As an introduction to the zombie film this documentary is a disappointment. There are two major reasons for this.
First, while the inaugural zombie film, White Zombie (1932) is referenced, the history presented is very much from Night of the Living Dead (1968) onwards. Certainly, George A. Romero’s film inaugurated a paradigm shift in the nature of the zombie, from labourer-producer to flesh eater consumer, but this point could have been made clearer by referencing, for example, Plague of the Zombies (1966) as a point of contrast.
Second, all the films mentioned – others include Return of the Living Dead (1985), Shaun of the Dead (2003), and 28 Days Later (2002) – are Anglo-American. The contributions of continental European film-makers are entirely absent. This is a problem when you remember that Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) was a co-production with Dario Argento and that the film’s success at the Italian box-office led to several tribute productions. Two of particular note here are Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979), for its fusion of old school voodoo zombie and new school flesh-eater, and Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City (1980), for featuring running zombies more than 20 years before 28 Days Later or the remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004).
With the film running only 82 minutes and feeling padded out even these these omissions are all the more striking.
And, finally, if you are going to feature Joanna Angel talking about her zombie-porn crossover shouldn’t you also mention that Joe D’Amato, was there first?
Showing posts with label Lucio Fulci. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lucio Fulci. Show all posts
Sunday, 22 June 2014
Saturday, 2 March 2013
Aenigma fanzine
The look of this new fanzine by Nigel Maskell, of Italian Film Review, is deliberately low-fi and retro, the text being done in a typewriter font where the g’s have the descender filled in with ink and the occasional word is struck through or inserted in pencil, and then appearing as it has been cut out and pasted onto the background, with the result then being photocopied. There’s no colour, excepting the use of red card for the cover.
Anyone who remembers old punk-era, pre DTP zines, or who now reads Cinema Sewer or Rick Trembles’ Motion Picture Purgatory will feel right at home.
Nigel begins with a childhood memory of seeing Asylum whilst on holiday and how it led into horror and then Eurohorror. Following a brief digression into Joan Blondell – a digression that works thanks to the stream of consciousness style of the writing – we’re then onto five of the great Italian horror shock endings, namely Zombie/Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond, Rabid Dogs, To Be Twenty and 'Tis a Pity She’s a Whore.
Next up is a review of The Beast in Heat, in which the brilliant description of the titular Beast – "a Luciano-Pigozzi headed Ron Jeremy figure in a Luis Guzman mask" – pretty much tells those of us in the know all we need to know, that Nigel knows his stuff.
Following this is a piece on Cannibal Holocaust that’s partly about the film and partly about the late lamented video culture in the UK. Nigel’s analysis of documentary authenticity and the wider history of animal cruelty is good, though I would have added in a nod to Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, as a foundational documentary that is nevertheless misrepresentative, sensationalist and exploitative at points. I’d also say more about the score: while effective and mentioned diegetically I feel it detracts from the effectiveness of the whole.
The discussion of Zombie Flesh Eaters is similar: Part a discussion of the film, part the author’s reactions to it and the influence it has had on his life.
All in all, if you’re a reader of this blog, you should find plenty in Aenigma. If you don’t, well, as the masthead proclaims, with a reference to Welsh band Super Furry Animals, “The Man Don’t Give a Fuck”
Available from http://www.italianfilmreview.com/p/eurocult-fanzine.html.
Anyone who remembers old punk-era, pre DTP zines, or who now reads Cinema Sewer or Rick Trembles’ Motion Picture Purgatory will feel right at home.
Nigel begins with a childhood memory of seeing Asylum whilst on holiday and how it led into horror and then Eurohorror. Following a brief digression into Joan Blondell – a digression that works thanks to the stream of consciousness style of the writing – we’re then onto five of the great Italian horror shock endings, namely Zombie/Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond, Rabid Dogs, To Be Twenty and 'Tis a Pity She’s a Whore.
Next up is a review of The Beast in Heat, in which the brilliant description of the titular Beast – "a Luciano-Pigozzi headed Ron Jeremy figure in a Luis Guzman mask" – pretty much tells those of us in the know all we need to know, that Nigel knows his stuff.
Following this is a piece on Cannibal Holocaust that’s partly about the film and partly about the late lamented video culture in the UK. Nigel’s analysis of documentary authenticity and the wider history of animal cruelty is good, though I would have added in a nod to Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, as a foundational documentary that is nevertheless misrepresentative, sensationalist and exploitative at points. I’d also say more about the score: while effective and mentioned diegetically I feel it detracts from the effectiveness of the whole.
The discussion of Zombie Flesh Eaters is similar: Part a discussion of the film, part the author’s reactions to it and the influence it has had on his life.
All in all, if you’re a reader of this blog, you should find plenty in Aenigma. If you don’t, well, as the masthead proclaims, with a reference to Welsh band Super Furry Animals, “The Man Don’t Give a Fuck”
Available from http://www.italianfilmreview.com/p/eurocult-fanzine.html.
Friday, 6 January 2012
Some Fulciana
Two Polish posters for Fulci films; see if you can guess which:
And a Shark vs Zombie garage kit:
And a Shark vs Zombie garage kit:
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
002 Agenti Segretissimi
On the advice of a computer, our two heroes are secretly recruited by the Italian secret service to serve as decoys while the real agents go about their business unmolested; Franco also has a false formula implanted in a filling in his teeth. The complication is that he and Ciccio prove surprisingly elusive and effective, perhaps precisely because they don’t have a clue...
As usual Ciccio is the smarter of the two, but that isn't saying much; besides being Bondian the 002 refers to their low intelligence levels
Highlights include a visit to a health farm, with some amusing double-entendres and with a couple of gay-coded peplum type bodybuilders; a scene at a club where confusion over who is wearing the jackets with the X marked on them leads to the assassins from different enemy powers inadvertently killing one another; and the duo’s being taken as subjects for female agents to practice their seduction skills on – one getting the aged teacher rather than a beautiful young student.
I think Mary Arden from Blood and Black Lace plays the student seductress here
A visit to a Chinese restaurant, where the orders lead to plates of worms, bowls of beetles and suchlike, is perhaps a bit un-PC, but in keeping with our heroes limited view of the world – at another point, while burgling a house, they reject a Da Vinci as worthless in favour of an unknown painter with a Sicilian name.
The Italian cultural context is important in these films, which were more for domestic consumption (especially in the south) than international distribution.
