Quando Alice ruppe lo specchio (1988)

... aka: Alice Broke the Mirror
... aka: La sombra de Lester (Lester's Shadow)
... aka: Licia ha rotto lo specchio (Licia Has Broken the Mirror)
... aka: Soupçons de mort (Suspicions of Death)
... aka: Touch of Death
... aka: When Alice Broke the Mirror

Directed by:
Lucio Fulci

Lester Parson (Brett Halsey) is a middle-aged gambling addict always indebted to brutish loan shark Randy (Al Cliver, billed under his real name Pier Luigi Conti) who has an interesting way of clearing his debts: Scouring the "Lonely Hearts" personal ads, meeting highly flawed (i.e. desperate) wealthy widows and then murdering them for their money and jewelry. He's first seen sharing a fine roast with his cat Reginald and watching a home video of a homely, scrawny woman taking her top off. Immediately afterward he walks into a room with a dead, naked female corpse laid out on a table (the same woman from the video) that's missing a huge chunk of flesh from her thigh. Guess we know where that juicy rump roast came from. The body is then lovingly dismembered with a chainsaw and, in typical Fulci fashion, we get close-ups of all four of her limbs, her torso and her head being sliced off (the gore make-up is actually pretty good in this one). He grinds up her flesh into hamburger meat, slops his pigs with her guts and dumps the remaining body parts elsewhere.

Lester meets a second rich woman (Sacha Darwin) who's got a facial hair problem and hairy moles on her breasts. He gets her drunk and tries to poison her in an amusing scene where nothing goes his way. She mixes up her drink with his and then, when she's given a second poisoned cocktail, she immediately runs into the bathroom and starts puking it up. He barges in and bashes her over the head with a stick. As blood pours out of her wound, she flees in terror and is bashed over the head several more times until blood is gushing out everywhere and her eyeball falls out. Still not dead, he sticks her head in the oven and roasts her until her flesh starts melting off. Her body is dumped at a construction site in a hole full of wet concrete.

A bum (Marco Di Stefano) sees him disposing of a corpse and tries to blackmail him, but Lester runs him over with about a dozen times him with his car until his body is ripped in half. Next up is an obnoxious, shrill soprano named Alice (Ria De Simone) who never stops singing and likes to be slapped around. I'm guessing this is where the silly original title comes from, which translates to "When Alice Broke the Mirror." Lester finally shuts her up with a whip strangulation and dumps her body. The police and TV news seem to be keeping up with the crimes even though Lester appears to be doing a sufficient job of disposing of the bodies. But how?

Well, there's something weird afoot and a copycat killer at work, who seems to be murdering people in the same exact fashion Lester is. In addition, the second killer is harassing him over the phone and leaving behind evidence at crime scenes to implicate him. It's either a living shadow / doppelganger a la The Student of Prague or it's all in Lester's disturbed mind. I honestly found it hard to care about this story angle at all as it's confusing, half-assed and far less satisfying than the simple over-the-top murder / gore set pieces that are unfortunately all relegated to the first half. The plot also makes room for a mysterious woman with a bad harelip named Virginia (Zora Kerova), who enters Lester's life and seems a little more aggressive than the other victims. Wonder what she's up to?

There's an all-too-obvious attempt to make the grisly goings-on blackly humorous by inserting lighthearted music during the gruesome murders and such but the writing isn't smart enough, and Fulci isn't a skilled or subtle enough director, to pull most of this off for laughs. The most prominent running gag is Lester's difficulty in disposing of the bodies. A corpse in a trunk has legs that keep popping out so, of course, they must then be hacked off, a dead body won't sit straight up in his car and keeps falling over when he's pulled over by a cop for speeding, etc. etc. None of this is particularly clever.

Originally produced as part of a package deal between production company Alpha Cinematografica and distributor Reteitalia, this was one of nine gory horror films that union created specifically for the home video and TV markets. It doesn't appear to have been released until 1991 in Italy but may have turned up on VHS in Japan prior to that. Production lasted about a month (Fulci started shooting just three days after he wrapped Il fantasma di Sodoma), the budget was low (it was shot on 16mm for around 200 thousand dollars) and it all looks pretty murky and grainy because the only surviving prints later distributors had on hand were from video sources. Like most of the others from the series, this didn't get an official U.S. release until much later on when Shriek Show finally put it out on DVD in 2005. Their release came with English and Italian language options, an audio interview with Fulci, a photo gallery, a trailer, four unrelated trailers and two filmed interviews with actress Kerova and Fulci historian Paolo Albiero.

