1980, Color, 93 mins. Directed by Lucio Fulci Starring Christopher George, Katriona MacColl, Janet Agren, Carlo de Mejo, Antonella Interlinghi, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, Daniala Doria Blue Underground (Blu-Ray & DVD) (US R0 HD/NTSC) / WS (1.85:1) / DTS7.1/DD5.1, NoShame (Italy R0 PAL) / WS (1.85:1) (16:9) / DD5.1
Following the wild success of Zombie, outrageous Italian horror director Lucio Fulci next splattered blood on the drive-in screens of America with this gothic feast of zombies and the supernatural, known to most of its first VHS-reared fans under the catchier title of The Gates of Hell. Though a few minutes of transition dialogue were trimmed, the film's splashy thrills remained intact and earned it a heavy fan base at the dawn of home video, particularly the most famous scene in which a village idiot (oft-abused Giovanni Lombardo Radice, a.k.a. Make Them Die Slowly's John Morghen) has a nasty encounter with an electric drill (a sequence which raised the hackles of British censors and landed the film in trouble around the world).
In New York, psychic Mary Woodhouse (MacColl) goes into a catatonic trance and apparently dies while experiencing a vision of Father Thomas, the local parish priest in a small town called Dunwich, hanging himself in the local cemetery. Soon Dunwich is plagued by worm-infested bodies, bleeding walls punctured by glass, and the aforementioned priest who now has the ability to cause people to expel their digestive tracts through their mouths. An aggressive reporter (George) narrowly rescues Mary as she's almost buried alive, and together they drive to Dunwich to stop what promises to be an evil, extremely squishy apocalypse on All Saint's Day.
From the late 1970s to 1982, Fulci transitioned from a string of stellar thrillers to a landmark quartet of zombie-centric horror films, all featuring the same stellar crew. Thanks to Sergio Salvati's magnificent cinematography, Gino de Rossi's skincrawling special effects, and Fabio Frizzi's haunting score, this particular entry (the only one not filmed in scope) works up a feverish series of incidents which provide a heavy visceral kick missing from Fulci's later comeback efforts. The game cast does quite a job, with the lovely MacColl proving her mettle in her first of three Fulci outings which cemented her as his greatest scream queen, and blonde starlet Janet Agren (Eaten Alive!) offers a very neurotic counterpoint as Dunwich's most insecure resident. While the story barely holds together and skips giddily through barely-connected stories involving drunk bar patrons, the aforementioned town idiot suspected of being a child killer, and the town's other oddball residents, Fulci keeps the viewer gripped through a thick, deeply creepy atmosphere loaded with unease and dread greatly aided by a constant barrage of dust storms and fog. Simply put, this is one of the moodiest, most unsettling films ever made from a visual standpoint, and Frizzi's peerless music manages to turn the whole experience into an uncanny feast of sights and sounds. If it weren't for the nonsensical dull thud of a final scene, this would equal Fulci's subsequent masterpiece, The Beyond, and even so it still stands as one of the decade's most indelible terror offerings.
Fulci fans are quite aware of what a nightmare this film has posed to video technicians over the years. The mixture of film grain, fog, dust, and deep, dark shadows has defeated several formats over the years, including some dire VHS releases and marginally better laserdiscs. Anchor Bay's DVD, which was subsequently ported over by Blue Underground, offered the best standard def digital option, presenting a crisp if slightly overly sharpened presentation that adequately captured the experience of watching an average film print. That disc also includes the original English trailer, a solid 5.1 remix, and a sills gallery coupled with some fantastic radio spots. At the other end of the spectrum, Italy's NoShame release contains the Italian and English tracks in mono with one terrific exclusive: a long reel of footage from the original film shoot in Savannah, Georgia, complete with lots of spooky graveyard shots. It's a wonderful bit of Fulci memorabilia and is almost worth the price tag by itself. Unfortunately, the transfer is an utter disaster, slathering so much noise reduction on the film that actors' faces constantly blur into a sludgy mess and any onscreen movement accompanied by blurring and ghosting galore. On top of that, the image has been brightened far too much and drenched in an artificial yellow tint that makes the whole experience unwatchable after a few minutes.
While Blue Underground pulled off a miracle with its crackerjack Blu-Ray of New York Ripper, fans had reason to worry about whether this already grainy film would prove to be a nightmare with the added clarity of high definition. Well, surprise, surprise; the Blu-Ray taken from the original camera negative is a real stunner, featuring a far richer color scheme than anyone could have guessed by past transfers (the Anchor Bay/Blue Underground standard def one now looks pallid and far too cold in copmarison), with accurate and vibrant flesh tones as well as some eye-popping color designs in the cinematography completely impossible to appreciate in past versions (and theatrical prints). From the lush green and mahogany furniture in the New York seance room to the searing, Argento-esque neon lighting in the local Dunwich watering hole, this now feels much more like an accomplished, artistic film than before. Interestingly, the opening cemetery scene seems to vary greatly from one version to the next; in most prints it's a murky gray, while on the Anchor Bay disc; it featured a heavy blue tint that mysteriously vanished after the switchover to New York. Here it looks like a misty, overcast afternoon, which feels about right. The film grain here is present but far more natural and under control; detail is excellent and very filmic throughout, especially in the exterior scenes shot in New York and Savannah. The limitations of the original shooting conditions are still evident in a handful of the darker scenes, but it's hard to imagine how this could possibly look better. The Blu-Ray's 7.1 DTS-HD mix is also a real treat, with Frizzi's score sounding very robust as it pumps out of the front and rear speakers and some of the more manipulative sound effects getting a nice shot in the arm as well. The 50GB disc (which allows for a very healthy, very necessary high bit rate) also includes the original mono track (which now sounds pretty anemic in comparison) and the same 5.1 mix from the DVD, along with new English, English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitle options.