Lucio Fulci directed, in that anonymous, professional, efficient way that tended to be the case for anyone working with the two comedians. An issue here, much as with the Bond films it spoofs in fact, is that the franchise was more important than the filmmaker. (This is why Tarantino, despite his avowed desire to do a Bond film, will probably never get the chance.) Basically it was don’t get in the stars’ way and let them do their thing.
Neither the best or the worst of its type, it moves along at a decent pace and is good natured enough, with Piero Umiliani’s breezy soundtrack a further plus.
Special thanks to Merlin for the custom subs.
As usual Ciccio is the smarter of the two, but that isn't saying much; besides being Bondian the 002 refers to their low intelligence levels
Highlights include a visit to a health farm, with some amusing double-entendres and with a couple of gay-coded peplum type bodybuilders; a scene at a club where confusion over who is wearing the jackets with the X marked on them leads to the assassins from different enemy powers inadvertently killing one another; and the duo’s being taken as subjects for female agents to practice their seduction skills on – one getting the aged teacher rather than a beautiful young student.
I think Mary Arden from Blood and Black Lace plays the student seductress here
A visit to a Chinese restaurant, where the orders lead to plates of worms, bowls of beetles and suchlike, is perhaps a bit un-PC, but in keeping with our heroes limited view of the world – at another point, while burgling a house, they reject a Da Vinci as worthless in favour of an unknown painter with a Sicilian name.
The Italian cultural context is important in these films, which were more for domestic consumption (especially in the south) than international distribution.
Lucio Fulci directed, in that anonymous, professional, efficient way that tended to be the case for anyone working with the two comedians. An issue here, much as with the Bond films it spoofs in fact, is that the franchise was more important than the filmmaker. (This is why Tarantino, despite his avowed desire to do a Bond film, will probably never get the chance.) Basically it was don’t get in the stars’ way and let them do their thing.
Neither the best or the worst of its type, it moves along at a decent pace and is good natured enough, with Piero Umiliani’s breezy soundtrack a further plus.
Special thanks to Merlin for the custom subs.
Monday, 28 March 2011
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
New York Ripper sighted in London
Comeandsee is a new film screening group in London. They will be showing Fulci's The New York Ripper courtesy of Shameless on 28th October, and hope to also have a videotape swap shop.
More information:
More information:
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Come rubammo la bomba atomica
There's a certain irony about this Lucio Fulci entry: Working on a directorially anonymous Franco and Ciccio vehicle, in 1966, he had the opportunity to undertake extensive location filming in Egypt. Then, in 1982, having made his name and reputation, he was not able to do anywhere as much shooting in Egypt as he would have liked on Manhattan Baby, a more personal film that serves as both a continuation of many of the themes of its horror predecessors and a conscious repudiation of their more extreme gore and violence.
As for How we Stole the Atomic Bomb itself goes, there's not much to be said: It's a Franco and Ciccio film that as usual spoofs a popular genre or cycle of the time, in this case the superspy film, and is better and no worse than the dozens of others they churned over the course of the 1960s and early 1970s.
The story begins somewhere in the Mediterranean, as a fishing boat crewed by Franco and captained by his grandfather – i.e. Franco in old age make-up – witnesses a US plane crash into the sea nearby. It turns out that the plane was carrying an atomic bomb.
Soon various agents are after Franco, seeking the co-ordinates of the plane. Besides Ciccio, agent number 87 in Spectralis, there are James Bomb (read Bond), Modesty Bluff (Blaise) and Derek Flit (Flint). Meanwhile Franco is being wooed by Cinzia, not realising that she is the daughter of the sinister Dr Yes (No) who has his own plans for the bomb, curiously involving raising the dead...
It's all harmless fun, with the odd moment of inspiration amidst the usual mixture of slapstick, mugging, and linguistic confusion, with our heroes eventually teaming up and steal the bomb for themselves in a typical piece of cynicism or enlightened self-interest that anyone else is better suited to possess it... until the delicious final image.
As for How we Stole the Atomic Bomb itself goes, there's not much to be said: It's a Franco and Ciccio film that as usual spoofs a popular genre or cycle of the time, in this case the superspy film, and is better and no worse than the dozens of others they churned over the course of the 1960s and early 1970s.
The story begins somewhere in the Mediterranean, as a fishing boat crewed by Franco and captained by his grandfather – i.e. Franco in old age make-up – witnesses a US plane crash into the sea nearby. It turns out that the plane was carrying an atomic bomb.
Soon various agents are after Franco, seeking the co-ordinates of the plane. Besides Ciccio, agent number 87 in Spectralis, there are James Bomb (read Bond), Modesty Bluff (Blaise) and Derek Flit (Flint). Meanwhile Franco is being wooed by Cinzia, not realising that she is the daughter of the sinister Dr Yes (No) who has his own plans for the bomb, curiously involving raising the dead...
It's all harmless fun, with the odd moment of inspiration amidst the usual mixture of slapstick, mugging, and linguistic confusion, with our heroes eventually teaming up and steal the bomb for themselves in a typical piece of cynicism or enlightened self-interest that anyone else is better suited to possess it... until the delicious final image.
Thursday, 5 November 2009
Il lungo, il corto, il gatto
This is another of the Franco and Ciccio vehicles directed by Lucio Fulci in the mid 1960s.
The two comedians play il lungo/the long (Ciccio) and il corto/the short (Franco), in reference to their heights, their character names and their own otherwise interchangeable as usual. They are the long suffering-servants to a countess, who is devoted to il gatto/the cat, Archibaldo, in the way that only rich old ladies in movies can be.
An image from the cartoon credits
The thing that keeps the two idiots there, with Ciccio the smarter, again as always, is the promise of a pay-off when the countess snuffs it.
This soon happens, as she discovers that her purportedly faithful Archibaldo has not been as faithful as she had believed – he is a tom cat, after all, and will do what tom cats do, namely fathering kittens.
Franco duly engages in a spaghetti western style showdown with Archibaldo, cued with appropriate music and with Ciccio serving as referee. The outcomes is predictable, as Franco boots the cat out of the house. We need not be overly concerned for the animal's welfare, however, given the comedy context - you are not about to see a beloved comedian actually kick a real life cat - and the necessity for a dramatic complication that will prevent our two heroes from enjoying their just reward (or desserts) just yet.
This comes in the form of the reading of the Countess's will, which promises Franco and Ciccio some money, but only on the condition that they continue to take care of Archibaldo. (Most of the estate goes to the cat protection charity.)
No problem, they think: one cat is surely as good as another. Unfortunately the Countess had Archibaldo photographed and fingerprinted, making for one of the film's more inspired gags.
