pleasures divorced from any payoff in mystery- though it takes a punchline of anti-mystery to allow this kind of generous reflection to occur. (Obviously we were basking in the artistic nature of the picture all along, but I found that implicit tap on the shoulder validating on a deeper layer of engagement, ironically by assuring us that not going deep is quite alright)

[knives]

Funny you bring this up. For the week I’m hoping to watch a few Fulci’s and was struck surprised in my research that this seems to be his first horror film, over twenty years into his career! Quite the latecomer, huh.

[Maltic]

Like Terence Fisher himself

[therewillbeblus]

Funny you bring this up. For the week I’m hoping to watch a few Fulci’s and was struck surprised in my research that this seems to be his first horror film, over twenty years into his career!

I just watched this and the earlier Perversion Story in close succession, and while A Lizard in a Woman's Skin certainly leans into strange psychedelic imagery in contrast to Perversion Story's straightforward mystery, they both follow giallo models pretty similarly. I can understand why one would be classified as a horror since we actually get assaulted with unpredictably disorienting and occasionally violent stimuli, whereas the other film elides any information of what violence may or may not have occurred, but the jump isn't that drastic in terms of basic ideas. It feels like Fulci was gradually building to this direction all along and eventually just said Fuck It, I'm Tired of Restraining Myself. And then he realized he could realise his eye-gouging fetish without hindrance, and the rest was history

[knives]

I didn’t know that. I had assumed it was more in line with the all italia comedies he had largely been doing up to that point.

[therewillbeblus]

Well, I'll concede that I'm using a very small sample size here, and under the banner of Mondo Macabro's label to boot, so not exactly unlatched parameters for what he was doing around this time!

I know that I've seen more Fulci than I have logged on LB, but that was a while back, before I was active on this forum and way before I was on LB. Still, the only other of his I can actually recommend is Conquest, which is a batshit-crazy departure from him (but makes a lot more sense in terms of his visual potential having just seen A Lizard in a Woman's Skin). Grand Wazoo recommended it when it was like $5 on KL's site during some sale last year. I didn't love it, but it's wild and I'm glad I own it. Personally, I'm completely bewildered at the love Don’t Torture a Duckling gets, but clearly many see something I don't in that one

[dwk]

Since you guys have brought up A Lizard in a Woman's Skin, Jared from Mondo Macabro mentioned that they are losing the rights soon (they are reverting to StudioCanal) and they don't know if they will be able to renew them.

[Mr Sausage]

Personally, I'm completely bewildered at the love Don’t Torture a Duckling gets, but clearly many see something I don't in that one

You’re not alone. I’ve long been mystified by the high regard Fulci fans hold it in. People hold it up as this daring, anti-clerical, surgical dissection of small town Italy in all its prejudices and parochialism, a deeply personal work showing the extent of Fulci’s artistic maturity…and then you watch it, and all that stuff is barely in there and mostly taken for granted. There are long scenes of people being whipped to death with chains and the heroine parading her naked body to a pre-teen for no reason. But actual social content is passed right over. What’s there is only what’s latent in the basic plot ideas: that a priest is being wicked and that this happens in a small town. You’d never guess Fulci was from a small town, its portrayal is so anonymous. This is just an ok giallo. Nothing more.

Lizard in a Woman’s Skin is top 5 giallo, tho’.

[dwk]

Severin has been slowly announcing new titles for their summer sale and they just announced The Psychic UHD.

[Orlac]

https://web.archive.org/web/20111224120 ... flesh.html

I really miss the old DVD Times reviews. Some excellent contributors.

[dwk]

Cauldron Films' The House of Doom box set, featuring two Fulci television movies (The House of Clocks & The Sweet House of Horrors) and two Lenzi television movies (The House of Lost Souls & The House of Witchcraft) is available to pre-order