If the huge improvement in quality weren't enough of an enticement, the Blue Underground release tosses in a huge helping of extras produced in conjunction with Paura Productions. The 32-minute "The Making of City of the Living Dead" features MacColl, co-star and future director Michele Soavi (who gets his brains memorably squeezed out of his cranium), Salvati, De Rossi, production designer Massimo Antonello Geleng, assistant FX artist Rosario Prestopino, and camera operator Roberto Forges Davanzati talking about their experiences on the film, sometimes very candidly indeed. Most of them confirm Fulci's reputation as "very difficult," with George apparently butting heads with the director so much he wound up pulling a surprisingly grotesque prank on the set. All of the nasty highlights are covered here including the methods used to create the maggot storm, the tears of blood, the head drill, and much more, along with the problems of shooting in a Georgia cemetery and the difficulties of trying to swing an axe into a coffin containing the leading lady. Soavi in particular has some fascinating bits as he talks about taking his small role to get some directorial work snuck in on the set and offers a graphic explanation for his death scene. MacColl turns up again for a separate interview, "Acting among the Living Dead" (shot at a different time and place than her earlier chat), in which she talks about first being hired by Fulci, her personal methods of finding peace with the subject matter of the script, and her much-delayed realization of the film's huge cult reputation. It's a fine companion to her magnificent commentary on The Beyond and once again shows her as an intelligent, very likeable presence. The always hilarious Radice pops up for a welcome separate interview, "Entering the Gates of Hell," in which he rattles off his own uncensored memories of working with Maestro Fulci and recalls his hedonistic days on the set. "Memories of the Maestro" is a more generic piece with most of the same participants chatting about Fulci in stories and recollections unconnected to the main feature; it's a nice tribute and similar to Paura's feature-length Fulci doc. "Marketing of the Living Dead" is a new, HD gallery of posters and stills, while the older DVD gallery and radio spots are carried over as well. The package is rounded out with the English and Italian trailers, both also presented in new HD transfers. Simply put, this phenomenal package should be enough to spur on any fan of European horror to spring for a Blu-Ray player right away.
1982, Color, 93m. Directed by Lucio Fulci Starring Jack Hedley, Almanta Keller, Howard Ross, Andrea Occhipinti, Alessandra Delli Colli, Paolo Malco, Cinzia Di Ponti, Daniela Doria Blue Underground (Blu-Ray & DVD, US R1 NTSC/HD), Another World (Sweden R0 PAL), Shameless (UK R0 PAL), Neo (France R2 PAL) / WS (2.35:1) (16:9)
In Zombie, Lucio Fulci turned a tropical island into a desolate wasteland of the walking dead. In The Beyond, he transformed Louisiana into a nightmarish doorway to the underworld. However, none of Fulci's elegiac, haunting visions can compare to what he inflicts on the landscape in New York Ripper (Lo squartatore di New York), his most controversial film. Rough, unsettling, and surprisingly well crafted, New York Ripper has borne the brunt of countless charges of misogyny and other cinematic hate crimes, particularly after being banned in the U.K. as a "video nasty." Like most entries in the European cinema of the extreme, this will outrage many and provoke more than a little laughter (probably intentional), but for any viewer, New York Ripper is a difficult film to forget.
Hooker-loving police detective Lieutenant Williams (Hedley) finds himself pursuing a brutal serial killer who, according to one eyewitness, quacks like a duck as he slashes his victims. Yes, indeed, every time a broken bottle or razor blade is wielded in malice, the soundtrack explodes with a deafening "quack quack quack!" Each murder becomes more unsavory than the last with women from all walks of life falling victim to the madman. Suspicious professor Dr. Davis (House by the Cemetery's Malco) offers his services to the police, and a young potential victim, Faye (Keller), escapes the killer's clutches (a splendidly weird half-dream sequence) and begins to unravel the mystery herself. When the killer cuts a little too close to home for Williams, the stakes increase and uncover a startling revelation lurking behind the madman's psychosis.
Tossing in every convention of the Italian giallo formula, Fulci emerges with an unholy response to such slick urban thrillers as Tenebrae and Dressed to Kill. Like Tenebrae, with which this film shares more than a few interesting structural similarities, the earlier scenes of brutality focus mainly on women, but the director turns this malefic gaze back on the viewer by ultimately offing virtually every cast member in a spectacularly nihilistic display of misanthropy. While the gore scenes here are alarming and convincingly executed (for the most part), the killings also elicit a great deal of agony from the viewer and ultimately implicate any observer for participating in a society only the beautiful get rewarded. Granted, most of Fulci's social observations may be complete hooey when you consider they're being delivered by a homicidal duck (a weird tribute to his earlier Don't Torture a Duckling, perhaps), but the eerie final ten minutes provide enough poignance and food for thought to at least indicate Fulci had more on his mind than simply trading in hardcore sexist gore. On the other hand, this finale also spurs a hilarious version of Psycho's concluding psychiatric monolgue as the viewer is pelted with such insightful nuggets as "The duck provided the onus for him to start killing."
Even many Fulci fans find this film repugnant, an understandable reaction given the treatment and subject matter, but a few elements are noteworthy even with these misgivings. Francesco De Masi's marvelous big city crime score gives the proceedings an appropriately jazzy and sleazy bent, while cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller (Deep Red) magnificently uses the scope frame to capture an atmosphere of rotting claustrophobia which was completely lost on transfers before the age of DVD. Though only a small portion of the film was actually shot on location in New York, the setting is all too convincing and bizarre. The actors generally do a good job despite the chaotic and frequently hilarious dubbing job, with Hedley making an interesting social hypocrite and genre stalwart Andrea Occhipinti (A Blade in the Dark, Conquest) expanding his range somewhat as Faye's boyfriend. And finally, if you ever wanted to know where Dario Argento got the idea for the cheek-piercing bullet in The Stendhal Syndrome, look no further than this film's showstopping finale.
Most American viewers first encountered The New York Ripper through Vidmark's atrocious VHS release in the mid-'80s. Unwatchable panning and scanning coupled with an ugly faded and brown transfer immediately earned the film a bad reputation which was only slightly improved when Cult Epics issued a much needed widescreen laserdisc several years later. Though smudgy and overbright, the laserdisc at least provided some indication of the visual artistry inherent in the film and restored several brief bits of sex deleted from the U.S. cut. Surprisingly, the most notorious restored scene involves no gore but involves a toe job in a local Puerto Rican dive, and for better or worse, Anchor Bay retained all of this legendary footage in their DVD release. Strangely, the last shot of Malco standing on the sidewalk froze and faded into a wild psychedelic pattern on the laserdisc, while the DVD simply fades to black -- a much more rational choice. This utterly inconsequential snippet was originally intended to appear halfway through the film (after Fay's hospital interrogation) but was shuffled, removed and replaced by the distributor several times, apparently tagged at the end of some versions to cast some doubt on the killer's identity. The only extras for the Anchor Bay version (subsequently carried over to Blue Underground's DVD reissue) are the outrageous European trailer and a Fulci filmography.
While other companies have offered their own subsequent editions of New York Ripper in the ensuing years, the most notable one on DVD is a "special restored" version from Sweden's Another World series. The transfer is indeed noticeably crisper than the AB one, with somewhat punchier colors as well and a bit more picture information visible on all four sides. It also boasts the correct placement of Malco's final scene, so we'll take their word for it. Extras on this one (culled from an earlier French release but augmented with English subtitles here) include a great 52-minute De Masi interview, a "Ti Ricordi Lucio Fulci" featurette running just under an hour, a funny interview with stuntman-turned-actor Howard Ross, a giallo trailer reel, and for the feature itself, optional subtitles in Danish, Norweigan, Finish and Swedish. It's also quite cheap, so even if you have the earlier release, it's worth the double dip. If you feel like hunting down that French disc (which features an inferior transfer), it also contains an additional featurette solely devoted to the making of this film.