Franco and Ciccio thus begin a desperate search for Archibaldo, il gatto. At this point the film veers into Eurospy territory as they become mixed up in the attempts of Interpol and the Secret Service to apprehend a master-criminal (Ivano Staccioli) also known as The Cat...
This is one of those films that defies criticism. As a Franco and Ciccio vehicle it's no better or worse than the four or five other examples of their mainstream work I've seen: Funny in places, but something that's never likely to be respectable in the manner of a Toto or Tati. Fulci, meanwhile, does what he's there to do, namely letting the two comedians do their stuff. What's perhaps lacking, excepting the slides of Archibaldo as an image that would recur in his gialli a few years later, is the sense of a developing personality and style.
The two comedians play il lungo/the long (Ciccio) and il corto/the short (Franco), in reference to their heights, their character names and their own otherwise interchangeable as usual. They are the long suffering-servants to a countess, who is devoted to il gatto/the cat, Archibaldo, in the way that only rich old ladies in movies can be.
An image from the cartoon credits
The thing that keeps the two idiots there, with Ciccio the smarter, again as always, is the promise of a pay-off when the countess snuffs it.
This soon happens, as she discovers that her purportedly faithful Archibaldo has not been as faithful as she had believed – he is a tom cat, after all, and will do what tom cats do, namely fathering kittens.
Franco duly engages in a spaghetti western style showdown with Archibaldo, cued with appropriate music and with Ciccio serving as referee. The outcomes is predictable, as Franco boots the cat out of the house. We need not be overly concerned for the animal's welfare, however, given the comedy context - you are not about to see a beloved comedian actually kick a real life cat - and the necessity for a dramatic complication that will prevent our two heroes from enjoying their just reward (or desserts) just yet.
This comes in the form of the reading of the Countess's will, which promises Franco and Ciccio some money, but only on the condition that they continue to take care of Archibaldo. (Most of the estate goes to the cat protection charity.)
No problem, they think: one cat is surely as good as another. Unfortunately the Countess had Archibaldo photographed and fingerprinted, making for one of the film's more inspired gags.
Franco and Ciccio thus begin a desperate search for Archibaldo, il gatto. At this point the film veers into Eurospy territory as they become mixed up in the attempts of Interpol and the Secret Service to apprehend a master-criminal (Ivano Staccioli) also known as The Cat...
This is one of those films that defies criticism. As a Franco and Ciccio vehicle it's no better or worse than the four or five other examples of their mainstream work I've seen: Funny in places, but something that's never likely to be respectable in the manner of a Toto or Tati. Fulci, meanwhile, does what he's there to do, namely letting the two comedians do their stuff. What's perhaps lacking, excepting the slides of Archibaldo as an image that would recur in his gialli a few years later, is the sense of a developing personality and style.
Sunday, 16 August 2009
Cicciabomba / Fatty Girl Goes to New York
Following on from my previous piece, this 1982 comedy from Umberto Lenzi can be best summarised as one of those "I've got to eat" projects.
The star of the show is pop singer Donatella Rettore, billed under her last name in accord with her wishes: "Non chiamatemi Donatella! Il mio nome è Rettore!" / "Don't call me Donatella! My name is Rettore!"
She plays teenager Miris Bigolin, an aspiring disc jockey - albeit on church radio - in a provincial northern Italian town, whose large size prevents her from declaring her love for altar-boy Mirko, who then plays a nasty practical joke upon her.
Depressed, Miris is about to commit suicide when she learns that she has won a competition she had entered some time before. The prize is a trip to New York. There Miris meets Baronessa Judith von Kemp (Anita Ekberg, looking well past her best as far as glamourous star attractions go) who chooses her to test a new slimming treatment.
Miris loses her excess weight and undergoes an extensive makeover, thereby giving Rettore fans the opportunity to see their idol as herself, or at least without the fat suit.
Note how the poster emphasises Rettore as star, with Lenzi and Ekberg getting second billing.
The new Miris-Rettore returns home to learn that Mirko has seduced and abandoned her younger sister Deborah, who is now pregnant by him. She thus proceeds to extract her revenge...
While intermittently funny, Cicciabomba is best described as being for Rettore's fans - there must be some out there - and Lenzi completists, such as myself, but very much in that order.
For Lenzi fans, the issue is that the film is utterly impersonal and could have been made to the same standard by any of a dozen other directors.
Admittedly, comedy can be a difficult genre for the non-specialist to make their mark within, all the more so when working with a star whose name undoubtedly represents the film's main selling point.
Nonetheless, as Lucio Fulci's collaborations with Lando Buzzanca demonstrate, it is also possible for the director to impart something more personal into the proceedings: Dracula in the Provinces and The Senator Likes Women are comedies whose incorporation of elements of surrealism, anti-clericalism and class conflict marks them as of a piece with Fulci's better-known horror and giallo entries.
They may be marginal compared to these films, or a Beatrice Cenci, but they nevertheless confirm the impression that a genuine auteur, someone whose work is marked by the same obsessions, is behind them.
Indeed, by commutating Fulci into Lenzi's place here, we can well imagine what he might have done to make it his own in playing up the anti-clerical angle Lenzi only hints at, or featuring surrealistic food nightmares...
The star of the show is pop singer Donatella Rettore, billed under her last name in accord with her wishes: "Non chiamatemi Donatella! Il mio nome è Rettore!" / "Don't call me Donatella! My name is Rettore!"
She plays teenager Miris Bigolin, an aspiring disc jockey - albeit on church radio - in a provincial northern Italian town, whose large size prevents her from declaring her love for altar-boy Mirko, who then plays a nasty practical joke upon her.
Depressed, Miris is about to commit suicide when she learns that she has won a competition she had entered some time before. The prize is a trip to New York. There Miris meets Baronessa Judith von Kemp (Anita Ekberg, looking well past her best as far as glamourous star attractions go) who chooses her to test a new slimming treatment.
Miris loses her excess weight and undergoes an extensive makeover, thereby giving Rettore fans the opportunity to see their idol as herself, or at least without the fat suit.
Note how the poster emphasises Rettore as star, with Lenzi and Ekberg getting second billing.
The new Miris-Rettore returns home to learn that Mirko has seduced and abandoned her younger sister Deborah, who is now pregnant by him. She thus proceeds to extract her revenge...
While intermittently funny, Cicciabomba is best described as being for Rettore's fans - there must be some out there - and Lenzi completists, such as myself, but very much in that order.
