Lucio Fulci

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Lucio Fulci

#26 Post by Mr Sausage » Thu Aug 04, 2011 7:15 pm

I'll grant that the ending of The Beyond (overlooking the infuriating plot device of the hero continually shooting the zombies in the belly even when it should be pretty clear by then even to him that the zombies only stop coming when you shoot them in the head) very effectively shows the logic of our world crumbling until time and space fracture and disappear altogether. The final moments are very good representations of nightmare logic. If Fulci had been a better filmmaker, he would've controlled this steady breakdown of physical laws (something John Carpenter did exceedingly well in the first act of Prince of Darkness) throughout the film, but instead the previous moments of defied logic come across as clumsy set-ups for more gore scenes, and so aren't the point.

To the Devil a Daughter's ending is inept for sure, perhaps even worse than the strikingly terrible ending to Fulci's House by the Cemetery. I bought the reveal that ends The Devil Rides Out, tho', because everything we know about witchcraft and sorcery comes from Christopher Lee. So when the authority for all the happenings suddenly points out some new information, you're inclined to credit it, even if on second thought it's kind of a cheat.

As an aside, while I am not a fan of To the Devil a Daughter, for several reasons, I think The Devil Rides Out, for all its dodgy special effects work, is one of Hammer's very best.

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Re: Worst DVD Covers...ever! (Part 3-D)

#27 Post by MichaelB » Fri Aug 05, 2011 5:49 am

Mr Sausage wrote:Haven't seen Lizard in a Woman's Skin, tho', so we'll see if it fits the broken clock rule.
My Sight & Sound review:
A Lizard in a Woman's Skin

Lucio Fulci; Italy/France/Spain 1971; Optimum/Region 2; Certificate 15; 99 minutes; Aspect Ratio 1.85:1 anamorphic; Features: trailer

Film: Trivia buffs, what links Zombie Flesh Eaters with the Duke of Bedford? It's this early giallo from Italy's future splatter auteur, partly shot at Woburn Abbey, the rest in an unsettlingly foreign-looking London where Stanley Baker's detective (whose compulsive whistling of an eerie Ennio Morricone tune is one of many agreeably off-kilter touches) pieces together the murder of a politician's neighbour. The genre thesaurus is well-thumbed: there are spiral staircases, organs resounding through cavernous halls and even bats in the belfry, but also more outré moments (especially a genuinely shocking hospital discovery) that anticipate Fulci's later career. Despite numerous hallucinatory dream sequences, the final wrapping-up actually makes sense, by no means a given in this genre.

Disc: Although this jettisons most of the extras of Anchor Bay's US edition, it's a significant improvement in a crucial respect, since it offers a superb transfer of the full Italian release version. Two soundtracks are provided, with English offering the closest lip-sync and situational plausibility, although this sometimes dips into subtitled Italian to cover material removed for the international version. The self-consciously psychedelic trailer is good for a giggle.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Lucio Fulci

#28 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Aug 05, 2011 12:59 pm

Well, I just put it near the top of my rental list (although I don't think I'm getting the full Italian release cut which, if true, is annoying). I'll report back when I've watched it.

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colinr0380
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Re: Lucio Fulci

#29 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Aug 05, 2011 1:20 pm

I remember on the Bird With Crystal Plumage commentary that Kim Newman and Alan Jones did that they talked of Argento being really upset at Fulci for a long time because of the feeling that Fulci was seemingly copying many of the Argento themes in a more mercenary manner, to the extent of getting very angry whenever Fulci's name was mentioned! But they were apparently working together on Wax Mask before Fulci's death.

I don't disagree with the points that Mr Sausage is making but it just seems that our tolerance levels varies for this director. I certainly think in the context of Italian exploitation that Fulci cannot be seen to be the 'worst' - Umberto Lenzi's sole dabbling into zombie horror with Nightmare City is far more difficult to piece together into a coherent whole:
SpoilerShow
though the 'it was all a dream' circular ending returning the hero back to the scene of the outbreak at the airport to repeat the entire thing again somewhat mitigates all those problems!
And a film that I shied away from for the longest time, Zombie Creeping Flesh (by Bruno Mattei who would later take over direction of Zombi 3 from Fulci), is an utterly incompetent Frankenstein's monster of a film in many respects but so deliriously goofy in its utter lack of logic, shifting character motivations, slipping from genre to genre (The opening involves a team of mercenaries breaking up a political siege situation. The middle of the film stops totaly dead for a mondo-inspired scene in which our anthropologist heroine strips topless to blend in with a local African tribe and watch their funeray rites for those dying of the mysterious zombie plague. And there is also that infamous scene where one member of our ostensibly heroic band of gun toting mercenaries puts on a green tutu and top hat, picks up a cane and does an impromptu musical number before inevitably having it interrupted by the zombies!) and ripping off of every current Italian horror trend (Goblin's scores for Dawn of the Dead and Contamination are repurposed) that I was totally won over by it.