And now we arrive at the most surprising incarnation of The New York Ripper -- a Blu-Ray from Blue Underground newly transferred from the original negative. Simply put, it's a beauty; the huge leap in detail is astounding, and you can even make out the fine patterns in Mrs. Weissberger's hairnet. You'd never believe this film could look so good, and the eerie landscape shots (especially during the first ferry murder) now look like finely rendered landscapes out of a nightmare. Yes, it still looks like an early '80s Italian horror movie so anyone expecting something comparable to Wall-E isn't going to get it, but there's no way this could look any better. Interestingly and not surprisingly, as this is from the negative that pesky street shot of Malco is nowhere to be found, which doesn't affect the movie much at all. The original English audio can be played either in the original mono or a fun DTS-HD 7.1 mix which pumps De Masi's infectious music to the surround channels and really adds to the entertainment value. Optional subtitles are available in English, French or Spanish. Along with a new HD version of the trailer you get two exclusive extras, also hi-def; the first, "NYC Locations Then and Now," spends a nifty four minutes comparing location shots from the film in '81 with the current locales, including Times Square, the subway to Nassau Street, the Staten Island ferry, the Cavalier Hotel, and of course the now-destroyed World Trade Center, all set to De Masi's jazzy score. "I'm an Actress!" spends ten minutes chatting with Czech-born actress Zora Kerova (in Italian with English subtitles), who was hired from Prague for the film in the quick but memorable role as a sex show performer who gets the wrong end of a broken bottle. She calls her sex scene "the most difficult I've ever done" but has better memories of her murder scene; Kerova's other notable films from the period include Anthropophagus, Cannibal Ferox and The New Barbarians. Most interestingly the still-gorgeous actress talks about how the role got her in hot water with her native country, shares sometimes unpleasant memories of other directors like Bruno Mattei and Umberto Lenzi, and remembers a nice relationship with Fulci, whom she believes was more angry at the world than women in particular. A standard def DVD of the special edition is also available, but since it costs slightly more and can't compete with the glory of watching this nasty classic in full 1080p, it should be obvious which one to buy.
1990, Color, 93 mins. Directed by Lucio Fulci Starring Lucio Fulci, David L. Thompson, Jeoffrey Kennedy, Malisa Longo, Brett Halsey, Ria de Simone Grindhouse Releasing (US R0 NTSC), Raro (Italy R0 PAL), Shock (Holland R0 PAL) / WS (1.66:1) (16:9), Blackhorse (UK R2 PAL)
While Wes Craven kicked off the "postmodern," reflexive horror approach in America with New Nightmare and the Scream saga, Lucio Fulci got there way ahead of him with A Cat in the Brain, a.k.a. Nightmare Concert, in which Fulci plays a director named, hmmm, Lucio Fulci, who drives around experiencing macabre visions during the shooting of his latest film. Fulci likens this experience to a cat clawing inside his head, shown literally in graphic detail as a furry kitty puppet flopping around in gooey cerebral matter. Fulci consults a psychiatrist (Thompson) who decides to let horror films take the rap for his own murderous urges. The shrink goes out and brutally kills a string of young women, while Fulci thinks he is responsible for the crimes. Will our beloved splatter auteur take the rap, or will he wind up having the last laugh?
One of the most deranged films in the Italian horror canon, Cat has sharply divided Fulci fans on virtually every level. Cheaply shot on 16mm and blown up to 35, the narrative consists largely of excerpts from other films (particularly Fulci's A Touch of Death and Ghosts of Sodom) intercut with new Fulci scenes. Since actor Brett Halsey (infamous from Fulci's S&M drama, The Devil's Honey) appears in several different clips from different films, the experience is not unlike Plan 9 from Outer Space as his appearance changes from scene to scene. Newcomers to Fulci will definitely wonder what the fuss is about: the acting is uniformly terrible, the visuals are crude at best, and Fabio Frizzi's score awkwardly mixes new Muzak compositions with exceprts from his past glory days (mainly The Beyond). Scene for scene, this may be Fulci's goriest film, and this aspect alone has earned it some fan loyalty; on another level, it's a bizarre cry for understanding, as Fulci appears to be exorcising demons and coming to terms with the nastier pitfalls of his chosen profession. The high level of violence in and of itself certainly grabs your attention, but since it's all directed at cardboard characters we know nothing about, the effect is quite different from your standard horror film; here instead Fulci seems to be pointing out that, after years of sitting with a camera filming people getting mangled in increasingly gory ways, it's all started to run together and created a detached, alternate method of perception unto itself. Many people will be turned off by the nonlinear and often maddening collision of nonsensical scenes and misogynist gore, but it's an interesting film nonetheless.
A Cat in the Brain's other main claim to fame lies mainly in retrospect as it marks something of a final chapter in the history of the Italian horror film, which quickly slid into irrelevance after this (Dellamorte Dellamore being the odd man out, highly poetic postscript). Just as Argento essentially wrapped up the high point of his career with Opera the previous year, so Fulci wrapped up the decade with this final over-the-top adieu to his viewers.
After its initial release in Italy, A Cat in the Brain was insanely difficult to see for many years, accessibly primarily through dupes from the Japanese prerecord edition. Eventually near the end of the laserdisc era, it finally hit America courtesy of Grindhouse Releasing in an okay, barely letterboxed transfer featuring a handful of extras. The same extras are carried over to their long-awaited DVD edition, namely a U.S. trailer, a gallery of stills and promotional Fulci artwork, and a very lengthy and endearing video segment of Fulci at the 1996 Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors. The double-disc set features a much better anamorphic transfer that looks about as good as possible given the source; colors and detail are excellent in the new footage and variable but generally fine for clips from other films (with the bits from Touch of Death looking better than the actual film's DVD release). The English mono soundtrack is presented along with the Italian one with optional English subtitles; given that the film's looped either way, it's really just a matter of viewer preference. The personal vote here goes for the Italian one, simply because the English one has an annoying canned quality with many lines often mumbled or difficult to make out. The DVD also heaps on a load of new extras (some accessible only through Easter Eggs in the usual Grindhouse fashion) including the original Italian trailer, outtake footage of Fulci signing autographs and talking about his TV career, an additional never-before-seen Fulci interview from 1995 (broken into two segments, "Genre Terrorist" and "The Television Years") in which he spends 80 minutes total discusses everything from his original career as a cardiologist to his love of Joe D'Amato and anthropomorphic animals, and a fun 45-minute chat with Halsey about his Italian films and status as a European movie star including his spaghetti westerns and of course his later Fulci projects. Not enough? You also get quick snippets with American actor Joffrey Kennedy (who made his debut here) and Cat actresses Sacha Maria Darwin and Malisa Longo, all taken from the four-hour Fulci retrospective, Paura: Lucio Fulci Remembered. On top of that are the usual Grindhouse trailers including such newer additions as Death Game and Family Enforcer, as well as a liner notes booklet containing thoughts from Antonella Fulci (who apparently still has very ambivalent feelings about her dad), Eli Roth and David S. Schrow, all of whom make a case for the film being more artistically significant than many viewers may find.