For Lenzi fans, the issue is that the film is utterly impersonal and could have been made to the same standard by any of a dozen other directors.
Admittedly, comedy can be a difficult genre for the non-specialist to make their mark within, all the more so when working with a star whose name undoubtedly represents the film's main selling point.
Nonetheless, as Lucio Fulci's collaborations with Lando Buzzanca demonstrate, it is also possible for the director to impart something more personal into the proceedings: Dracula in the Provinces and The Senator Likes Women are comedies whose incorporation of elements of surrealism, anti-clericalism and class conflict marks them as of a piece with Fulci's better-known horror and giallo entries.
They may be marginal compared to these films, or a Beatrice Cenci, but they nevertheless confirm the impression that a genuine auteur, someone whose work is marked by the same obsessions, is behind them.
Indeed, by commutating Fulci into Lenzi's place here, we can well imagine what he might have done to make it his own in playing up the anti-clerical angle Lenzi only hints at, or featuring surrealistic food nightmares...
Sunday, 5 July 2009
Manhattan Baby
Released in 1982 Manhattan Baby is a film which may, in retrospect, be seen as the beginning of the end for its director, Lucio Fulci.
In the preceding three years, beginning with Zombie, Fulci had formed a successful partnership with producer Fabrizio De Angelis. Though that film was more of a work for hire for the director, he subsequently developed his own vision, particularly with the trilogy begun by City of the Living Dead, continued by The Beyond and completed with The House by the Cemetery.
If all Fulci’s films during this prolific period (the others being The Smuggler, The Black Cat, and The New York Ripper) have their moments, it is fair to say that the trilogy remains at the core of his critical reputation.
With this in mind, what really emerged for me on watching Manhattan Baby again was how far it seemed to represent an alternative grouping of Fulci’s films, much in the way that John Martin suggested Phenomena could be considered the (Heavenly) conclusion to a Dante-eqsue triptych in Argento’s work.
What also makes this comparison worth considering is the way in which Manhattan Baby now seems to be Fulci’s Phenomena, a greatest hits package of moments culled from his previous films, most notably City and The Beyond.
Indeed, the film can also be called a greatest hits package in a more literal sense insofar as much of its score is drawn from Fabio Frizzi’s work on these films, with countless cues creating a sense of déjà vu.
The big question here is how far this intertextuality was present in Fulci’s and screenwriting couple Dardano Sacchetti and Elisa Livia Briganti’s original version or imposed by De Angelis’s refusal or inability to commit the resources he had originally promised.
The early scenes of the film take place in Egypt, where archaeologist Professor George Hacker and a native assistant enter a lost tomb bearing a curse. The curse predictably leads to the death of the admirably, if foolishly, non-superstitious assistant via an Indiana Jones-esque spiked pit trap, with the use of Beyond cues as the two men enter the formerly sealed, subterranean space foreshadowing their doom; the fall onto spikes also being found in The Black Cat.
Hacker is then blinded with two Conquest-like blue laser beams to his eyes at the exact moment as his daughter Susie is given a mysterious amulet by an blind woman who had clearly been waiting for her…
If all this is already pretty weird, and marked by Fulci’s ocular obsession, it only gets weirder as the Hackers return to New York. There, alongside their neighbours and friends, they fall prey to random manifestations of killer snakes; unexpected portals emerging into an otherworldly desert; a lift which inexorably conspires to deposit its charges into the abyss, all culminating in a battle for Susie’s very soul.
At this point we also get two of the film’s wider intertextual allusions as the occult expert Exorcist type happens to be called Adrian Mocata in reference to Rosemary’s Baby.
What also makes Manhattan Baby such a Fulci compendium is its casting, with roles for Giovanni Frezza (House), Cinzia De Ponti and Cosimo Cineri/Lawrence Welles (Ripper), Carlo De Mejo and Martin Sorrentino (City) and, yes, Fulci himself, as yet another doctor.
Overall, not a film for the Fulci newbie, nor those who would prefer more extreme gore – although there is still probably more than enough by most film-makers standards – but one which the fan should get something more out of.
In the preceding three years, beginning with Zombie, Fulci had formed a successful partnership with producer Fabrizio De Angelis. Though that film was more of a work for hire for the director, he subsequently developed his own vision, particularly with the trilogy begun by City of the Living Dead, continued by The Beyond and completed with The House by the Cemetery.
If all Fulci’s films during this prolific period (the others being The Smuggler, The Black Cat, and The New York Ripper) have their moments, it is fair to say that the trilogy remains at the core of his critical reputation.
With this in mind, what really emerged for me on watching Manhattan Baby again was how far it seemed to represent an alternative grouping of Fulci’s films, much in the way that John Martin suggested Phenomena could be considered the (Heavenly) conclusion to a Dante-eqsue triptych in Argento’s work.
What also makes this comparison worth considering is the way in which Manhattan Baby now seems to be Fulci’s Phenomena, a greatest hits package of moments culled from his previous films, most notably City and The Beyond.
Indeed, the film can also be called a greatest hits package in a more literal sense insofar as much of its score is drawn from Fabio Frizzi’s work on these films, with countless cues creating a sense of déjà vu.
The big question here is how far this intertextuality was present in Fulci’s and screenwriting couple Dardano Sacchetti and Elisa Livia Briganti’s original version or imposed by De Angelis’s refusal or inability to commit the resources he had originally promised.
The early scenes of the film take place in Egypt, where archaeologist Professor George Hacker and a native assistant enter a lost tomb bearing a curse. The curse predictably leads to the death of the admirably, if foolishly, non-superstitious assistant via an Indiana Jones-esque spiked pit trap, with the use of Beyond cues as the two men enter the formerly sealed, subterranean space foreshadowing their doom; the fall onto spikes also being found in The Black Cat.
Hacker is then blinded with two Conquest-like blue laser beams to his eyes at the exact moment as his daughter Susie is given a mysterious amulet by an blind woman who had clearly been waiting for her…
If all this is already pretty weird, and marked by Fulci’s ocular obsession, it only gets weirder as the Hackers return to New York. There, alongside their neighbours and friends, they fall prey to random manifestations of killer snakes; unexpected portals emerging into an otherworldly desert; a lift which inexorably conspires to deposit its charges into the abyss, all culminating in a battle for Susie’s very soul.
At this point we also get two of the film’s wider intertextual allusions as the occult expert Exorcist type happens to be called Adrian Mocata in reference to Rosemary’s Baby.
