Beyond the Psychic City of the New York Flesh-Eaters … and other stories. (Beyond Terror: the Films of Lucio Fulci - Stephen Thrower)

Member Name: Brett Bligh

Product:	Beyond Terror: the Films of Lucio Fulci - Stephen Thrower
Date:	06/03/01 (91 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: a very substantial study of Fulci’s work; features a deep and complex analysis if some of Fulci’s films without becoming pretentious; surprisingly, for a book of this nature, the text is very readable in all but a couple of places.

Disadvantages: further study of the man himself, especially with regard to the effect his harsh family life and severe illness in later life, might have lead to even further insight into the films.

Lucio Fulci is undoubtedly one of the key figures of not only the horror genre, but also of European exploitation filmmaking at its best. Along with Mario Bava, Dario Argento and Ruggero Deodato, Fulci helped to mould this substantial collection of related genres over the course of many years, gaining a mixture of admiration, repugnance, contempt and dismissal for his efforts. In ‘Beyond Terror: the films of Lucio Fulci’, Stephen Thrower presents us with an account of Fulci’s films which is both interesting and substantial.

Like many Italian directors of the mid-to-late twentieth century, Fulci actually operated as a jack-of-all-trades, working in a large number of genres throughout his career and, for the most part, allowing market conditions and the imitative Italian studio system to guide his filmmaking direction. In fact, Thrower uses this on a couple of occasions during the text to argue the limitations of auteur film theory when looking at European directors of this type quite forcefully, and it has to be said that, whether Thrower is correct in general or not, on Fulci’s specific case he has a definite point. When working in a genre to which he was suited, and on projects on which he had good-calibre collaborators, Fulci was capable of excellent work. Fulci’s career, however, was most certainly marred by a slew of mediocre (or in many cases downright shoddy) productions which did not help his reputation, and it is this inconsistency which has lead to Fulci being a lesser known name in the field of Euro-horror than, for example, Bava senior or Argento.

Beyond Terror is a large-format hardback volume (it measures 12” by 9½”), attractively produced, its standard black-and-white and reasonably glossy pages being supplemented by frequent sections of full-colour glossy plates containing poster reproductions and publicity stills.

Rather than discuss Fulci’s films in order, Thrower herein elec
ts to group Fulci’s films together by genre (although, as the genre which the majority of this volume’s buyers will be most interested in, the horror films are granted a total of four chapters), and to arrange the chapters roughly in the order in which Fulci made the groupings of films in any one genre.

After a Foreword by Antonella Fulci, Lucio’s daughter, and a personal introduction by Thrower himself, in which he outlines his introduction to Fulci’s work during the early days of the videocassette, the book moves on to its first chapter, a general introduction to the man’s work which covers only three pages of text and which essentially attempts to outline the general trends in Fulci’s career (from slapstick comedy through giallo to horror, with diversions into other genres occurring intermittently) in order to place the rest of the book into context. Then the book commences its task proper.

Although by 1979 Fulci was already a veteran director, and although it is not his best work, the film which introduced Fulci to a wider audience outside Italy was Zombie Flesh-Eaters (1979). It is with some justification, therefore, that Thrower devotes the entire second chapter of the book to this work, placing it into context alongside other works of the sub-genre (such as Romero’s well-known trilogy, various Hammer horrors and older British B-movies, and other Euro-Zombie features such as the Spanish-made, British-set ‘masterpiece’ The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue) as well as the horror genre more generally, and then moving on to a synopsis and criticism of the film on its own merits.

In general, Thrower approves of the film (as anyone writing a book on Fulci probably should), although he does question the film’s lack of pace in certain sections, most notably the long sequence in which the characters have to actually travel to the tropical island of Matul, summarising his views to
wards the end of the chapter by stating, “Zombie Flesh-Eaters is not a masterpiece, but a sort of ‘pop classic’ of Italian horror … lumbered with a bathetic, laughable coda … [which] is likely to leave audiences laughing at, and not with, the film. Nonetheless Fulci had crafted a memorable experience, sure to excite connoisseurs of extreme imagery’. The chapter also includes a frame-by-frame depiction of the infamous ‘eye-penetration’ scene displayed over a full two-page spread, and concludes with a full-colour section comprising posters and stills for the film.