(If you feel like blowing money for no particular reason, the international DVD editions are a mixed bag with the Italian Raro version featuirng a comparable anamorphic transfer and both Italian and English audio options but virtually no extras, while the British disc is a fullscreen mess you don't want to experience at all.)
1981, Color, 89 mins. Directed by Lucio Fulci Starring Catriona MacColl, David Warbeck, Sarah Keller, Antoine Saint-John, Veronica Lazar, Anthony Flees, Giovanni De Nava, Al Cliver Grindhouse Releasing (US R0 NTSC), Anchor Bay / WS (2.35:1) (16:9) / DD5.1
A few lucky directors have a certain film where all of the elements come perfectly into alignment. Lucio Fulci managed to pull of this feat for an entire quartet, often referred to as his zombie cycle. Zombie, City of the Living Dead, and House by the Cemetery are all well known and revered among horror fans, but The Beyond (L'Aldila) is arguably his masterpiece. Oddly enough it was also virtually unknown for many years, with most American fans unfortunate enough to be stuck with a brutally edited, rescored version entitled 7 Doors of Death (released on Thriller Video back in the early '80s). When the original cut of The Beyond finally surfaced on Japanese laserdisc, the floodgates opened and the film's reputation went through the roof, even winding up with an unlikely theatrical release from Grindhouse and Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Pictures on the midnight movie circuit. No matter how you see it, Fulci's hallucinatory masterpiece is one ride you'll never forget.
During a sepia tone prologue set in 1927 Louisiana, a group of men arrive by boat at the Seven Doors Hotel. They burst into Room 36 and proceed to chain whip the inhabitant, a painter and warlock named Schweick. Meanwhile a young girl downstairs named Emily (Sarah Keller) reads from an occult text called the Book of Eibon, which erupts into flames as Schweick's face is dissolved with acidic sludge. In 1981 the abandoned hotel is under renovation thanks to the new owner, a relocated New Yorker named Liza (Catriona MacColl). When one of the handymen suffers a bloody accident on the scaffolding, the local doctor, John McCabe (David Warbeck), is called in to keep things under control. A number of bizarre incidents begin to occur beneath and around the hotel, such as constant ringing from the bell in Room 36 and a gruesome fate for poor plumber Joe (Giovanni De Nava). During a car trip along an eerie causeway Eliza first meets Emily, who still looks exactly the same except for her eyes, which have turned a milky white. Other "accidents" at the local morgue and a bookshop indicate that the Book of Eibon holds the key to the hotel's dark secret, with a cryptic gateway to Hell housed somewhere within the property. Ultimately the humid landscape is beset by shuffling zombies, with Liza and John frantically fighting for their lives as they attempt to close that which should never have been opened.
By most rational standards, The Beyond can be a confounding experience. The plot has little to do with linear story properties or rational development, and the acting is highly stilted and often awkward. However, any Fulci fan knows that when the filmmaker has kicked into high gear, these are really attributes, not flaws. The lovely and endearing MacColl served as leading lady in three of his best zombie films; apart from being a first rate screamer, she's a terrific protagonist and seems to be enjoying herself. The late Warbeck carved a niche for himself in British and Italian exploitation titles during the '70s and '80s, and his rugged leading man qualities are put to excellent use here as he turns from concerned family physician to pistol-packing defender against the undead. Their characters are more warm and engaging than they really have any right to be, which makes the poetic and thoroughly chilling ending all the more powerful. If anyone ever questions Fulci's abilities as a filmmaker, kindly direct them to the last 90 seconds of this film. The special effects by splatter maestro Giannetto De Rosi are effectively repellent, with eyes popping from their sockets and faces blending into mush. The legendary, painfully slow tarantula attack sequence is both stomach churning and hilarious, with squeaking arachnids covering one poor victim and casually removing portions of his face with their... uh, teeth, apparently. All of Fulci's most noteworthy collaborators attack this film full throttle, with the amazing Sergio Salvati pumping up the atmospheric lighting across the scope frame and Fabio Frizzi manipulating piano solos and electronics into a tremendous music score. Forget what mainstream critics like Roger Ebert had to say; this film is a heartfelt poem for horror fans and, most importantly, a gory good show.
The distribution history of The Beyond has been unusually tangled over the years, with its most recent acquisition providing even more drama. When Rolling Thunder stepped in, the video rights went to Miramax. Unfortunately their owner, Disney, wouldn't even consider allowing a laserdisc release, despite the massive amount of supplementary material compiled by Grindhouse. The title drifted in limbo for a while after its theatrical run, with a decent Region 2 DVD from EC Entertainment turning up in Holland of all places. Finally the licensors made a deal with Anchor Bay, and years later the DVD finally hit the market. So was it worth the wait? Most definitely. The film itself looks terrific, with the widescreen compositions looking balanced and well judged, while the colors range from appropriately muted to garish and vivid during the gore scenes. The disc offers several audio options: a thunderous 5.1 remix, which offers some wild and amusing separation effects to the rear speakers and increases the scare value immensely; a 2.0 surround version of the same mix; the original mono soundtrack for the more nostalgic viewers; and the original Italian audio track, which is much better than average and invests the film with some welcome dynamic, emotional shadings. Though the packaging makes no mention of it, the disc also includes optional English subtitles, a very welcome addition. The most notable special feature here is the commentary track by MacColl and Warbeck, recorded while the latter was on his deathbed. You'd never guess it, though; this is easily one of the best commentary tracks ever recorded and never lets up for a moment. The two actors show a great deal of respect for Fulci and the film itself while poking fun at the filming experience, cracking jokes and making some astonishingly witty observations about the action onscreen. The affection and knowledge shown by this pair cannot be overstated, and it's extremely satisfying that their comments can finally be heard. Check out Warbeck's method of soothing MacColl's queasiness during the tarantula scene for an especially good chuckle. The DVD also includes the international English trailer (apparently ported over from the Japanese laserdisc master), the Rolling Thunder reissue trailer (with a slightly different opening), a similar German trailer, and a file of cast and promotional photographs and artwork. An alternate color version of the opening sequence has also been recovered from the German release version, and obviously, it's much more disgusting seeing Schweick's bloody chain wounds and candy colored face melting in full, MGM-style Technicolor. Necrophagia's music video for a thrash metal song called "And You Will Live in Terror," directed by Jim Van Bebber and featuring clips from the film, is also included but will probably only appeal to a select few out there. Easter Egg hunters out there can also follow the Eibon symbols and see the original U.S. opening for 7 Doors of Death and a trailer for Fulci's latter day postmodern horror opus, A Cat in the Brain. The Anchor Bay disc eventually went out of print and was resuscitated directly from Grindhouse, essentially adding on a video intro with MacColl and retaining all the contents of the deluxe tin edition (without the turbo packaging, but anyone suffering from shelf space woes should be thankful). They also throw in 20 minutes of new interviews with cast members excerpted from the Paura Fulci epic retrospective (along with most of the major living crew members, including De Rosi). A nice upgrade if you have the previous version, and an obvious must for anyone who missed the boat the first time around.