What also makes Manhattan Baby such a Fulci compendium is its casting, with roles for Giovanni Frezza (House), Cinzia De Ponti and Cosimo Cineri/Lawrence Welles (Ripper), Carlo De Mejo and Martin Sorrentino (City) and, yes, Fulci himself, as yet another doctor.
Overall, not a film for the Fulci newbie, nor those who would prefer more extreme gore – although there is still probably more than enough by most film-makers standards – but one which the fan should get something more out of.
Thursday, 4 June 2009
Fulci / Bacon #2
Yesterday I was at a seminar on Francis Bacon, which produced another couple of connections to Fulci's A Lizard in a Woman's Skin:
Bacon's paintings, with their vivisected / meat forms
Lizard's dogs
Interestingly the lecturer also mentioned Bacon's interest in Bataille - someone whom I've often thought about Fulci's 'obscence' "stories of the eye" in relation to...
Bacon's paintings, with their vivisected / meat forms
Lizard's dogs
Interestingly the lecturer also mentioned Bacon's interest in Bataille - someone whom I've often thought about Fulci's 'obscence' "stories of the eye" in relation to...
Sunday, 5 April 2009
I Maniaci / The Maniacs
First things first: despite the associations that the title and director Lucio Fulci may suggest today, this is a comedy rather than a thriller or a horror film.
The madness is not that of the black gloved killer but rather of an everyday sort, specifically the ordinary madness of people like you or I – or more specifically our Italian counterparts circa 1964.
Rather than exploring this madness through a single set of characters and narrative, the film is structured around a series of vignettes, most based upon a reversal of expectation.
For instance, a driver races what he assumes to be the car alongside him, taking greater and greater risks as he endeavours to prove his masculine potency, as expressed by his macchina, against his challenger, only to be overtaken by a jumbo jet...
While some of the segments, like this one, work regardless of the viewer’s knowledge of Italian history, politics and culture, it’s probably fair to say that to get more out of the film you really do need to have some background.
For the Fulci fan, aware of his own personal background and politics, the film meanwhile provides some early indicators as to why he never fulfilled his early promise as a specialist in the Italian style comedy and became ghettoised as a cult horror director. Specifically, he was just too harsh and too cynical in his approach, too willing to bit the hand that might otherwise have fed him by criticising both left and right, modernity and tradition.
This comes through most strongly in the segment starring Enrico Maria Salerno as a hypocritical left-wing / avant-garde / intellectual author who advises an old colleague who comes asking for advice to spice up his realist account of partisan activity with extraneous sex, violence and bad language, only to then deny the result publication as inauthentic and immoral; Salerno’s character’s dog is telling called Pier-Paolo, whilst he himself makes apparent allusions to the likes of Accatone and Mama Roma.
Another story, in which a souther hitch-hiker and his northern lift gradually convince themselves that the other is out to kill them, helps illuminate Fulci’s understanding of regional relations, to indicate again that his representations of the south(erner) in Don’t Torture a Duckling were not merely an easy resort to stereotype but something more worked / thought through.
There’s also an anti-clerical and anti-bourgeois skit, as two antique hunters think they’ve bought a load of valuable items from a monastery at a bargain price, only for the punchline to reveal that the monastery buys these as seconds wholesale from the furnishers nearby. The segment also features its own internal running gag, with the monk refusing the various things offered him by the couple on religious grounds, to then decline wine on account of his ulcer.
For those less interested in identifying Fulci’s auteur signature, I Maniaci boasts the attraction of a superior ensemble cast, featuring the likes of Lisa Gastoni, Barbara Steele, Margaret Lee and Franco and Ciccio. It also has a charming pop score by Ennio Morricone, with vocal performances by the likes of Nico Fidenco and Rita Pavone.
The madness is not that of the black gloved killer but rather of an everyday sort, specifically the ordinary madness of people like you or I – or more specifically our Italian counterparts circa 1964.
Rather than exploring this madness through a single set of characters and narrative, the film is structured around a series of vignettes, most based upon a reversal of expectation.
For instance, a driver races what he assumes to be the car alongside him, taking greater and greater risks as he endeavours to prove his masculine potency, as expressed by his macchina, against his challenger, only to be overtaken by a jumbo jet...
While some of the segments, like this one, work regardless of the viewer’s knowledge of Italian history, politics and culture, it’s probably fair to say that to get more out of the film you really do need to have some background.
For the Fulci fan, aware of his own personal background and politics, the film meanwhile provides some early indicators as to why he never fulfilled his early promise as a specialist in the Italian style comedy and became ghettoised as a cult horror director. Specifically, he was just too harsh and too cynical in his approach, too willing to bit the hand that might otherwise have fed him by criticising both left and right, modernity and tradition.
This comes through most strongly in the segment starring Enrico Maria Salerno as a hypocritical left-wing / avant-garde / intellectual author who advises an old colleague who comes asking for advice to spice up his realist account of partisan activity with extraneous sex, violence and bad language, only to then deny the result publication as inauthentic and immoral; Salerno’s character’s dog is telling called Pier-Paolo, whilst he himself makes apparent allusions to the likes of Accatone and Mama Roma.
Another story, in which a souther hitch-hiker and his northern lift gradually convince themselves that the other is out to kill them, helps illuminate Fulci’s understanding of regional relations, to indicate again that his representations of the south(erner) in Don’t Torture a Duckling were not merely an easy resort to stereotype but something more worked / thought through.
There’s also an anti-clerical and anti-bourgeois skit, as two antique hunters think they’ve bought a load of valuable items from a monastery at a bargain price, only for the punchline to reveal that the monastery buys these as seconds wholesale from the furnishers nearby. The segment also features its own internal running gag, with the monk refusing the various things offered him by the couple on religious grounds, to then decline wine on account of his ulcer.
For those less interested in identifying Fulci’s auteur signature, I Maniaci boasts the attraction of a superior ensemble cast, featuring the likes of Lisa Gastoni, Barbara Steele, Margaret Lee and Franco and Ciccio. It also has a charming pop score by Ennio Morricone, with vocal performances by the likes of Nico Fidenco and Rita Pavone.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
You've seen the films, now wear the jacket?!
"The only jacket in our Vintage Gold collection this summer the Fulci jacket is a smart looking piece of 70's retro styling. "
The 'Fulci' jacket
The 'Fulci' jacket
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
I ragazzi del juke-box / The Juke-Box Kids
Unlikely as it may sound, future horror specialist Lucio Fulci made his directorial debut with this musical comedy.