Note: There were Blu-ray releases in 2017 (from 88 Films in the UK) and 2019 (from Raro in the U.S.) which I assume look better than the copy I viewed, though I've not had a chance to check 'em out yet.

★★

Black Cat (Gatto nero) (1980)

... aka: Black Cat, The
... aka: Gato nero, El

Directed by:
Lucio Fulci

When I say "surprisingly good" it typically means that either the film has totally flown under the radar to little fanfare or that it's been outright rejected by critics and / or fans... but I liked it, anyway. This is one such case. The film came in between Fulci's living dead splatter-fest ZOMBI 2 (1979) and his spate of early 80s gore flicks such as THE BEYOND (1981) and NEW YORK RIPPER (1982). All of those were hits on VHS during the video boom era and established Fulci as an icon to gorehounds around the globe, so I suppose it should come as no surprise that many of them were disappointed by what The Black Cat had to offer. After all, this is one of his least gory, least bloody films of the period. You won't find eyes being gouged out or sliced with razors in close-up, brains oozing out of crushed heads or anything of the sort. So what do you get instead? For starters, a better made movie. The budget seems to be higher than usual; it's vividly and creatively photographed by Sergio Salvati (who utilizes lots of low level cat POV shots) and boasts an excellent Pino Donaggio score. You also get an intense performance from talented character actor Patrick Magee, a man of the stage who it's said only did films for the money. Magee's acting is so far above the norm for a Fulci movie that it instantly lends a distinction that's lacking in most of Fulci's other films.

"Freely adapted" from the story of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe, things open with a fiery car crash that sends the driver out of the windshield before cutting to some charming opening credits of a black cat navigating the rooftops of the village and making its way back home. But don't become too fond of the cuddly kitty. Immediately before the crash, the driver discovered it in the back seat of his car and, somehow, the cat put him into a trance, caused him to let go of the steering wheel and then crash into a parked vehicle; killing him. The cat returns to his home, heads upstairs to where its owner - Professor Robert Miles (Magee) - is intently listening to some strange, distorted tapes, and then scratches the hell out of his hand. As we'll later find out, the Professor and the feline share a very odd link. Or as he says, they're "bound together by hatred."

Miles is feared and hated by the townsfolk in about equal measure. A loner, he frequents a nearby cemetery late at night with his audio equipment in an attempt to capture the voices of the dead. Aside from communicating with the spirit world, Miles possesses psychic powers and the ability to hypnotize people. He believes that the black cat who's hounding him will eventually kill him, but attempts to poison and hang it don't work. It keeps coming back. After a young couple disappear, Lillian (Dagmar Lassander) comes to Miles for help locating her daughter. Miles leads Lillian and the authorities to the missing girl and her boyfriend, but by then it's too late. They've both suffocated after being locked inside an airtight boat house. Cat prints and fur are found at the scene of the crime. A gossipy drunk (Bruno Corazzari) is then pushed onto some spikes. Local cop Sgt. Wilson (Al Cliver) decides to call in Scotland Yard Inspector Gorley (David Warbeck) to get to the bottom of the sudden rash of seemingly accidental deaths. Meanwhile, American photographer Jill Travers (Mimsy Farmer), who's come to England to shoot pictures of ancient ruins, starts getting to know the Professor and slowly comes to the realization that the cat is somehow acting out Miles' subconscious impulses.

Everything here isn't perfect; especially the confused supernatural elements. Though I can accept the concept of a human to animal psychic link, there's no attempt made to explain how the ghost cat is connected to Miles. Or better yet, why the ghost cat is connected to Miles. Since the Professor isn't given proper motivation, and some of the victims are innocents who we've never seen cross or mistreat him, the murders that occur are as much random as revenge oriented (or just a case of wanting people who know too much out of the way). Other scenes, such as the failed attempt to kill the cat causing Jill's windows to explode, lights to flash and bed to levitate, seem completely out of place. One could also gripe about the obvious dummy during a sequence where a victim is burnt up in her apartment and jumps out of the window. But the whole thing is so interesting, and so nicely presented with a modern Gothic feel, that I was willing to say to hell with logic.