1981, Color, 86 m. / Directed by Lucio Fulci / Starring Katriona MacColl, Paolo Malco, Giovanni de Nava, Dagmar Lassander, Ania Pieroni, Giovanni Frezza, Daniela Doria, Carlo de Mejo Anchor Bay / WS (2.35:1) (16:9) / DD2.0
A rare film that even Fulci haters tend to enjoy, House by the Cemetery contains his typically strong emphasis on atmosphere and shocking visuals but also devotes more time than usual to character development and surprising plotting, allowing the graphic gore to serve as a function of the story rather than an end unto itself. The last of Fulci's Gothic zombie excursions, House is also a strangely beautiful film, with Sergio Salvati's expert scope photography crafting a strange world of childhood fairy tales gone very bad and Walter Rizzati's poignant score providing much needed emotional support.
A middle class couple (Katriona MacColl and New York Ripper's Paolo Malco) move to New Whitby, Boston, ignoring the protests of their young son, Bob (Giovanni Frezza), who experiences visions of a spooky freckled girl warning him about bloody events in their new house. While MacColl is a little miffed to find out the house is next door to a cemetery (irrelevant, but it does give the movie a cool title) and the tomb of a Dr. Freudstein is situated in the middle of their hallway, the couple decide to tough it out and make the best of the situation. Not surprisingly, nasty things begin to happen: Malco is attacked by a bat (and this is a Fulci bat attack, folks-- he paints the walls red with this one), spooky-looking babysitter Ania Pieroni (Tenebrae, Inferno) inexplicably disappears, and real estate agent Dagmar Lassander (a long way from her sex starlet days) meets up with a poker-wielding assailant.
In the last half hour, Fulci really shines and produces some of his finest work; the claustrophobic mixture of chills and supernatural poetry would do Mario Bava proud, with an unexpected but very satisfying supernatural resolution. He also wreaks havoc with audience expectations, which adds immensely to the air of childhood uneasiness in which the whole world feels like it can collapse from underneath you at any moment.
When House was released to U.S. theaters and on Lightning Home Video, the gore remained intact but two of the reels were placed out of sequence and much of Rizzati's score was stupidly replaced. The Japanese Daie laserdisc, letterboxed and uncut, was a very welcome alternative, and EC's Holland-produced Region 2 DVD went one even better by removing those pesky subtitles. To make things even more confusing, EC then anamorphically remastered their DVD, supposedly from the original negative, while retaining the same extras: the European theatrical trailer(be warned, it contains a lot of spoilers), juicy trailers for A Blade in the Dark and Mountain of the Cannibal God, and a half hour 1994 Eurofest interview with Fulci (in Italian with a translator on hand).
Anchor Bay's belated release of House marks both its first widescreen and correctly sequenced appearance in America, discounting an unauthorized bootleg disc from the notorious Diamond. The image quality is the best of all, with exceptionally rich colors, less grain than its counterparts, and a sharp overall appearance that mostly belies the film's age. Inexplicably, the disc does not contain the same jolting 5.1 remix treatment afforded to The Beyond or City of the Living Dead; instead the viewer is left to settle with a moderately effective two channel surround mix, which tosses in a few nice directional effects to the front speakers but leaves the rear channels largely silent apart from some very mild ambient support to Rizzati's score. The striking full motion menus (which take the viewer through the house, of course) lead to the hilariously lurid U.S. trailer ("Be sure to read the fine print! You may have just mortgaged... your life!"), the European trailer, a handful of abbreviated TV spots, a gooey still gallery, and cast and crew bios. However, completists may not want to toss out those EC discs just yet, as that's still the only way to own both the Fulci interview and a version of the film with (optional but handy) English subtitles.
1972, Color, 102m. / Directed by Lucio Fulci / Starring Florinda Bolkan, Barbara Bouchet, Tomas Milian, Irene Papas, Marc Porel, Vito Passeri Anchor Bay / WS (2.35:1) (16:9)
While many Italian murder mysteries (or gialli) involve black-gloved killers stalking women in the big city, Lucio Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling (Non si sevizia un paperino) turns the formula completely inside out to produce a violent, sweltering masterpiece of regional and religious oppression. Don't expect to see any shuffling zombies or gory power drills in this one, folks.
In a small village in southern Italy, young preadolescent boys are turning up dead from strangulation. Evidence points to a number of possible suspects, especially the local "witch," Martiara (Florinda Bolkan), whose voodoo practices and possible insanity make her a likely candidate. But what about Patrizia (Barbara Bouchet), the bored city girl hiding out after a drug scandal, who now passes the time by flaunting her naked body in front of children? The local Catholic Church, headed by young Don Alberto (The Psychic's Marc Porel) and his mother, Aurelia (Irene Papas), tries to keep the population under control, but even the local police are baffled by the case. A reporter from the north, Andrea (Tomas Milian), comes to investigate and recruits Patrizia to discover some genuinely ugly truths about the quiet provincial town.
Virtually unseen outside Italy since its release, Don't Torture a Duckling is one of the crucial films in the Fulci canon. He once again displays the precise control of the giallo format found in the previous A Lizard in a Woman's Skin and One on Top of the Other, but he also introduces a number of elements which would reappear prominently throughout his later work. The film's theme of innocence preserved through murder, coupled with the prominent use of Donald Duck as a plot device, later appeared in the much nastier New York Ripper, while the memorable face-smashing finale dovetails nicely with its identical appearance at the beginning of Fulci's next film, The Psychic. However, Duckling's most memorable sequence, in which a main character is subjected to a horrific fate involving chain-whips, is so effective that Fulci repeated it during the prologue of The Beyond and returned to the concept of provincial vigilantism in City of the Living Dead. However, Duckling is much more than a simple blueprint for Fulci's themes and obsessions; on its own terms the film is a singular accomplishment, a chilling horror film and social thesis flooded with sunlight, punctuated with odd scenes of dark rainfall. This contrast is reflected in the magnificent score by Riz Ortolani, which oscillates between chilling atonal suspense music and the deliberately syrupy, haunting main theme which appears ironically in several key scenes. The acting is also among the best in a Fulci film, with Bolkan in particular delivering a tour de force performance as the mistreated outcast. One of the many Euro starlets who blossomed in Italian thrillers, Barbara Bouchet never looked better and has an undeniably memorable entrance in the film.