A kind of Italian take on the Elvis film, Rock Around the Clock, It’s Trad Dad, or any number of other films of the time exploiting the rise of the new post-war youth culture, I ragazzi del juke-box / The Juke-Box Kids’ plot is back-of-the-envelope stuff, replete with the usual tropes of inter-generational and familial conflict and a happy ever-after ending.
To wit fuddy-duddy daddy Commander Cesari doesn’t ‘get’ his daughter Giulia’s taste in music, only to be shown the error of his ways and old-fashioned tastes when she and her friends take over the running of his record label and save it from bankruptcy.
While the results may be test your tolerance for Adriano Celentano, Betty Dorys, Fred Buscaglione and other hip young performers of the era at times, they also have many points of interest.
Celentano, doing the Elvis thang
First, Fulci’s direction is pretty stylish, handling the song and dance routines well and combining superimpositions and slow motion in some of the later Vorkapich-style montage sequences.
One of the montages - three images, plus slow motion
Fulci and Buscaglione
Second, he also makes his first cameo appearance, as an A&R or talent scout type who, in characteristic self-deprecating manner, proves more interested in the women than the music; or, alternatively, draws into question the purity of the product, that it is as much ‘sex’ as music which is really being bought and sold here, a point further made by an impromptu striptease routine at an otherwise stage-managed battle of the bands type event.
Third, the cast contains other figures later to play prominent roles the filone cinema, including Elke Sommer, later seen in the likes of Baron Blood and Lisa and the Devil, and Anthony Steffen, here billed as Antonio de Teffe and looking very different from his Django days a decade or so later.
Steffen without stubble
Fourth, there’s even a hint of horror, with one of the kids being nicknamed Dracula, and a song entitled 'I Hate Old Women' with a delightfully manic performance from the singer alongside some suitable odio(us) old women.
Io odio vecchia donne
Or, in sum, enough to make it worthwhile viewing for the dedicated Fulci enthusiast.
A kind of Italian take on the Elvis film, Rock Around the Clock, It’s Trad Dad, or any number of other films of the time exploiting the rise of the new post-war youth culture, I ragazzi del juke-box / The Juke-Box Kids’ plot is back-of-the-envelope stuff, replete with the usual tropes of inter-generational and familial conflict and a happy ever-after ending.
To wit fuddy-duddy daddy Commander Cesari doesn’t ‘get’ his daughter Giulia’s taste in music, only to be shown the error of his ways and old-fashioned tastes when she and her friends take over the running of his record label and save it from bankruptcy.
While the results may be test your tolerance for Adriano Celentano, Betty Dorys, Fred Buscaglione and other hip young performers of the era at times, they also have many points of interest.
Celentano, doing the Elvis thang
First, Fulci’s direction is pretty stylish, handling the song and dance routines well and combining superimpositions and slow motion in some of the later Vorkapich-style montage sequences.
One of the montages - three images, plus slow motion
Fulci and Buscaglione
Second, he also makes his first cameo appearance, as an A&R or talent scout type who, in characteristic self-deprecating manner, proves more interested in the women than the music; or, alternatively, draws into question the purity of the product, that it is as much ‘sex’ as music which is really being bought and sold here, a point further made by an impromptu striptease routine at an otherwise stage-managed battle of the bands type event.
Third, the cast contains other figures later to play prominent roles the filone cinema, including Elke Sommer, later seen in the likes of Baron Blood and Lisa and the Devil, and Anthony Steffen, here billed as Antonio de Teffe and looking very different from his Django days a decade or so later.
Steffen without stubble
Fourth, there’s even a hint of horror, with one of the kids being nicknamed Dracula, and a song entitled 'I Hate Old Women' with a delightfully manic performance from the singer alongside some suitable odio(us) old women.
Io odio vecchia donne
Or, in sum, enough to make it worthwhile viewing for the dedicated Fulci enthusiast.
Thursday, 12 February 2009
Operazione San Pietro / Operation St. Peter's / Die Abenteuer des Kardinal Braun / Au diable les anges
There's a book of photographs of American skid-row poet Charles Bukowski on a European tour entitled Shakespeare Never Did This, which this 1966 Fulci comedy somehow reminded me of.
Specifically, it might be subtitled Argento Never Did This, in reference to Fulci's great and more widely recognised rival. For, the more one explores the sheer breadth of Fulci's filmography beyond the horror and gialli films for which he would later become best known, the more he emerges as a talented filmmaker able to engage with just about any material
Though Fulci had certainly directed plenty of comedies by this time, including crime capers such as I Ladri, Operazione San Pietro immediately signals its distinctiveness by beginning more or less where they tended to finish, as a gang of robbers bungles a break-in.
Specifically, The Baron, The Captain and Agonia wind up not in the vault as intended, but in a prison cell, occupied by Lando Buzzanca's Napolean. Before the guards can arrive, all four men escape. (Argento would later begin Le Cinque Giornate with a similar escape from gaol, while Agonia is played by Ugo Fangareggi, later Gigi the Loser in Cat o' Nine Tails.)
Encouraging his new colleagues to think big, in line with his name, Napoleone suggests that they head north, to Rome, where one of his friends is currently in 'business'.
They arrive, only to find that this friend is himself in custody while the only other resident of the less than palatial shack, Jean-Claude Brialy's Majella, is too busy with his own work as a gigolo cum swindler to be of much help.
He does, however, suggest the newcomers take a trip to St Peters. While there Napoleone has the idea for an audacious theft: they will take Michaelangelo's Pieta and sell it on the black market.
Incredibly the plan succeeds, at which point things become more complicated. For not only does the Vatican understandably want the statue back, but a group of gangsters whom Cajella has inadvertently become involved with learn of the theft, which the Vatican has kept top-secret, and naturally want the statue for themselves…
Worse, these gangsters are led by legendary US mobster Joe Ventura, incarnated by none other than Edward G. Robinson, whose idea of subtlety is to bring out the machine guns and kill everyone who stands in his way…
The film obviously had a decent budget given its combination of US, French, German and Italian stars, comparatively large-scale set piece chases and stunts – credited to none less than Remy Julienne and his team – and the delightful animated credits sequence atop which plays some suitable irreverent jazz-pop accompanied with scatted vocals.
While it is hard for the non-Italian and / or non-Catholic to quite get all of the religious references, with the various rival orders present – the Jesuits "always have to be first," as a member of another order remarks when they are overtaken – the overall picture that emerges is of Fulci having fun and making some points at the Church's expense, without overstepping the mark into the more full-blown anti-clericalism that would come to the fore around the time of Beatrice Cenci.