It is utterly ridiculous and in no way realistic at all but is highly entertaining - it even has a wonderful, totally out of nowhere, fatalistic final act. I've never really seen such a death wish shown in such an overwhelming way, and think that it might be so powerful because of its poorly integrated relationship with the rest of the film.

Those are not Fulci films but I hope they help to illustrate my tolerance for wonky, crude and misshapen Italian horror!

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Re: Lucio Fulci

#30 Post by MichaelB » Fri Aug 05, 2011 1:46 pm

colinr0380 wrote:It is utterly ridiculous and in no way realistic at all but is highly entertaining - it even has a wonderful, totally out of nowhere, fatalistic final act. I've never really seen such a death wish shown in such an overwhelming way, and think that it might be so powerful because of its poorly integrated relationship with the rest of the film.
I first saw Zombie Creeping Flesh at the late lamented Scala cinema, with a sellout audience. The first belly laugh came with a line whose dubbers didn't even try to synchronise plausibly, and by the time the radioactive rat had got into the protective suit (how?) and blood was spraying everywhere we were cheering and applauding it from the rafters. In fact, I think that was my first great Scala audience experience, and I've been very fond of the film ever since - in fact, it was the subject of one of my favourite reviews for DVD Times (as was).

(Sadly, in the upgrade to The Digital Fix, all the original framegrabs seem to have vanished - I'll see if I've still got them on my hard drive).

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Lucio Fulci

#31 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Aug 05, 2011 4:03 pm

colin wrote:I certainly think in the context of Italian exploitation that Fulci cannot be seen to be the 'worst'
Oh, agreed, Fulci is nowhere near the worst. Umberto Lenzi and Joe D'amato have him beat. His reputation however vastly outweighs his accomplishments. He is regarded by a lot (most?) horror fans as being one of the very best Italian horror directors, the equal of, if not superior to, Argento, Bava, and Soavi. And this reputation rests mainly on some of his more inept films. I understand getting a kick out of schlock (I'm kind of a fan of the enormously silly giallo, Pieces, for instance), and I can appreciate all the eye-gouging, gut-vomiting, throat ripping, and head drilling; but in the end, I just don't understand how he's held in such high regard. Even Don't Torture a Duckling, routinely called one of the greatest giallos, I would rate the equal of Argento's Trauma or Bava's Bay of Blood and Five Dolls for an August Moon, ie. among their more middling efforts.

By the way, does anyone have an actual defense of New York Ripper?

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Re: Lucio Fulci

#32 Post by broadwayrock » Fri Aug 05, 2011 4:17 pm

The duck voice was convincing

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colinr0380
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Re: Lucio Fulci

#33 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Aug 05, 2011 4:23 pm

I was going to add that I think Michele Soavi's Stagefright-Aquarius is one of the high points of Italian horror, and one of the best slasher films overall. I love that opening musical number with the Marilyn Monroe stand-in in the billowing white dress and playing a saxophone solo! But apart from StageFright, Soavi's films are even more incoherent than Fulci's, albeit often not as gore focused.

I think New York Ripper is a good film, mostly for the reasons that it is controversial - it is utterly nihilistic where even the victims are portrayed as being deeply flawed in many respects. That is a good example though of the key scene being the gore scene, where the prostitute that the Lieutenant is having a relationship with is slowly tortured and murdered while the detective extremely slowly weighs up the options of revealing this by leading the rest of the force to her apartment. That's the point at which I think we lose all sympathy for anyone in that film.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Lucio Fulci

