It was around the time of
Lucio Fulci’s return to the giallo genre in 1982 with the odiously awful The New York Ripper his penultimate
collaboration with screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti that the downward spiral of
his filmmaking career began. Their last collaboration along with Sacchetti’s
wife Elisa Briganti was ‘Manhattan
Baby’ one of the director’s biggest failures released that same year. However,
prior to these two low points the screenwriter was responsible for co-writing
some of Fulci’s most successful films.
One of the director’s finest
gialli is ‘Seven Notes in Black’ (1977) and Dardano Sacchetti would re-team with
Lucio Fulci again a couple of years later along with Briganti for his reinvention of himself as a horror maverick with
the much lauded although overrated ‘Zombie’ with its poorly paced meandering
narrative. The movie would catapult him to cult international status as "The Godfather of Gore" a moniker he
shared with fellow famed goremeister Herschell Gordon Lewis due to the film’s
now legendary graphic depictions of gory viscera. Due to this massive
commercial success, the pair worked together again immediately on the more
satisfying City of the Living Dead (1980) an exercise in surrealistic atmosphere and intense gore depicting
the illogic of fear through metaphysical concepts with a non-linear
narrative. This experimental formula Lucio Fulci would perfect the following
year with his greatest horror movie ‘The Beyond’ that would also turn out to be
his Achilles’ heel failing to come anywhere near close to matching this quality
of work ever again.
With the bar rose so high ‘The
House by the Cemetery’ released that same year also featuring again writing duties
from Elisa Briganti is a mess
albeit an enjoyable one for some striking imagery, finely executed set-pieces,
a imaginatively creepy antagonist and is dripping with an irresistible dreaded atmosphere.
It remains one of Fulci’s few passably watchable efforts in his post-Beyond
era. It would seem that his partnership with Sacchetti worked well when working
with non-linear narratives striving for surrealism to string together
set-pieces of atmospheric gore with their outright horror projects as with City of the Living Dead and ‘The
Beyond’. Although ironically when it came to actually trying to tell a story as with
‘Zombie’ and ‘The House by the Cemetery’ they came up with disjointed messes.
Returning to the giallo
genre in 1982 in which the director had previously made four of its best
examples - ‘Perversion Story’ (1969), ‘A Lizard in a Woman's Skin’ (1971), ‘Don't
Torture a Duckling’ (1972) and the aforementioned ‘Seven Notes in Black’ (1977)
- and bringing Sacchetti with him I wonder how much input the screenwriter
actually had. Despite the writing credits on the wretched The New York Ripper and the immediate abysmal ‘Manhattan Baby’ I
cannot help but think that this was when their relationship began to deteriorate. As disappointing as ‘Zombie’ and ‘The House by the Cemetery’ are there is still
much to look at there in admiration but little to be had here on these two occasions
and are more reminiscent of the poor dip in quality of Lucio Fulci’s later
movies. I think it might be a little more than a coincidence that he failed to
bring Dardano Sacchetti along for his
next project 1983’s sword and sorcery Conan rip-off ‘Conquest’ and never worked
together again.
This was the start of the rot. A severe lack of form that only
grew considerably worse with ill health suffering from diabetes and emotional
problems due to the past traumas of his wife’s suicide and daughter’s fatal car
accident that attributed to his constant need to work to keep his mind
pre-occupied. Keeping himself busy though while battling health and emotional
problems only resulted in burn out and Fulci sadly became nothing more than a
hack for hire with the poor quality of his later work forever cemented. The director’s
last giallo that followed the next year ‘Murder Rock’ is a prime example of
this.
Lucio Fulci takes full
writing duties here with a story set in a New York City dance academy where a mysterious
black gloved stranger stalks and murders one by one the young attractive students
who are picked off in the order of their talent hierarchy leading the police to
believe that it is a jealous rival amongst the students. Fulci takes a note
from Paolo Cavara’s solid 1971 giallo ‘The Black Belly of the Tarantula’ as the
killer punctures the victims’ hearts by plunging a pin into their chests. The
class instructor Candice Norman played by Olga Karlatos who you might remember as Menard’s
wife in ‘Zombie’ dreams of a man (Ray Lovelock) trying to kill her wielding the
same kind of large golden hatpin that the killer is using. Discovering that he is down on his luck actor
George Webb she tracks him down explaining her dream and as George cannot remember
her thinking they have not met before Candice thinks that somehow they have.
They become lovers and Candice later reveals to George that a hit and run
accident ended her promising dance career and is the reason for her now teaching
behind the scenes. Turning amateur sleuths, they team up to find the killer.
The writer and director has crafted
a dull ineffectual by the numbers whodunit offering little in the way of intriguing
mystery. There are no interesting twists and turns in sight other than throwing
almost every character in as a suspect making for piss poor red herrings that
the viewer can see a mile off with so blatant extreme close-ups of the cast’s suspicious
facial expressions. So obvious it makes the so-called big reveal at the end
easy to see coming. The film unlike the majority of Lucio Fulci’s previous work
is goreless but that is not a negative criticism, as it is just that the extremely
lacklustre murder set-pieces are completely lacking in suspense and tension. The
lack of gore was an overreaction on Fulci’s part to the harsh criticism he received
for the prolonged cruel sadistic murders of women he graphically depicted in The New York Ripper for which critics
branded him a misogynistic woman hater. Although, the director still makes sure
that the audience gets to see some T & A before and during the young beauties meet
their demises and he has no problem of injecting his usual sleaze into the proceedings
implying that the female dancers are moonlighting as prostitutes to support themselves.
