‘80s Italian horror TV movies aren’t always the most
memorable and have a tendency to be a little underwhelming in comparison to the
classic gialli and Eurohorror films from the ‘60s and ‘70s golden era. By the
late ‘80s, we were at, or were even beyond, the tail end of the horror boom, with
many Italian directors making movies more for television. Lamberto Bava directed a lot of TV movies throughout his career. His
‘80s horror TV movies paid a lot of homage to the classic gialli and horror
films that sculpted the genre like The Bird
with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Inferno
(1980), House by the Cemetery (1981),
his father’s Black Sunday (1960),
and even his own Demons (1985). A
lot of times his TV films could be a little mediocre and almost feel like near-pointless
rehashes, like Demons 3: The Ogre (1988), but Lamberto Bava also had a tendency to
catch you by surprise with TV movies like Demons
5: The Devil’s Veil (1989), the hilarious and ‘80s satirical Dinner with a Vampire (1989), and the (previously)
hard-to-find School of Fear.
Aside
from being an interesting take on the evil kid trope, School of Fear / Il gioko does present
a lot to chew on, and like Demons 5: The
Devil’s Veil and Macabre (1980)
is a little more of what I prefer from director Lamberto Bava. Don’t get me wrong, Demons and A Blade in the Dark (1983) are awesome
too, but I honestly lamented for a time that we never really got something as
twisted, different, and well-made as Macabre.
It’s still no Macabre, but School of Fear feels a little more in
the right direction towards something twisted and different.
Manhattan
Baby
marks the end of an era, which was Lucio Fulci’s most prolific filmmaking
period that included classics such as Zombie (1979), The Gates of Hell (1980), The
Beyond (1981), and The House by the
Cemetery (1981). This isn’t to say these were Fulci’s best films; they were just some of the most commercially
successful, not to mention big hits with the general horror audience.
With Fulci being synonymous with gore,
zombies, and various sorts of gateways to hell, viewer expectations of Manhattan Baby were probably different
than what they got, as it abandons the gothic, supernatural zombie film
altogether. It was scriptwriter Dardano
Sacchetti’s attempt at moving away from what he considered conventional
horror, to try and close up the gates of hell and open new gates of time and
space. Although there are obvious influences from The Exorcist (1973) and The
Awakening (1980) (and surprising similarities to Poltergeist which came out the same year), Sacchetti wanted to create something different, and for the most
part he succeeded.
City of the Living Dead
is part of a high point in Lucio Fulci’s career
that would make him synonymous with gore, zombies, and splatter and also cause
him to be more generally regarded as a horror director, despite having worked in
numerous other film genres. Being the first film in what has become known as
The Gates of Hell trilogy, which also includes The Beyond (1981) and House
by the Cemetery (1981), City
feels a little rough around the edges, a step down from the previous Zombi 2 (1979) but at the same time a
stepping stone or prototype to The
Beyond, a film that masterfully embodies a dreadful but surreal atmospheric
ascetic that I like to call nightmarish horror, which abandons logic to create
a sense that anything can happen, usually something bad involving the eyes.
While
there is an interesting Lovecraftian story (co-written by Fulci and Dardano Sacchetti)
and plenty of dialogue and characters to fill it, City feels a bit like a compendium of gore scenes and set pieces,
most of which exemplify Fulci in top
form. It has its flaws and issues, yet it’s one of those films where you can
talk just as much about what’s wrong with it as you can about what’s right with
it, and what’s right is pleasing enough to supersede what’s wrong.
Despite
having a dodgy narrative, a few silly moments, and somewhat shallow characters, who
have grown on me with time, such as Bob (Giovanni
Lombardo Radice), the film is quite a macabre experience that has become known for its top-notch
ambiance and gore FX (by Gino De Rossi),
as well as succeeding as a horror film overall. It’s like a product of low
quality that nonetheless continually hits the sweet spot throughout its runtime
so that you just can’t help loving it. It’s almost the masterpiece The Beyond is.
I’ve always considered Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond
to be the definitive Italian horror experience, and it’s the one I’d recommend
most, even over Suspiria, if anyone
ever asked me what a real good Italian horror is. No one ever has, though, and
most anyone remotely familiar with Italian horror already knows about The Beyond. When I first saw it, this
gross, gory but beautifully nightmarish picture had awoken something in me
that completely turned my attention to Italian horror, with an unwaning interest,
and it changed my previous negative opinion of Fulci’s Zombi 2 into an
entirely positive one.
Presently I can’t figure out why, but I had loathed Zombi 2 for quite some time, so when a
local theater that specialized in cult and independent cinema advertised a
screening of an old Zombie film, Lucio
Fulci’s The Beyond, I
immediately recognized the director and thought, “oh no, not that guy” (I was
severely of the uninitiated at the time). But, since I regularly attended the
weekly midnight screenings at this theater, I thought it’d be fun to go and
watch this movie in a dark room full of strangers and observe the general
response. Despite numerous riffing and laughter from the audience, there was
something about the film that entertained and terrified me. Those moments with
the grieving widow in the morgue and every time someone went into room 36
were real intense for me, and the scene with the blind ghost girl, Emily, surrounded
by the zombies from Hell gave me a nightmare that night. The characteristics of
The Beyond reminded me of Zombi 2, in a good way, and the gore, as
indicated by the screams and waves of laughter in the audience, was a real
crowd pleaser.