#34 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Aug 05, 2011 9:32 pm

I don't actually think New York Ripper is nihilistic. It is deeply cynical and seems to think pretty much everyone--or at least everyone in New York--is worthless and consumed by depravity of one sort or another. The killer vents his frustration and resentment at the bodily corruption of an innocent child by forcefully corrupting the bodies of women who cavalierly over-indulge in the worldly pleasures denied the dying child. So the film cannot be nihilistic because at the core of the killer's psychology is an idea of how the world ought to be, and the rage and pain of seeing it fail to match that ideal. The world is not meaningless, it simply has failed in one instance to proceed as it should, which drives the killer insane and provokes him into attacks on the indulgences of women. When the film ends with the plaintive cries of the child for her father, the point seems to be that her tears are not empty, that the killer should have been there to comfort and console her with honest human feeling instead of selfishly indulging in his own resentment, a sentiment echoed by the psychologist. A meaningful reaction was demanded from the killer, but he chose the wrong one: imposing a pattern of meaning on society through violence instead of making a human connection in the face of life's unfairness. The people in the movie act wrongly, but there is the implication that it was possible for them to act rightly.

A truly nihilistic movie is Argento's Inferno, where the villain is revealed to be death itself. Her destruction therefore becomes her own triumph as it reveals the hero will never overcome her, will never avenge or right the evils she's perpetrated, and will be consumed by her along with everyone else. The hero's discovery of the killer's identity does not clear the narrative of mystery and rebalance the world the killer had unbalanced as in most giallos; it reveals that narrative, and the world itself, is a flimsily constructed shell hiding the chaos and disorder at the heart of everything. Heroic action in giallos gives meaning to meaningless deaths by revealing the pattern behind them and offering the dead retribution for their pain. The end of Inferno just reinforces not only the meaninglessness of their deaths, but of all actions. Now that is nihilism, and it's actually kind of frightening to contemplate.

I don't like New York Ripper. It's pedestrian in every way except one, its violence, and that violence is so leering and lingering that the movie begins to participate in the killer's own misogyny. The camera in this movie finds female sexuality repugnant even as it can't stop leering at it; so when the camera continues its leering gaze as the killer mutilates the areas of the female body associated with sexuality, critical distance on behalf of the film becomes impossible. The killer's disgust is carried over into the camera's disgust and the movie becomes misogynistic as a result. It's a repulsive film that I can't find much value in.

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Re: Lucio Fulci

#35 Post by Morbii » Sat Aug 06, 2011 1:14 am

Mr Sausage wrote:I don't like New York Ripper. It's pedestrian in every way except one, its violence, and that violence is so leering and lingering that the movie begins to participate in the killer's own misogyny. The camera in this movie finds female sexuality repugnant even as it can't stop leering at it; so when the camera continues its leering gaze as the killer mutilates the areas of the female body associated with sexuality, critical distance on behalf of the film becomes impossible. The killer's disgust is carried over into the camera's disgust and the movie becomes misogynistic as a result. It's a repulsive film that I can't find much value in.
I remember really liking the camera in this film. That may be because it felt very "Argento-ish" to me, though.

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Der Spieler
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Re: Lucio Fulci

#36 Post by Der Spieler » Sat Aug 06, 2011 3:24 am

Mr Sausage wrote:I don't like New York Ripper. It's pedestrian in every way except one, its violence, and that violence is so leering and lingering that the movie begins to participate in the killer's own misogyny. The camera in this movie finds female sexuality repugnant even as it can't stop leering at it; so when the camera continues its leering gaze as the killer mutilates the areas of the female body associated with sexuality, critical distance on behalf of the film becomes impossible. The killer's disgust is carried over into the camera's disgust and the movie becomes misogynistic as a result. It's a repulsive film that I can't find much value in.
I must say I agree. I had a hard time getting used to the whole duck-voice killer thing. It just sounded ridiculous, and frankly the ending didn't quite make up for it. I'm quite used to his poor scenarios, but this one was stretching it. And I thought the film looked pretty ugly and cheap. The whole part with the rich woman getting her rocks off with strangers was totally unnecessary. I mean how many more times could the guy say "Shes loooves it"... I don't understand why BU thought it was a good idea to put out a Blu-ray of this but let 'Duckling' rot on DVD with an outdated transfer.

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Re: Lucio Fulci

#37 Post by knives » Sat Aug 06, 2011 3:30 am

Money dear boy. New York Ripper is simply a more high profile title. I think only Zombi is better known.

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Re: Lucio Fulci

#38 Post by MichaelB » Sat Aug 06, 2011 4:46 am

Yes, absolutely. Even fans of Fulci's 1980s films might not be able to pick out Don't Torture a Duckling in an identity parade, whereas anyone familiar with the British "video nasty" moral panic of thirty years ago will recognise The New York Ripper.