Next, Thrower begins his more chronographical examination of Fulci’s work, beginning (inevitably) with Fulci’s comedies. It would be very easy to follow the tendency in a book such as this, of course, which is mainly aimed at a readership comprised of horror fans, to skip over such work, and in this case I am not sure that such an attitude would be an entirely bad thing; Fulci’s comedies were, for the most part, based upon slapstick or farce, with his central comedic franchise centring around Franco and Ciccio, an Italian equivalent of Laurel and Hardy. The film in this section whose title evoked in me the most interest, ‘Young Dracula’ (1975), was apparently a film dismissed by Fulci himself, and hence hardly likely to be an enjoyable experience. Of the films featured in this section the only title I would actually like to see is ‘The Eroticist’ (1972), a comedy about corruption in both politics and the Catholic church which features a hallucinating politician with a compulsive ‘bottom-pinching’ complex (okay, so this brief synopsis may not inspire much confidence, but Fulci’s criticism of the Catholic church in the country in which that institution possibly holds more sway than any other, a trend which Fulci continued in some other films featured later, is something that I found inherently i
nteresting, and are perhaps what draws me to this film more than the ‘comedy’ elements).

Some of Fulci’s comedies, however, such as the spy-spoof ‘002’ sequence, are skipped over as a matter of necessity — information on these films is, apparently, extremely difficult to come by, and coverage of these films is limited to a brief synopsis in one of the Appendices. A shame, since spoof material has always appealed to me when I thought the source matter deserved it.

Chapter Four features perhaps Fulci’s most popular non-horror work — his films in the Giallo genre. Giallo films (‘gialli’) were essentially gruesome murder mysteries with plots of a complex nature (sometimes convoluted to the point of absurdity) and which often featured a race against time, with the police attempting to catch the killer before he/she killed again, and again, and again. It was during this period that Fulci’s penchant for a loving focus on the gore element of his films, and his tendency for sadistic violence, first emerged, and this is obviously one of the reasons why Fulci’s gialli seem to be nearly as popular amongst his fans as his horror work. Thrower himself seems quite enthusiastic about these films, and many titles discussed in this chapter were mentally added to my list of films ‘to see’.

After starting the chapter with a discussion of the giallo format, describing it essentially as a crossbreed between the murder mystery and horror, Thrower moves on to consider the individual films, again supplying a synopsis followed by a discussion of each film in turn. Most noteworthy to me in this section were ‘Don’t Torture a Duckling’ (1972), featuring Barbara Bouchet (a one time Star Trek guest and star of the MST3K-lampooned ‘Agent for H.A.R.M.’) and yet another attack on the Catholic church, linking it here with rural bigotry and superstition, and R
16;The Psychic’, featuring Scanners’ heroine Jennifer O’Neill as a woman locked into a loop of inexorable premonition which combines an intriguing plot with some early premonitions of the director’s excellent later piece ‘The Black Cat’.

Next comes the catch-all chapter ‘The Ghoul Can’t Help It: Violent holidays from horror’, which essentially covers all of Fulci’s films which do not fit into any of the other major categories discussed in the book. Included are three westerns, two children’s adventures (“White Fang” adaptations, no less, and quite interesting ones too from the look of it), violent crime thriller ‘The Naples Connection’, a dire-looking sword-and-sorcery epic-wannabe entitled ‘Conquest’, and a shoddy sci-fi piece, ‘Rome 2033 – The Fighter Centurions’ (1984), which anticipates Schwarzenegger’s ‘The Running Man’ and is a film which I would very much like to see.

Probably the film of most interest to me in this section, however, was ‘Beatrice Cenci’, a historical murder-mystery based around the inner political machinations of the powerful Cenci family and the murder of the incestuous patriarch by the eponymous daughter. Although considered only very briefly, the few production stills included in the book, together with the synopsis provided, paint a picture of an intelligent and well-directed movie with quite an impact, both visceral and emotional (the film, once again, ends with an attack on the Catholic church, who deliberately delay their naming of Beatrice as a Saint until after she is executed for murder for obviously political reasons).

The meat and potatoes of any book on the films of Fulci, however, obviously lies in its coverage of the horror films the director made and became best known for internationally, and it is for this reason that the next three chapters are devot
ed entirely to these films: chapter 6 to Fulci’s best-regarded classics; chapter 7 to those films of roughly the same time period in which it was generally judged that the director had gone “too far” in his excesses; and chapter 8 to Fulci’s later horror films, most of which are generally regarded as being of a lower standard, as if Fulci had somehow run out of steam.