Unusual direction, too. I doubt you'll ever see more close-ups on eyeballs in any other film! The cast includes Geoffrey Copleston as another Scotland Yard detective called in at the end to help out, and Daniela Doria (who - as per her usual - provides some nudity) as the boat house victim. DVD from Anchor Bay.

★★★

Zombi 2 (1979)

... aka: Island of the Flesh-Eaters
... aka: Island of the Living Dead
... aka: Zombie
... aka: Zombie 2: The Dead Are Among Us
... aka: Zombie Flesh Eaters
... aka: Zombies 2

Directed by:
Lucio Fulci

In 1978, George A. Romero revolutionized horror cinema with his trend-setting classic DAWN OF THE DEAD. Filmed on a modest budget independently in Pennsylvania, the movie combined solid direction, sophisticated storytelling and until-then unseen levels of gore to become a huge international hit, despite the fact it played theaters with a self-applied X-rating. It also pulled off the impossible by getting positive [and most certainly deserved] critical notices across the board, even from the majority of critics reputed to have a strong distaste for the genre. So it's not surprising that many other filmmakers across the globe tried to cash-in, particularly in Europe. This Italian effort by Lucio Fulci was one of the first to do so and went on to become one of the most famous of all the copycats, possibly because it was released overseas as an actual sequel to Romero's film; Dawn was titled Zombi, Zombie was titled Zombi 2. Though the films share the slow, shambling, flesh-eating resurrected dead and high levels of gore (plus snippets of the same score), the similarities pretty much end there. Absent are Romero's sharp satire and humor, his relatable and enjoyable characterizations, the sweeping, increasingly hopeless apocalyptic tone and the deftly-directed action and horror sequences. Fulci's film is a dirtier, grittier, more primitive affair, which drops anything substantive and gets right down to basics.

The film opens as a seemingly unoccupied little boat washes into New York Harbor. When a couple of police officers go to investigate, they're promptly attacked by a zombie, who rips one of their throats open before being shot and falling into the water. Anne (Tisa Farrow) becomes concerned because the boat came from the same desolate tropical island her scientist father (whom she's lost contact with) is doing research. She, along with reporter Peter (Ian McCulloch) decide to head to the island to investigate. They charter a boat from Brian (Al Cliver) and his girlfriend Susan (Auretta Gay) and before the four even arrive at their destination, they're already being attacked by zombies. During one of the film's most memorable scenes, while Susan's deep underwater scuba diving, she comes face to face with a flesh-eater. Thankfully, the attack is thwarted by a shark that rips the zombie's arm off! Our heroes finally arrive at the island and act like complete dunderheads while the living dead start popping up all over the place. We're also introduced to some more thinly-defined fodder along the way, including Richard Johnson as the mad doctor type responsible for creating the zombie plague, Olga Karlatos (who'd star in Fulci's MURDEROCK a few years later) as his hysterical wife, Stefania D'Amario (NIGHTMARE CITY) as a nurse and Dakar (ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST) as an island native.

Though no match for the Romero zombie film responsible for its very existence, this isn't without its own redeeming qualities. For starters, some of the zombie designs are really good, including the maggot-faced chap who winded up on the poster. The film is also filled with gore, including a now-famous bit where Karlatos gets her eyeball skewered in close-up by a jagged piece of wood. Flesh chewed out of necks, arms and legs spray blood all over the place, and there are heads being shot, a dismemberment, guts and more. The island is a nice setting for one of these things, the low-budget look of the film is also something of an accidental plus that contributes to the film's grimy atmosphere and there's an excellent score from Goblin. On the down side, the script is pretty awful; there's next to no plot, the dialogue is terrible and there are no characters to root for or care about. In fact, they all pretty much behave like morons the entire time, including standing around for minutes at a time watching zombie accumulate around them.

The film was co-written by the prolific Dardano Sacchetti, who had his name removed from the credits after his father passed away (he found it a little distasteful to have his name attached to a living dead flick at the time).