You might as well ask why a distributor is favouring The Texas Chain Saw Massacre over Let's Scare Jessica to Death.

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Re: Lucio Fulci

#39 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Aug 06, 2011 5:25 am

Those are very good points about New York Ripper not being nihilistic Mr Sausage (I apologise for having too blithely having plucked the first term that came to mind to use in describing the film!) and a very fine reading of the film overall, even if it is one that you don't like that much!

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Re: Lucio Fulci

#40 Post by Mr Sausage » Sat Aug 06, 2011 12:47 pm

colinr0380 wrote:Those are very good points about New York Ripper not being nihilistic Mr Sausage (I apologise for having too blithely having plucked the first term that came to mind to use in describing the film!) and a very fine reading of the film overall, even if it is one that you don't like that much!
You have this strange ability to get me to think seriously about films I normally wouldn't give the time of day to.

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Der Spieler
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Re: Lucio Fulci

#41 Post by Der Spieler » Sat Aug 06, 2011 5:37 pm

MichaelB wrote:Yes, absolutely. Even fans of Fulci's 1980s films might not be able to pick out Don't Torture a Duckling in an identity parade, whereas anyone familiar with the British "video nasty" moral panic of thirty years ago will recognise The New York Ripper.

You might as well ask why a distributor is favouring The Texas Chain Saw Massacre over Let's Scare Jessica to Death.
I got the point long ago, Michael... It was more a rhetorical question, made from a movie buff point of view, if that's still accepted.

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Re: Lucio Fulci

#42 Post by knives » Sat Aug 06, 2011 5:49 pm

What was the rhetoric for though?

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Der Spieler
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Re: Lucio Fulci

#43 Post by Der Spieler » Sat Aug 06, 2011 5:52 pm

I don't write well in english, it's not my first language. Maybe I didn't express myself correctly, sorry...

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knives
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Re: Lucio Fulci

#44 Post by knives » Sat Aug 06, 2011 6:02 pm

No, you wrote like a native speaker, but I don't understand the why.

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Re: Lucio Fulci

#45 Post by doc mccoy » Sun Aug 07, 2011 7:53 am

Mr Sausage wrote:I don't actually think New York Ripper is nihilistic. It is deeply cynical and seems to think pretty much everyone--or at least everyone in New York--is worthless and consumed by depravity of one sort or another. The killer vents his frustration and resentment at the bodily corruption of an innocent child by forcefully corrupting the bodies of women who cavalierly over-indulge in the worldly pleasures denied the dying child. So the film cannot be nihilistic because at the core of the killer's psychology is an idea of how the world ought to be, and the rage and pain of seeing it fail to match that ideal. The world is not meaningless, it simply has failed in one instance to proceed as it should, which drives the killer insane and provokes him into attacks on the indulgences of women. When the film ends with the plaintive cries of the child for her father, the point seems to be that her tears are not empty, that the killer should have been there to comfort and console her with honest human feeling instead of selfishly indulging in his own resentment, a sentiment echoed by the psychologist. A meaningful reaction was demanded from the killer, but he chose the wrong one: imposing a pattern of meaning on society through violence instead of making a human connection in the face of life's unfairness. The people in the movie act wrongly, but there is the implication that it was possible for them to act rightly.



I don't like New York Ripper. It's pedestrian in every way except one, its violence, and that violence is so leering and lingering that the movie begins to participate in the killer's own misogyny. The camera in this movie finds female sexuality repugnant even as it can't stop leering at it; so when the camera continues its leering gaze as the killer mutilates the areas of the female body associated with sexuality, critical distance on behalf of the film becomes impossible. The killer's disgust is carried over into the camera's disgust and the movie becomes misogynistic as a result. It's a repulsive film that I can't find much value in.

I think you've actually given a rather good defense of NYR; I would add that I think it's effective because it sets out to do what it says on the tin. New York Ripper is New York's version of Jack the Ripper - most slashers are not designed to create and inspire disgust and revulsion; most are designed with the purpose of making money and giving the punters a thrilling ride, and not caring about whether the violence is disturbing or offensive or not. Now I'm not saying that Fulci filmed it with this intention in mind, but if one does not want to revisit NYR because they find the violence repulsive - then on a certain level, it works; such violence in real life is vicious and nasty and so should be depicted as such on the screen. How many slashers have there been and how many can one remember? Or perhaps the question to ask is this: how many slashers can one forget due to the subject matter/violence being treated with indifference?