These set-pieces are made
all the more unmemorable by being overshadowed by unnecessarily extensive badly
choreographed dance sequences supplemented by Keith Emerson’s terrible cheesetastic pop
disco soundtrack. Despite the dance school setting this was not the original intention
by Fulci as it was producer Augusto Caminito idea to include these sequences to
cash in on the successes of the Hollywood dance musicals of the day - Alan Parker’s
‘Fame’ (1980) and Adrian Lyne’s ‘Flashdance’ (1983). This just makes for a disastrous
disco giallo cocktail that is just too campy in this respect for genre fans to
appreciate and too mean spirited for dance enthusiasts to get into who are maybe
fans of those aforementioned mainstream hits. Actually, one of the movie’s many
alternative titles is ‘Giallo a Disco’.
With the exception of the
presence of the always-good Lovelock who is a saviour of lost causes even in
pieces of shit such as the 1978 rape and revenge film The Last House on the Beach, the acting is very lousy overall. Karlatos
annoyingly overacts and the rest of the young cast fare little better especially
when handicapped by the script’s one-dimensional characterization and laughable
dialogue. As crap as the movie is, it is made to look like beautiful crap with great quality
production values. The New York locations are captured beautifully thanks to
Giuseppe Pinori’s sumptuous cinematography making a low budget of an estimated
$100,000 look anything but low budget and it is a stylistic treat when it comes
to the gorgeous visuals that the director employs with some inspired shots.
‘Murder Rock’ pales in
comparison to Lucio Fulci’s previous gialli up to 1977. Uninspired direction and poorly written it lacks the sexual subversion,
the social criticism, the throw off plot points and just overall intelligence. It is clear evidence of a filmmaker slumming it trying so desperately to
rekindle the once successful career he had a success he did not taste again
since parting ways with screenwriting partner Sacchetti. Recommended only for
the hardcore Fulci completest, otherwise it is best avoided.
* out of ****
Dave J. Wilson
©2014 Cinematic Shocks, Dave J. Wilson
- All work is the property of the credited author and may not be reprinted or
reproduced elsewhere without permission.
I actually really enjoyed both this and The New York Ripper. But then again, I might be one of the hardcore Fulci completests you mentioned. It may be relative to the fact that while watching through all of Fulci's horror films, those two are followed up with the awkward horror comedy Touch of Death, the atrocious Sodoma's Ghost, and then later the bland Sweet House of Horrors and Door Into Silence. So compared to how unwatchable some of his later films are, I enjoy these two. Hell I even enjoy Aenigma and Demonia. But then when you compare this and New York Ripper to some of the great gialli, it doesn't begin to hold water. And you're spot on about Karlatos overacting.
ReplyDelete‘House of Clocks’ isn’t one that I’ve seen yet and I would like to as I’ve read some positive things about it but It’s pretty hard to get hold of . And yeah, Fulci did make four of the best gialli from '69 up to '77.
DeleteI actually loved Touch of Death... haven't seen this one yet though.
DeleteYeah 'Touch of Death' is a film that divides Fulci fans. One-half considers it one of his better later efforts and the other half are put off by its comedy elements. I haven't made up my mind about it the couple of times that I've seen it.
DeleteHouse of Clocks is decent, despite the obvious 'made for TV' feel that it has. And yeah, I did not like Touch of Death, the comedy was just so clumsy.
DeleteDave, I feel like I've gone ten rounds with a Fulci-hater and emerged with serious concussion - the odiously awful The New York Ripper, overrated Zombie, the passably watchable The House by the Cemetery... Ouch ! I'm all for slaughtering sacred cows but damn, these are three major world-shakers in my young European Cult Cinema watching years ! Fine stuff neverlessless, and I'm thinking you might be spot on in your appraisal for Murder Rock, (which would have made a great title for an Alcatraz film if nothing else). I've had the Shriek Show DVD in various carts throughout the years but never quite pulled the trigger on. Actually, I've taken a sabbatical from Fulci lately, my last outing was a disastrous screening of Manhattan Baby, which was so meandering, it was pure torture, but more than that, Fulci's insistence on cutting to huge close-ups of eyes and furrowed brows really drove me nuts and the film was abandoned about an hour in... Really love the new blog banner, its really terrific !
ReplyDeleteThank you, Wes.
DeleteI'm actually a fan of most of Lucio Fulci's films up to the early '80s. Although I don't like 'Zombie' and 'The House by the Cemetery' that much they are still worth a watch from time to time.
However, I do have an intense dislike for 'The New York Ripper' and that's where Fulci started to go right downhill for me. Here's my review...
http://cinematicshocks.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-york-ripper-1982.html
Oh yeah, I actually have three new banners that I will be rotating every week.
DeleteThey are designed by the very talented Beyond Horror Design. You can check out his blog for fantastic faux posters and occasional wallpapers for genre classics...
http://beyondhorrordesign.blogspot.co.uk/