Long available to collectors via dupes of a half-letterboxed (1.85:1) transfer from Dutch video, Don't Torture a Duckling has long been overdue for a decent video presentation. Thankfully, Anchor Bay's DVD does justice to the film's expert scope photography and unorthodox color schemes. This still looks like a '70s title, which means some visual grain and film stock inconsistencies from time to time, but it's hard to imagine this looking much better. Though much of the film was filmed with English dubbing in mind, some of the voices are a little jarring considering the rural nature of the characters. Otherwise the audio is fine, but in this case an alternate Italian track might have been welcome (as opposed to titles like Shock where it makes little difference at all).
1979, Color, 91 mins.
Directed by Lucio Fulci / Starring Tisa Farrow, Ian McCullough, Richard Johnson, Auretta Gay, Olga Karlatos, Al Cliver (Pier Luigi Conti) Anchor Bay, Blue Underground, Media Blasters (US R1 NTSC) / WS (2.35:1) (16:9) / DD5.1
Definitely a love it or hate it type of film, Lucio Fulci's Zombie is by far his most famous contribution to the horror genre and still ranks as one of the goriest features ever made. Fortunately, time has been very kind to this film; its guttersnipe nastiness now seems almost quaint and reassuring after two subsequent decades of jokey, watered-down horror hokum. Despite a draggy first third, Fulci really delivers the goods with this one, and the final two acts are an admirable escalation of pure nightmare on film.
The plot (what there is) follows Tisa Farrow (Mia's look-alike sister who appeared in The Grim Reaper and the excellent cult film Fingers) as she travels with Ian McCullough from New York to the cursed tropical island of Matoul, where the dead have been coming back to life and attacking the locals. The mayhem all stems from the reckless mad scientist, Dr. Meynard (The Haunting's Richard Johnson), who has been combining science with ancient voodoo rituals. Pretty soon, the entire cast (including Fulci regular Al Cliver and Auretta Gay) is fighting off hordes of the living dead, and the blood runs deep enough to require a raincoat.
Originally released under the title Zombi 2 in Italy, Fulci's epic was intended as a pseudo-sequel to George Romero's profitable living dead classic, Dawn of the Dead (released in Europe as Zombi). However, Fulci opted to drop Romero's satiric approach and goes straight for the jugular, offering no social commentary or redeeming substance whatsoever. Of course, it's an easy film to attack; it lacks the flair of Fulci's The Beyond or House by the Cemetery, and on the whole, the acting is pretty awful. Farrow and McCullough have little to do besides look neurotic, and Johnson skulks about in a haggard fashion and grumbles about the dead disturbing his work. The best acting award easily goes to the beautiful Olga Karlatos, who also enlivened Fulci's Murderock and is best known as Prince's mom in Purple Rain! She makes a very strong impression in the two scenes she has, particularly during the infamous close encounter between one of her eyes and a very large wooden splinter.
The VHS editions from Wizard Video, Magnum Video (who also issued a long out-of-print pan and scan laserdisc), and a handful of public domain companies looked pretty wretched, suffering from greenish skin tones during the island scenes and muffled, scratchy audio. The Japanese laserdisc (under the Zombi 2 title) looked substantially better, though the print was somewhat worn, with hissy sound. The Roan and Anchor Bay versions (on laserdisc and DVD respectively) feature a digitally remixed soundtrack in Dolby Digital, with some oddly recorded new sound effects. Of course, the dubbed voices still sound canned, and Fabio Frizzi's stirring music score doesn't sound as punchy as one might wish, but that can't be helped. Though the clarity of the picture is fine, the colors have been digitally enhanced and punched up a little too much for comfort on the laserdisc; for example, during a couple of faded scenes, the shadows glow an electric blue. Turn down the color control on your monitor a bit, however, and the film looks as it should. On the other hand, the Anchor Bay DVD is too pale, washing out even the blues of the ocean scenes. The fun bonus material includes the US theatrical trailer, a couple of TV spots, and some hilarious radio promos. Also, the commentary by Ian McCulloch provides quite a few chuckles, including his amazing comparison between Fulci and Preston Sturges! More often, though, the comments stray way off the subject and may not please Fulciphiles. In Britain there’s a slightly cut version as Zombie Flesh Eaters, marketed as the “Extreme Version;” it looks adequate enough. The German disc from Dragon, under the title Woodoo, is uncut, looks nicer than any of the other options, and also features an Antonella Fulci interview.
Now things get really complicated. Due to a rights snafu, both Media Blasters and Blue Underground wound up with the American DVD rights for the film, which resulted in the latter company issuing its version first, containing the English and Italian audio tracks with optional English subtitles. The transfer looks simply terrific, with cool but pleasing colors and a nice option between a new, more faithful 5.1 mix and the mono original (both languages). Extras include a hilarious slew of trailers and radio spots. Then the Media Blasters edition appeared under the title Zombi 2, with a similar but slightly more yellowish transfer and the same audio/subtitle options. Extras this time out include a whole disc packed with interviews with most of the participants, including the FX artists and actors; however, it's cut into an incredibly long, rather shapeless documentary form and requires viewers to carve out a lot of time and patience to get to all the good stuff. So what does it all mean in the end? Well, if you like the movie, you gotta buy 'em both.
Following the wild success of Zombie, outrageous Italian horror director Lucio Fulci next splattered blood on the drive-in screens of America with this gothic feast of zombies and the supernatural, known to most of its first VHS-reared fans under the catchier title of The Gates of Hell. Though a few minutes of transition dialogue were trimmed, the film's splashy thrills remained intact and earned it a heavy fan base at the dawn of home video, particularly the most famous scene in which a village idiot (oft-abused Giovanni Lombardo Radice, a.k.a. Make Them Die Slowly's John Morghen) has a nasty encounter with an electric drill (a sequence which raised the hackles of British censors and landed the film in trouble around the world).
From the late 1970s to 1982, Fulci transitioned from a string of stellar thrillers to a landmark quartet of zombie-centric horror films, all featuring the same stellar crew. Thanks to Sergio Salvati's magnificent cinematography, Gino de Rossi's skincrawling special effects, and Fabio Frizzi's haunting score, this particular entry (the only one not filmed in scope) works up a feverish series of incidents which provide a heavy visceral kick missing from Fulci's later comeback efforts. The game cast does quite a job, with the lovely MacColl proving her mettle in her first of three Fulci outings which cemented her as his greatest scream queen, and blonde starlet Janet Agren (Eaten Alive!) offers a very neurotic counterpoint as Dunwich's most insecure resident. While the story barely holds together and skips giddily through barely-connected stories involving drunk bar patrons, the aforementioned town idiot suspected of being a child killer, and the town's other oddball residents, Fulci keeps the viewer gripped through a thick, deeply creepy atmosphere loaded with unease and dread greatly aided by a constant barrage of dust storms and fog. Simply put, this is one of the moodiest, most unsettling films ever made from a visual standpoint, and Frizzi's peerless music manages to turn the whole experience into an uncanny feast of sights and sounds. If it weren't for the nonsensical dull thud of a final scene, this would equal Fulci's subsequent masterpiece, The Beyond, and even so it still stands as one of the decade's most indelible terror offerings.