One thing I did like is the ambiguity that Fulci subjects the characters to - there are touches which place them all under suspicion. I particularly liked
SpoilerShow
the end confrontation between the female lead and the killer. There is this phone call where it not's quite clear what's happening; the way she then stabs him without hesitation was quite a surprise - we learn that she's certainly got the killer instinct herself. And we then learn when she's in the back of the cab what the phone call revealed and how the events then unfolded. And the end where a child is left crying for her father, left to die alone is arguably just as disturbing, if not more so than the horrendous murders that we've seen before.
It's actually quite ballsy to end a slasher on that note - examining the human cost and the collateral damage. Most other slashers would have either the killer dying or if the killer is already dead, a scene with one or two survivors smiling, pretty much instantly forgetting the people whom they were friends/related to that did not survive.

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Re: Lucio Fulci

#46 Post by Mr Sausage » Sun Aug 07, 2011 1:45 pm

doc mccoy wrote:I think you've actually given a rather good defense of NYR
Well, my words have made the film sound more coherent and organized than it actually is. It took some reconstructing because of how indifferently the film indicates the significance of its own parts.
doc mccoy wrote:but if one does not want to revisit NYR because they find the violence repulsive - then on a certain level, it works
Which only proves that success is assured if you set your sights low enough.

The violence in NYR isn't repulsive because of any technical expertise or flight of imagination; it's repulsive because the film seems to approve. It lingers, disgustedly, on women's sexual depravity and then lingers when they are punished for it. A lot of giallos are mistakenly called misogynistic for having killers who inflict violence on women, but in this case, I think the charge is entirely warranted. The film does not achieve any distance on the acts of the killer, so it becomes implicated. It's only once the killer is dead that the movie tries to gain some distance, but by that point it's far too late.
doc mccoy wrote:One thing I did like is the ambiguity that Fulci subjects the characters to - there are touches which place them all under suspicion.
This would've been more impressive if his script weren't so terrible. The killer and the lead girl don't show up until 45 minutes through the movie, and they aren't even given an introduction. They just appear in the narrative, and you sit there wondering why they're suddenly getting so much screen time before it finally hits you that they're the focus of the film, or at least are supposed to be. Plus this movie makes so many people red herrings that frankly, when it's revealed they aren't the killer, you can't figure out why they were acting so suspiciously in the first place. This movie is so inept it's incredible.
doc mccoy wrote:It's actually quite ballsy to end a slasher on that note - examining the human cost and the collateral damage. Most other slashers would have either the killer dying or if the killer is already dead, a scene with one or two survivors smiling, pretty much instantly forgetting the people whom they were friends/related to that did not survive.
Yes, most giallos end with a happy sense that the world has been rebalanced now that the killer has been unmasked and dispatched. The ending to NYR continues the cynicism of its depiction of New York by showing that the killer's unmasking and death has not mitigated suffering--suffering will continue. Although Fulci does this in such a manipulative and sentimental way that I find it slightly less impressive than you. Plus the darkness of this ending is mitigated somewhat by the (rather preachy) implication that places like New York only exist because people choose to act badly and with self-interest rather than with humanity and self-sacrifice. It's a very moral film, which makes its violence towards women all the more despicable since its leering gaze enjoys and encourages such violence even while it condemns such actions in the end. No movie which participates in atrocity is in a good position to turn around and hand out judgements.

But I don't think Fulci's ending is idiosyncratic. Argento's giallos effectively linger on the damage done the survivors: Deep Red's ending, where Mark is forced to stare at his own reflection in the growing pool of blood; or Tenebrae, where the only survivor screams until the shot goes black (shades of Witchfinder General); or Inferno's nihilistic finale, where the villain raises her arms in triumph as the building crumbles around her. Even some of the Friday the 13th movies manage something of this sort: in number 3, the heroine is carted away gibbering after having had a hallucination of Jason's return while the camera surveys the carnage; in number 4, it ends with the lead boy screaming and hacking away at Jason's long dead corpse in slow motion while the lead girl pleads with him to stop. Or look at Halloween 4, which ends (SPOILER) with the little girl stabbing her mother to death, starting the cycle all over again.