Thus, Napoleone seems about to be let off lightly for his crimes by his confessor, who asks him rhetorically who hasn't stolen these days, until he then admits to stealing from the church, and specifically taking the Pieta, as far more serious matters…
There's also the way in which all the statues in St Peters are covered over, with the guide then telling visitors that they can, however, purchase postcards of said statues from the gift shop; the representation of the Vatican and its agents appear to exist as a shadow state within the state, complete with their own presses for publishing wanted posters, channels for efficiently distributing these, and unofficial police forces, used as an alternative to those of the Italian state who remain oblivious to the whole affair throughout; or Cardinal Brown's dubious past and remark at one point that the Church has been going almost two millennia longer than the cosa nostra.
But, in the end it's all in good fun, rendered safe by a touch of the old deus ex machina and a happy end in which no-one really gets hurt and some are even redeemed…
Not that Fulci only targets the church, however, as the sight of a fake blind beggar – born blind, according to his placard – finishing his meal and going back to work, updates the “court of miracles” while also introducing in passing that most famous of Fulci motifs, the ocular.
Edward G Robinson's gangster presents an amusing self-deprecating throwback to his most famous character types. 35 years or more years on and he's still responding to every situation in the same old way. There's also a sense of his being able to “dish it out” but “not take it,” a la Little Caesar, via a neat black-and-white flashback sequence set in the 1930s, in which he suffers a physical beating at the hands of other members of the mob, resulting in a psychological trauma every time the specific conditions preceding it coincide; a combination that also manages to prefigure both the chain whippings of Don't Torture a Duckling and The Beyond and the more general theme of the giallo “primal scene”.
If there is the risk of over-analysing the film, of seeing something Fulci-esque in every little detail – here we might also note the figure of the crucified Christ in a procession, who comes down off his cross to join a chase, as a further precursor of Schweik in The Beyond – this can be countered by a consideration of the more general visual style of the film, in which close-ups are sparsely used and the emphasis is usually placed more on the long and medium shot to better illustrate the expansiveness (expensiveness) of the film.
In other words, it's Fulci again demonstrating that he knew how to adapt his approach to the material and collaborators at hand, and that his later style was a genuinely personal one emerging as he matured as a filmmaker / auteur in his own right. (The question was perhaps whether critics at the time were able to recognise this, that the zoom, the rack focus, the extreme close-up of the eyes and the nailed-down camera in the set piece, represented an actual aesthetic rather than ineptitude or an unsuccessful attempt to copy Argento; to re-iterate, the two filmmakers have very different aesthetics, with one also doubting that Argento would have ever been able to work effectively with the likes of Buzzanca.)
A nice self-reflexive moment occurs when Napoleone returns to find his friends apparently dead, the victims of Ventura and his gunmen. But then it transpires that the men are really just passed out after a rather large meal, and that the blood around their faces is in fact the sauce from their pasta by way of a nice joke at the expense of what initially seemed unconvincing effects work of the sort where someone can be riddled with bullets yet without any holes or red fluid showing…
Away from Fulci’s films, the other key intertexts are The Treasure of San Gennaro, which also featured Fangareggi, and the two German Father Brown films in which the detective priest was played by Heinz Rühmann, and which give the film its German title, by way of a promotion - The Adventures of Cardinal Brown.
A film of considerable charm.
Specifically, it might be subtitled Argento Never Did This, in reference to Fulci's great and more widely recognised rival. For, the more one explores the sheer breadth of Fulci's filmography beyond the horror and gialli films for which he would later become best known, the more he emerges as a talented filmmaker able to engage with just about any material
Though Fulci had certainly directed plenty of comedies by this time, including crime capers such as I Ladri, Operazione San Pietro immediately signals its distinctiveness by beginning more or less where they tended to finish, as a gang of robbers bungles a break-in.
Specifically, The Baron, The Captain and Agonia wind up not in the vault as intended, but in a prison cell, occupied by Lando Buzzanca's Napolean. Before the guards can arrive, all four men escape. (Argento would later begin Le Cinque Giornate with a similar escape from gaol, while Agonia is played by Ugo Fangareggi, later Gigi the Loser in Cat o' Nine Tails.)
Encouraging his new colleagues to think big, in line with his name, Napoleone suggests that they head north, to Rome, where one of his friends is currently in 'business'.
They arrive, only to find that this friend is himself in custody while the only other resident of the less than palatial shack, Jean-Claude Brialy's Majella, is too busy with his own work as a gigolo cum swindler to be of much help.
He does, however, suggest the newcomers take a trip to St Peters. While there Napoleone has the idea for an audacious theft: they will take Michaelangelo's Pieta and sell it on the black market.
Incredibly the plan succeeds, at which point things become more complicated. For not only does the Vatican understandably want the statue back, but a group of gangsters whom Cajella has inadvertently become involved with learn of the theft, which the Vatican has kept top-secret, and naturally want the statue for themselves…
Worse, these gangsters are led by legendary US mobster Joe Ventura, incarnated by none other than Edward G. Robinson, whose idea of subtlety is to bring out the machine guns and kill everyone who stands in his way…
The film obviously had a decent budget given its combination of US, French, German and Italian stars, comparatively large-scale set piece chases and stunts – credited to none less than Remy Julienne and his team – and the delightful animated credits sequence atop which plays some suitable irreverent jazz-pop accompanied with scatted vocals.
While it is hard for the non-Italian and / or non-Catholic to quite get all of the religious references, with the various rival orders present – the Jesuits "always have to be first," as a member of another order remarks when they are overtaken – the overall picture that emerges is of Fulci having fun and making some points at the Church's expense, without overstepping the mark into the more full-blown anti-clericalism that would come to the fore around the time of Beatrice Cenci.
Thus, Napoleone seems about to be let off lightly for his crimes by his confessor, who asks him rhetorically who hasn't stolen these days, until he then admits to stealing from the church, and specifically taking the Pieta, as far more serious matters…
There's also the way in which all the statues in St Peters are covered over, with the guide then telling visitors that they can, however, purchase postcards of said statues from the gift shop; the representation of the Vatican and its agents appear to exist as a shadow state within the state, complete with their own presses for publishing wanted posters, channels for efficiently distributing these, and unofficial police forces, used as an alternative to those of the Italian state who remain oblivious to the whole affair throughout; or Cardinal Brown's dubious past and remark at one point that the Church has been going almost two millennia longer than the cosa nostra.