Fulci fans are quite aware of what a nightmare this film has posed to video technicians over the years. The mixture of film grain, fog, dust, and deep, dark shadows has defeated several formats over the years, including some dire VHS releases and marginally better laserdiscs. Anchor Bay's DVD, which was subsequently ported over by Blue Underground, offered the best standard def digital option, presenting a crisp if slightly overly sharpened presentation that adequately captured the experience of watching an average film print. That disc also includes the original English trailer, a solid 5.1 remix, and a sills gallery coupled with some fantastic radio spots. At the other end of the spectrum, Italy's NoShame release contains the Italian and English tracks in mono with one terrific exclusive: a long reel of footage from the original film shoot in Savannah, Georgia, complete with lots of spooky graveyard shots. It's a wonderful bit of Fulci memorabilia and is almost worth the price tag by itself. Unfortunately, the transfer is an utter disaster, slathering so much noise reduction on the film that actors' faces constantly blur into a sludgy mess and any onscreen movement accompanied by blurring and ghosting galore. On top of that, the image has been brightened far too much and drenched in an artificial yellow tint that makes the whole experience unwatchable after a few minutes.
While Blue Underground pulled off a miracle with its crackerjack Blu-Ray of New York Ripper, fans had reason to worry about whether this already grainy film would prove to be a nightmare with the added clarity of high definition. Well, surprise, surprise; the Blu-Ray taken from the original camera negative is a real stunner, featuring a far richer color scheme than anyone could have guessed by past transfers (the Anchor Bay/Blue Underground standard def one now looks pallid and far too cold in copmarison), with accurate and vibrant flesh tones as well as some eye-popping color designs in the cinematography completely impossible to appreciate in past versions (and theatrical prints). From the lush green and mahogany furniture in the New York seance room to the searing, Argento-esque neon lighting in the local Dunwich watering hole, this now feels much more like an accomplished, artistic film than before. Interestingly, the opening cemetery scene seems to vary greatly from one version to the next; in most prints it's a murky gray, while on the Anchor Bay disc; it featured a heavy blue tint that mysteriously vanished after the switchover to New York. Here it looks like a misty, overcast afternoon, which feels about right. The film grain here is present but far more natural and under control; detail is excellent and very filmic throughout, especially in the exterior scenes shot in New York and Savannah. The limitations of the original shooting conditions are still evident in a handful of the darker scenes, but it's hard to imagine how this could possibly look better. The Blu-Ray's 7.1 DTS-HD mix is also a real treat, with Frizzi's score sounding very robust as it pumps out of the front and rear speakers and some of the more manipulative sound effects getting a nice shot in the arm as well. The 50GB disc (which allows for a very healthy, very necessary high bit rate) also includes the original mono track (which now sounds pretty anemic in comparison) and the same 5.1 mix from the DVD, along with new English, English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitle options.
Tossing in every convention of the Italian giallo formula, Fulci emerges with an unholy response to such slick urban thrillers as Tenebrae and Dressed to Kill. Like Tenebrae, with which this film shares more than a few interesting structural similarities, the earlier scenes of brutality focus mainly on women, but the director turns this malefic gaze back on the viewer by ultimately offing virtually every cast member in a spectacularly nihilistic display of misanthropy. While the gore scenes here are alarming and convincingly executed (for the most part), the killings also elicit a great deal of agony from the viewer and ultimately implicate any observer for participating in a society only the beautiful get rewarded. Granted, most of Fulci's social observations may be complete hooey when you consider they're being delivered by a homicidal duck (a weird tribute to his earlier Don't Torture a Duckling, perhaps), but the eerie final ten minutes provide enough poignance and food for thought to at least indicate Fulci had more on his mind than simply trading in hardcore sexist gore. On the other hand, this finale also spurs a hilarious version of Psycho's concluding psychiatric monolgue as the viewer is pelted with such insightful nuggets as "The duck provided the onus for him to start killing."
While Wes Craven kicked off the "postmodern," reflexive horror approach in America with New Nightmare and the Scream saga, Lucio Fulci got there way ahead of him with A Cat in the Brain, a.k.a. Nightmare Concert, in which Fulci plays a director named, hmmm, Lucio Fulci, who drives around experiencing macabre visions during the shooting of his latest film. Fulci likens this experience to a cat clawing inside his head, shown literally in graphic detail as a furry kitty puppet flopping around in gooey cerebral matter. Fulci consults a psychiatrist (Thompson) who decides to let horror films take the rap for his own murderous urges. The shrink goes out and brutally kills a string of young women, while Fulci thinks he is responsible for the crimes. Will our beloved splatter auteur take the rap, or will he wind up having the last laugh?
One of the most deranged films in the Italian horror canon, Cat has sharply divided Fulci fans on virtually every level. Cheaply shot on 16mm and blown up to 35, the narrative consists largely of excerpts from other films (particularly Fulci's A Touch of Death and Ghosts of Sodom) intercut with new Fulci scenes. Since actor Brett Halsey (infamous from Fulci's S&M drama, The Devil's Honey) appears in several different clips from different films, the experience is not unlike Plan 9 from Outer Space as his appearance changes from scene to scene. Newcomers to Fulci will definitely wonder what the fuss is about: the acting is uniformly terrible, the visuals are crude at best, and Fabio Frizzi's score awkwardly mixes new Muzak compositions with exceprts from his past glory days (mainly The Beyond). Scene for scene, this may be Fulci's goriest film, and this aspect alone has earned it some fan loyalty; on another level, it's a bizarre cry for understanding, as Fulci appears to be exorcising demons and coming to terms with the nastier pitfalls of his chosen profession. The high level of violence in and of itself certainly grabs your attention, but since it's all directed at cardboard characters we know nothing about, the effect is quite different from your standard horror film; here instead Fulci seems to be pointing out that, after years of sitting with a camera filming people getting mangled in increasingly gory ways, it's all started to run together and created a detached, alternate method of perception unto itself. Many people will be turned off by the nonlinear and often maddening collision of nonsensical scenes and misogynist gore, but it's an interesting film nonetheless.