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Der Spieler
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Re: Lucio Fulci

#47 Post by Der Spieler » Sun Aug 07, 2011 2:43 pm

knives wrote:No, you wrote like a native speaker, but I don't understand the why.
Not quite sure I understand what you're driving at, but I wasn't born in the days of the video nasty panic and I didn't really know that Ney York Ripper was such a high-profile title. Now I know, I stand corrected, and that's that. I kind of assumed that money must be the main point, but in my circle of friends, more people have seen DTAD than NYR. I understand this is not the norm, though.

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Re: Lucio Fulci

#48 Post by doc mccoy » Sun Aug 07, 2011 3:18 pm

Mr Sausage wrote:But I don't think Fulci's ending is idiosyncratic. Argento's giallos effectively linger on the damage done the survivors: Deep Red's ending, where Mark is forced to stare at his own reflection in the growing pool of blood; or Tenebrae, where the only survivor screams until the shot goes black (shades of Witchfinder General); or Inferno's nihilistic finale, where the villain raises her arms in triumph as the building crumbles around her. Even some of the Friday the 13th movies manage something of this sort: in number 3, the heroine is carted away gibbering after having had a hallucination of Jason's return while the camera surveys the carnage; in number 4, it ends with the lead boy screaming and hacking away at Jason's long dead corpse in slow motion while the lead girl pleads with him to stop. Or look at Halloween 4, which ends (SPOILER) with the little girl stabbing her mother to death, starting the cycle all over again.
I'm not sure I agree with the Deep Red example -
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even though the stare into the pool of blood provides a cause for reflection, what else could he have done in that scenario, except allow himself to be killed? The stare may invite us to consider that the protagonist saved himself at a price and that price was high, but at the same time a good character survived. In addition, Daria Nicolodi's character appears to have survived, so I don't think Deep Red's ending falls into the negative ending camp. I will agree with Tenebrae,though.
You've touched on something else that bothers me about Argento - of the films of his that I have seen, the situation always seems to be resolved
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by either a quirk of fate where the main character cannot make the conscious decision to kill in self-defense and instead machinery does the job instead - Card Player with the train, Tenebrae with the sculpture, Varelli in Inferno with the microphone lead (Deep Red is a borderline case as Hemming's character presses the lift button, but it is in the heat of moment and I don't think he bargained on the results) - or a third party resolves it: the cops in Sleepless and Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and the monkey in Phenomena. For whatever reason, the protagonist must keep his/her hands clean.
I know many people argue that his style is all one should focus on, but I don't think his style is enough to transcend his repetitiveness. And as for Deep Red, even though it's well directed -
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there are some seriously glaring potholes in that film - how is a man who's stabbed from behind, falling to the ground dead, mummified with his mouth wide open? And I find it hard to believe that no one read the book of urban legends in advance and made no attempt to track that house down and make investigations.
If it had not been for David Hemming's performance, the Goblin score and a couple of inventive death scenes, then I'm not sure that this would be the leading giallo.

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Re: Lucio Fulci

#49 Post by Mr Sausage » Sun Aug 07, 2011 5:33 pm

I don't think you've grasped the significance of Deep Red's final shot. The reason Mark has to stare at himself in the blood (aside from it being the culmination of the sight/sightlessness theme) is because self-reflection was exactly what he was incapable of throughout the narrative. He effectively ignored the costs of his headlong, obsessive charge to solve the mystery, and in the end endangered everyone he was involved with, saw many of his friends killed or come close to it, and himself killed another human being. Worst of all, his obsession was driven primarily by his sense of himself as a competent, assertive male (a sense which all of his interactions with Nicolodi undercut: armwrestling her and refusing to accept the humiliating loss; being forced to sit lower than her in her car as she drives), and in the end it turns out the antagonist who asserted so much power over him and everyone else was female, subverting Mark's own gender assumptions and deflating the machoness of his endeavour. At the end, he has all the time in the world to see himself in the growing pool of blood he lead himself into, to really look at himself for the first time in the narrative. Whether it's a positive or negative ending wasn't the point (it's not a triumphant ending, we can agree); the point is whether it considers the cost of all the violence, and Deep Red most certainly does.
doc mccoy wrote:
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by either a quirk of fate where the main character cannot make the conscious decision to kill in self-defense and instead machinery does the job instead - Card Player with the train, Tenebrae with the sculpture, Varelli in Inferno with the microphone lead (Deep Red is a borderline case as Hemming's character presses the lift button, but it is in the heat of moment and I don't think he bargained on the results) - or a third party resolves it: the cops in Sleepless and Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and the monkey in Phenomena. For whatever reason, the protagonist must keep his/her hands clean.
This isn't a flaw, this is part of Argento's recurring interest in having the male protagonists of his films try to aggressively assert themselves within a heroic narrative only to become emasculated by their own helplessness in the end. Bird With the Crystal Plumage is a great example, where the protagonist heroically pursues the killer only to wind up needing to be rescued as he lies helpless in her clutches. It's a complete reversal of gender roles. Mark, in Deep Red, is continually saved by Daria Nicolodi, and tho' he defeats the killer, there is nothing heroic or macho about it. Inferno is the apex of this theme, where the male protagonist does not participate in the villain's downfall, and indeed the villain is ultimately triumphant.