Having covered Zombie Flesh-Eaters in an earlier chapter, the chapter on best-regarded classic comprises a brief introduction to Fulci’s ‘Gothic period’, which included his collaboration with screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti (regarded by Thrower as having produced Fulci’s best work), followed by the usual synopsis and analysis of the films in question, the analyses this time being of longer length than usual. The films included herein are: City of the Living Dead (1980, regarded by Thrower as a successful narrative experiment and a film of which I have already written a review); The Beyond (1981, usually regarded as one of Fulci’s best by his horror fans, the second in the loose trilogy begun by City, and featuring both David Warbeck and Catriona MacColl — regarded by Thrower as probably Fulci’s two greatest performers, these both feature in a mini-interview interwoven with the text of the chapter); The House By The Cemetery (1981, another Gothic masterpiece and the subject of considerable character analysis in the book); The Black Cat (1981, the film which was responsible for my introduction to Fulci and a personal favourite, this is apparently only regarded as a ‘minor’ classic by Fulci fans; Thrower argues that this is perhaps unjustified, and I agree — a very atmospheric film, the central performance by Patrick Magee is utterly excellent, especially when one considers that the actor was dying at the time); and Manhattan Baby (1982), which Thrower seems to regard as a sub-Exorcist rip-off with only a few redee
ming features — perhaps its inclusion in this chapter, therefore, was not entirely suitable?

The next chapter features the infamous ‘The New York Ripper’, an especially violent film which had the misfortune to have a video release just as the ‘video nasty’ scare of the early Eighties started in full swing, and only a few years after the “Yorkshire Ripper” real-life murder case; this, as far as Fulci’s public relations in Britain were concerned, was nothing short of a disaster, and many of the other films of this period offered similarly dubious delights.

Chapter 8, the final chapter to focus on films, concerns Fulci’s later horrors, and the underlying message seems to be: Don’t Watch These! With the exception of ‘Voices From Beyond’ (1991, no relation to Fulci’s earlier classic and his penultimate film, which is given guarded praise by Thrower), all of the films in this chapter are rubbished quite mercilessly; anyone reading this chapter and no other might come to the conclusion that the book’s author did not actually like Fulci’s work, and hence I would have to conclude, given my general agreement with most of Thrower’s assessments of the Fulci films I have seen, that these films are probably very poor indeed, and very probably the major reason for Fulci’s reputation suffering as it has in the last few years.

The final chapter of the book is a brief discussion of why the appreciation of the films of Lucio Fulci is, in fact, quite justifiable, as well as a critique of auteur theory and the wisdom of applying it when critiquing both Italian commercial cinema in general and Fulci in particular. The book then finishes with comprehensive appendices, compiled by the author together with Julian Grainger.

Fulci’s life was not a particularly easy one, either personally of professionally. If I am to make a serious criticism of this b
ook, then it would have to be that the fact, only ever fleetingly referred to, that Fulci’s filmmaking attitude changed drastically after the death of his wife at her own hand in 1969, closely followed by one of his daughters’ car accident: prior to this, Fulci had made mainly lightweight comedies of quite a poor quality, but at about this time Fulci began to focus on violence and darkness in his films, first with the gialli and then later with his horror work. There is an obvious correlation here which I believe may be central to Fulci’s work, and the only reason Thrower gives for not following this through is his unwillingness to engages in psychoanalysis. This is a shame, for I feel this angle would have added an entire extra dimension to the book, and one which would have been both interesting and relevant.

Late in life, Fulci became quite frail and, according to Dario Argento (the two men, directorial rivals during previous decades, became close friends during Fulci’s final years), looked like an “old man … horrible”, comparable to Edgar Allen Poe. Nevertheless, he spent his last few months in the eager attempt to get yet another film together, undeterred by his recent failures.

‘The Wax Mask’, which was to have been a collaboration with Argento, never happened due to Fulci’s death in March 1996. By this time, Fulci’s reputation was fatally tarnished — the majority of his recent projects had turned out to be rubbish, although many are now attributing this to the pitifully low budgets afforded Fulci by the now almost completely collapsed Italian film industry, and the recent unpopularity of straight genre horror — and he passed away virtually unnoticed. Fulci himself, however, still seemed convinced that The Wax Mask could have been a final triumph, and I for one am inclined to believe him.

This book is a very substantial work (hence the inordinate length of
this opinion; congratulations if you made it this far), and will quite possibly stand as the first and last word on Fulci for quite some time. It is, however, being published in quite a limited run, of which both the paperback and standard edition are already out of print.

So head on over to www.fabpress.com and pick up the deluxe autographed edition. It is well worth the price.

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