Because of Zombie's success in theaters, Fulci would continue mining the zombie well for the rest of his career (sometimes adding supernatural slants to the stories) with such releases as THE GATES OF HELL (1980), THE BEYOND (1981) and THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1981). Just as Zombie had been re-tited Zombi 2 in Europe, other unrelated films were re-titled for home video to create a bogus "zombie" series. The title ZOMBIE 3 was used for a troubled production partially directed by Fulci in 1987 (Review RIGHT HERE), the sleazy BURIAL GROUND (1980) and at least three (!) other films. There are at least three different movies which have used the title ZOMBIE 4 (including THIS ONE). Jess Franco's REVENGE IN THE HOUSE OF USHER (1979 aka Nervosus) was released as ZOMBIE 5 (but so was a 1987 film originally called THE KILLING BIRDS) and Joe D'Amato's MONSTER HUNTER (a follow up to his ANTHROPOPHAGOUS aka THE GRIM REAPER) was issued on VHS as ZOMBIE 6 at one point. It's just as confusing as the "Demons" series.

★★1/2

Murderock - uccide a passo di danza (1984)

...aka: Danza mortal
...aka: Demon Is Loose, The
...aka: Giallo a disco...aka: Murderock
...aka: Murder Rock Dancing Death...aka: Murder-Rock: Dancing Death

Directed by:
Lucio Fulci

Who knew Fulci could be so lustrous? Most of his films from the early 80s are pretty gritty. From his tropical living dead cash-in ZOMBI 2 (1979) to the misogynistic exploits of the THE NEW YORK RIPPER (1982), it's all about primitive shock effects shot through a grainy eye. Not so much here. This one's sumptuous, soft-focus and much more polished. It's also quite restrained as far as blood-and-guts are concerned and is one of the director's least violent and least graphic films. Trading off over-the-top splatter for a more professional-looking sheen is something that's probably not going to sit well with the majority of Mr. Fulci's fan base. After all, we're talking about a man whose claim to fame rests primarily on images of eyeballs being skewered by splintered wood, internal organs exiting bodies through mouths, razor blades slicing open nipples and ginger girls getting their heads blasted off with shotguns. Murderock is the other side of Fulci. It's him returning to the oft-neglected beginning of his career when he was making less-celebrated giallo thrillers such as A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971) and DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING (1972). Is it as good as either of those? Nope, but it's still a passable effort. Passable, that is, if you have a high tolerance for 80s tackiness.

The words "cheesy" and "dated" often crop up during discussions of this film and both are apt descriptions of what you'll see here. Fulci claimed in interviews that both the musical numbers and Keith Emerson's cheesy pop/disco/synth music soundtrack were both forced upon him by the film's producer. This results in what is essentially a slasher remake of Flashdance. Sure it sounds God awful, and parts of it are indeed God awful, but it's usually in a good-dumb-fun kind of way. Much of the entertainment value rests in the hilarious choreographed dance routines where leotard-clad ladies get so worked up they're flinging sweat off by the time they're done. And then, of course, they die.

The very attractive Olga Karlatos (aka the gouged-out eyeball chica in Zombi 2) stars as Candice Norman, a troubled dance instructor whipping her young male and female dancers into shape at the Arts for Living Center in New York City. One of her female students decides to stay late and is attacked while taking a shower by a psycho who chloroforms her and then sticks a thin metal pin through her heart. Many more students will die in a similar fashion and everything seems to coincide with the arrival of some producers announcing they'll be accepting only a couple of the students from the school for an upcoming TV series. Is someone wanting to trim the competition to increase their own chances? Or is something else afoot?

You get your typical line-up of suspects. Naturally, any of the students would have reason to kill the others. The first victim's boyfriend, Willy (Christian Borromeo), seems to have a temper and a bad habit of being at the scene of the murders right before they occur. Then there's jealous choreographer Margie (Geretta Giancarlo), academy director Dick Gibson (Claudio Cassinelli), who's either sleeping with several of the students or wants to, and Candice herself, who has been plagued by strange nightmares of a man trying to kill her. Even stranger, the man she's been dreaming about turns out to be a real man named George Webb (Ray Lovelock), a hard-drinking, washed up former male model. Candice and George begin seeing one another, but it's revealed that George is also connected to the dance academy: One of the chief dancers is his ex-girlfriend. Everything ends with a John Huston quote.