As for Suspiria and Opera, the female protagonist dispatches the villain in the former and incapacitates him in the latter. Women are far more capable agents in his films. In Phenomena, however, nature is the heroic agent from the start and dispatches both villains, first through a swarm of flies and second through the monkey. The female protagonist is saved not through her own actions, but through her close kinship with the natural world.
doc mccoy wrote:
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there are some seriously glaring potholes in that film - how is a man who's stabbed from behind, falling to the ground dead, mummified with his mouth wide open? And I find it hard to believe that no one read the book of urban legends in advance and made no attempt to track that house down and make investigations.
The first instance is from Bird With the Crystal Plumage, actually, and I assume the killer put him in that position and stretched the smile on his face. As to the latter, Argento's films are riddled with things that are never totally accounted for. See my earlier posts if you want to know how I think that adds to the experience.

doc mccoy
Joined: Sun Aug 02, 2009 8:07 am

Re: Lucio Fulci

#50 Post by doc mccoy » Mon Aug 08, 2011 6:25 am

Mr Sausage wrote:I don't think you've grasped the significance of Deep Red's final shot. The reason Mark has to stare at himself in the blood (aside from it being the culmination of the sight/sightlessness theme) is because self-reflection was exactly what he was incapable of throughout the narrative. He effectively ignored the costs of his headlong, obsessive charge to solve the mystery, and in the end endangered everyone he was involved with, saw many of his friends killed or come close to it, and himself killed another human being. Worst of all, his obsession was driven primarily by his sense of himself as a competent, assertive male (a sense which all of his interactions with Nicolodi undercut: armwrestling her and refusing to accept the humiliating loss; being forced to sit lower than her in her car as she drives), and in the end it turns out the antagonist who asserted so much power over him and everyone else was female, subverting Mark's own gender assumptions and deflating the machoness of his endeavour. At the end, he has all the time in the world to see himself in the growing pool of blood he lead himself into, to really look at himself for the first time in the narrative. Whether it's a positive or negative ending wasn't the point (it's not a triumphant ending, we can agree); the point is whether it considers the cost of all the violence, and Deep Red most certainly does.
Even though the reflection in the pool of blood may invite Mark and us to consider the cost of Mark's investigations, the feelings about the ending rather depend on the viewer's overall judgment about the price of justice and the right to intervene. In my view, the question is summarily answered in the affirmative: yes, it was worth it and even though it may have resulted in unecessary deaths, Mark delivered justice for the victims who died prior to his investigations
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the father and Helga
. Had he not done so, the former's death may not have been confirmed and the latter would be unsolved. As to the deaths during - admittedly
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the professor's murder was linked directly to Mark's meddling
, but
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Righetii was already sitting on a tinder box having written that book and were we to think beyond the confines of the story, it would only be a matter of time before the killer found out about Righetti's book and decided to act.
And even though Mark's investigations may have acted as a catalyst for the killings, it still does not change the fact that the killer made the choice to kill; he/she could have chosen not to. In addition, had the police displayed the perserverance and competence that Mark had in his investigations, who's to say that the same victims would not have died anyway?; the catalyst would have been the same but from a different source.

Even though Argento regularly likes to point out that women are stronger than men in the form of
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motifs such as the female killer, the lowered seat and the arm wrestle
, I think for the reasons stated above Mark is a competent assertive male and the gaze is limited to the fact that he had taken another life. And even though this may be an oversimplification, story-wise I'm glad he survived thereby producing a qualified positive ending. He had watched
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Helga die and held her corpse; how could he ignore his instincts to act?
If he had adopted Carlo's suggestion by letting it go and letting the incompetent police take over, would that not be the worst emasculation of all? Justice not served, responsibility ignored and no guarantee whatsoever that killer would not kill again (if we were to take it beyond the confines of the story).

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