After its initial release in Italy, A Cat in the Brain was insanely difficult to see for many years, accessibly primarily through dupes from the Japanese prerecord edition. Eventually near the end of the laserdisc era, it finally hit America courtesy of Grindhouse Releasing in an okay, barely letterboxed transfer featuring a handful of extras. The same extras are carried over to their long-awaited DVD edition, namely a U.S. trailer, a gallery of stills and promotional Fulci artwork, and a very lengthy and endearing video segment of Fulci at the 1996 Fangoria's Weekend of Horrors. The double-disc set features a much better anamorphic transfer that looks about as good as possible given the source; colors and detail are excellent in the new footage and variable but generally fine for clips from other films (with the bits from Touch of Death looking better than the actual film's DVD release). The English mono soundtrack is presented along with the Italian one with optional English subtitles; given that the film's looped either way, it's really just a matter of viewer preference. The personal vote here goes for the Italian one, simply because the English one has an annoying canned quality with many lines often mumbled or difficult to make out. The DVD also heaps on a load of new extras (some accessible only through Easter Eggs in the usual Grindhouse fashion) including the original Italian trailer, outtake footage of Fulci signing autographs and talking about his TV career, an additional never-before-seen Fulci interview from 1995 (broken into two segments, "Genre Terrorist" and "The Television Years") in which he spends 80 minutes total discusses everything from his original career as a cardiologist to his love of Joe D'Amato and anthropomorphic animals, and a fun 45-minute chat with Halsey about his Italian films and status as a European movie star including his spaghetti westerns and of course his later Fulci projects. Not enough? You also get quick snippets with American actor Joffrey Kennedy (who made his debut here) and Cat actresses Sacha Maria Darwin and Malisa Longo, all taken from the four-hour Fulci retrospective, 
Oddly enough it was also virtually unknown for many years, with most American fans unfortunate enough to be stuck with a brutally edited, rescored version entitled 7 Doors of Death (released on Thriller Video back in the early '80s). When the original cut of The Beyond finally surfaced on Japanese laserdisc, the floodgates opened and the film's reputation went through the roof, even winding up with an unlikely theatrical release from Grindhouse and Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Pictures on the midnight movie circuit. No matter how you see it, Fulci's hallucinatory masterpiece is one ride you'll never forget.
and around the hotel, such as constant ringing from the bell in Room 36 and a gruesome fate for poor plumber Joe (Giovanni De Nava). During a car trip along an eerie causeway Eliza first meets Emily, who still looks exactly the same except for her eyes, which have turned a milky white. Other "accidents" at the local morgue and a bookshop indicate that the Book of Eibon holds the key to the hotel's dark secret, with a cryptic gateway to Hell housed somewhere within the property. Ultimately the humid landscape is beset by shuffling zombies, with Liza and John frantically fighting for their lives as they attempt to close that which should never have been opened.
scare value immensely; a 2.0 surround version of the same mix; the original mono soundtrack for the more nostalgic viewers; and the original Italian audio track, which is much better than average and invests the film with some welcome dynamic, emotional shadings. Though the packaging makes no mention of it, the disc also includes optional English subtitles, a very welcome addition. The most notable special feature here is the commentary track by MacColl and Warbeck, recorded while the latter was on his deathbed. You'd never guess it, though; this is easily one of the best commentary tracks ever recorded and never lets up for a moment. The two actors show a great deal of respect for Fulci and the film itself while poking fun at the filming experience, cracking jokes and making some astonishingly witty observations about the action onscreen. The affection and knowledge shown by this pair cannot be overstated, and it's extremely satisfying that their comments can finally be heard. Check out Warbeck's method of soothing MacColl's queasiness during the tarantula scene for an especially good chuckle. The DVD also includes the international English trailer (apparently ported over from the Japanese laserdisc master), the Rolling Thunder reissue trailer (with a slightly different opening), a similar German trailer, and a file of cast and promotional photographs and artwork. An alternate color version of the opening sequence has also been recovered from the German release version, and obviously, it's much more disgusting seeing Schweick's bloody chain wounds and candy colored face melting in full, MGM-style Technicolor. Necrophagia's music video for a thrash metal song called "And You Will Live in Terror," directed by Jim Van Bebber and featuring clips from the film, is also included but will probably only appeal to a select few out there. Easter Egg hunters out there can also follow the Eibon symbols and see the original U.S. opening for 7 Doors of Death and a trailer for Fulci's latter day postmodern horror opus, A Cat in the Brain. The Anchor Bay disc eventually went out of print and was resuscitated directly from Grindhouse, essentially adding on a video intro with MacColl and retaining all the contents of the deluxe tin edition (without the turbo packaging, but anyone suffering from shelf space woes should be thankful). They also throw in 20 minutes of new interviews with cast members excerpted from the Paura Fulci epic retrospective (along with most of the major living crew members, including De Rosi). A nice upgrade if you have the previous version, and an obvious must for anyone who missed the boat the first time around.
devotes more time than usual to character development and surprising plotting, allowing the graphic gore to serve as a function of the story rather than an end unto itself. The last of Fulci's Gothic zombie excursions, House is also a strangely beautiful film, with Sergio Salvati's expert scope photography crafting a strange world of childhood fairy tales gone very bad and Walter Rizzati's poignant score providing much needed emotional support.
situation. Not surprisingly, nasty things begin to happen: Malco is attacked by a bat (and this is a Fulci bat attack, folks-- he paints the walls red with this one), spooky-looking babysitter Ania Pieroni (Tenebrae, Inferno) inexplicably disappears, and real estate agent Dagmar Lassander (a long way from her sex starlet days) meets up with a poker-wielding assailant.
alternative, and EC's Holland-produced Region 2 DVD went one even better by removing those pesky subtitles. To make things even more confusing, EC then anamorphically remastered their DVD, supposedly from the original negative, while retaining the same extras: the European theatrical trailer(be warned, it contains a lot of spoilers), juicy trailers for A Blade in the Dark and Mountain of the Cannibal God, and a half hour 1994 Eurofest interview with Fulci (in Italian with a translator on hand).
drills in this one, folks.
chain-whips, is so effective that Fulci repeated it during the prologue of The Beyond and returned to the concept of provincial vigilantism in City of the Living Dead. However, Duckling is much more than a simple blueprint for Fulci's themes and obsessions; on its own terms the film is a singular accomplishment, a chilling horror film and social thesis flooded with sunlight, punctuated with odd scenes of dark rainfall. This contrast is reflected in the magnificent score by Riz Ortolani, which oscillates between chilling atonal suspense music and the deliberately syrupy, haunting main theme which appears ironically in several key scenes. The acting is also among the best in a Fulci film, with Bolkan in particular delivering a tour de force performance as the mistreated outcast. One of the many Euro starlets who blossomed in Italian thrillers, Barbara Bouchet never looked better and has an undeniably memorable entrance in the film.