Nice-looking production with a typically convoluted plot and badly written dialogue, a pinch of T&A, a surprisingly low violence quotient and a fair mystery. Karlatos does a very good job in her role, though the rest of the cast doesn't make much of an impression. Cosimo Cinieri (from Fulci's Manhattan Baby) co-stars as a detective and small roles are played by Robert Gligorov (from Soavi's STAGE FRIGHT) and an uncredited Al Cliver. Fulci himself appears briefly as an agent.

★★

La casa del tempo (1989)

...aka: House of Clocks, The

Directed by:
Lucio Fulci

Like several other Fulci films, this opens with a literary quote; this time from 19th Century French playwright and novelist Honoré de Balzac ("The Human Comedy"), as if it's striving for some sort of respectibility. A very wealthy and seemingly normal elderly couple; Victor (Paolo Paolini) and Sara (Bettina Milne) Corsini, live in a gated mansion along with their maid Maria (Carla Cassola), one-eyed hired hand Peter (Al Cliver) and army of Doberman Pinchers they let roam free outside. Victor believes that the dozens of clocks that fill the home are his "children," and he and his wife are up to something strange involving the rotting corpses of his niece and nephew, which are kept in a locked room. After Maria discovers the bodies, Sara jams a spear into her stomach until her guts start pouring out. Meanwhile, three thoroughly obnoxious 20-somethings; Tony (Keith Van Hoven), Diana (Karina Huff) and Paul (Peter Hintz) are driving around smoking weed, arguing and plotting to break into the mansion. First, they stop by a supermarket, where Diana distracts the cashier by letting him sniff her panties while the other two shoplift dinner. For some reason, one of them also decides to lighten the mood by suffocating a cat in a plastic bag. Nice.

The three end up at the mansion, where Diana pretends to be a stranded motorist to coerce the couple to let her in so she can use their phone. It isn't long until her buddies barge in. There's a struggle over a rifle and the elderly couple, as well as Peter, are all killed. The thieves hide the bodies, start looting the place and plot to leave, but can't because the dogs are gathering around outside the door. Now trapped inside the home, the clocks all begin rewinding by themselves, bodies turn up missing and characters who were killed return to life and start attacking. There are three impalements (including one with a steel fence), three shotgun killings (including a stomach blown away), a hand stabbed with a knife, a head bashed off a table, a strangling, chainsaw and axe usage (both strangely off-screen) and zombie hands emerging from the ground. Despite this, the film actually isn't as gory as most of Fulci's other 80s offerings.

It's confusing, the characters are all horrible people you could care less about and nothing really makes a lick of sense, which has prompted some fans to refer to it as "a surreal gem," which is the same thing the same fans said about his sloppy, horror clip recycling hodgepodge NIGHTMARE CONCERT (1990, aka A CAT IN THE BRAIN). Sorry, but I still don't buy it. It's easy to come up with a senseless story and then not have the courage of your convictions by writing everything off at the very end. In this case (feel free to skip to the next paragraph if you don't want this thing spoiled) the film settles for a groan-inducing "it was all just a dream" twist as our leading lady wakes up from a horrible nightmare and learns that her friends had the same exact nightmare. Now scared, they decide not to actually break into the house and drive off. That's all capped off with an absurd attempt at irony when the bagged kitty cat comes to life, jumps in the driver's face and causes them to crash and be killed anyway! The "moral" ending is surprisingly similar to the one used by Lamberto Bava for GRAVEYARD DISTURBANCE (1987), and I hated the conclusion of that flick, too.

So while I wanted to kill all the characters myself and cringed at the terrible dubbed dialogue and hated the silly "twist" ending cop-out, the movie isn't completely worthless. It has an OK music score, a basic attempt at atmosphere both inside (spinning clocks, light glittering off various things, some coloring...) and outside (fog rolling in...) the mansion, as well as enough red stuff to keep the gorehounds from straying. I'm sure if you love all things Fulci, you'll also love this. Well, if you can look past the very cheap, very soft look of the "telecolor" cinematography.

It was originally made for Italian TV and was part of a four-part series called Le case maledette ("The Doomed Houses"), which also included the Fulci-directed SWEET HOUSE OF HORRORS, as well as the Umberto Lenzi-directed HOUSE OF LOST SOULS and THE HOUSE OF WITCHCRAFT. This one supposedly was too violent for TV, so it briefly played theatrically before heading to video. Though there was no VHS release in America, it got a R1 DVD release via Shriek Show in 2002.

★★