But, in the end it's all in good fun, rendered safe by a touch of the old deus ex machina and a happy end in which no-one really gets hurt and some are even redeemed…
Not that Fulci only targets the church, however, as the sight of a fake blind beggar – born blind, according to his placard – finishing his meal and going back to work, updates the “court of miracles” while also introducing in passing that most famous of Fulci motifs, the ocular.
Edward G Robinson's gangster presents an amusing self-deprecating throwback to his most famous character types. 35 years or more years on and he's still responding to every situation in the same old way. There's also a sense of his being able to “dish it out” but “not take it,” a la Little Caesar, via a neat black-and-white flashback sequence set in the 1930s, in which he suffers a physical beating at the hands of other members of the mob, resulting in a psychological trauma every time the specific conditions preceding it coincide; a combination that also manages to prefigure both the chain whippings of Don't Torture a Duckling and The Beyond and the more general theme of the giallo “primal scene”.
If there is the risk of over-analysing the film, of seeing something Fulci-esque in every little detail – here we might also note the figure of the crucified Christ in a procession, who comes down off his cross to join a chase, as a further precursor of Schweik in The Beyond – this can be countered by a consideration of the more general visual style of the film, in which close-ups are sparsely used and the emphasis is usually placed more on the long and medium shot to better illustrate the expansiveness (expensiveness) of the film.
In other words, it's Fulci again demonstrating that he knew how to adapt his approach to the material and collaborators at hand, and that his later style was a genuinely personal one emerging as he matured as a filmmaker / auteur in his own right. (The question was perhaps whether critics at the time were able to recognise this, that the zoom, the rack focus, the extreme close-up of the eyes and the nailed-down camera in the set piece, represented an actual aesthetic rather than ineptitude or an unsuccessful attempt to copy Argento; to re-iterate, the two filmmakers have very different aesthetics, with one also doubting that Argento would have ever been able to work effectively with the likes of Buzzanca.)
A nice self-reflexive moment occurs when Napoleone returns to find his friends apparently dead, the victims of Ventura and his gunmen. But then it transpires that the men are really just passed out after a rather large meal, and that the blood around their faces is in fact the sauce from their pasta by way of a nice joke at the expense of what initially seemed unconvincing effects work of the sort where someone can be riddled with bullets yet without any holes or red fluid showing…
Away from Fulci’s films, the other key intertexts are The Treasure of San Gennaro, which also featured Fangareggi, and the two German Father Brown films in which the detective priest was played by Heinz Rühmann, and which give the film its German title, by way of a promotion - The Adventures of Cardinal Brown.
A film of considerable charm.
Friday, 23 January 2009
Come svaligiammo la banca d'Italia / How we Robbed the Bank of Italy
This is one of those films which simultaneously confirms Lucio Fulci's abilities as a film-maker and indicates the problems he had in having these be recognised by mainstream critics.
Done with mirrors
For while a thoroughly competent piece of work from the writer-director, it again sees Fulci largely subordinating his own interests to showcasing the talents of the stars, Franco and Ciccio, popular comedians whose act, no matter how accomplished in its own right - and make no mistake they were damn good at what they did - was never going to appeal to the elite tastemakers.
Self-referentiality
Franco and Ciccio essentially play themselves as per usual, but are here cast as brothers, representing two-thirds of the current generation of a family with a long and illustrious history in crime.
Yet another bungle
Indeed, the black sheep of the family is the one who became a priest. Tellingly, however, this amounts to nothing more than a gag rather than being used as the springboard for a more thoroughly developed anti-clerical critique as in Fulci's more personal films.
The inversion of conventional morality?
Franco and Ciccio are also, however, thoroughly hopeless as criminals, such that their older and considerably more successful brother Paolo would rather have them stay at home, out of trouble.
To this end, he keeps his brothers supplied with a steady stream of female company, not so much because they are playboy types, instead being content to settle down with one woman apiece in a more traditional, conventional and respectable manner, and more because it has proven exceedingly difficult for Paolo to find women able to tolerate his brothers' idiocy for more than a few days or weeks at the most.
Until now, that is, as a visit to the nightclub reveals two women, Maralina and Rosalina, who are even dumber than Franco and Ciccio and thus look to be the perfect paid companions for them.
The girls
The problem is that Maralina and Rosalina also fantasise about being with tough-guy gangsters, giving Franco and Ciccio a further impetus to prove themselves. (In an ironic turn of fate, the Finnish-born Lena von Martens, who plays Maralina, apparently turned to escorting after her film career came to an end.)
Another botched job leads Paolo to take a different tack. He tells Ciccio his long-planned scheme for one last big score, namely robbing the bank of Italy, in the hope that his younger brother - the slightly more intelligent one of the pair - will realise that a life of crime is just not for him. Unfortunately Ciccio is also smart enough to secretly steal his over-confident brother's plans and resolves to carry out the robbery of the century with the help of Franco and some of their still more inept friends...
While thoroughly predictable in its Big Deal on Madonna Street styled antics from herein on, How We Robbed the Bank of Italy is never less than entertaining and manages to raise more than a few laughs and smiles along the way through the antics of its stars.
It also showcases Franco and Ciccio's versatility as comedians, with a combination of the verbal and the physical, the former relying on language and dialect and thus less accessible to non-Italian or indeed Northern Italians, though another recurring source of humour is the brothers' attempts to learn and use English. ("Frank, please," as Ciccio exasperatedly remarks in nearly every scene.)
The duo also perform a musical number that represents the reduction ad absurdum of the then-popular French Ye-Ye style, with Franco's lyrics comprising nothing more than "Yeah-Yeah" and Ciccio providing the occasional scream. This sequence, which results from the men being mistaken for members of the group on account of their costumes also highlights a connection with fumetti culture, with Franco and Ciccio's outfits being in the Diabolik and Kriminal vein.
An ironic critique of mass / popular culture; a defence of traditional cunning, both or neither?
Such moments again however highlight one of the basic issues in appreciating the film, that it helps to know the background context, one rather removed from the international art cinema.
Done with mirrors
For while a thoroughly competent piece of work from the writer-director, it again sees Fulci largely subordinating his own interests to showcasing the talents of the stars, Franco and Ciccio, popular comedians whose act, no matter how accomplished in its own right - and make no mistake they were damn good at what they did - was never going to appeal to the elite tastemakers.
Self-referentiality
Franco and Ciccio essentially play themselves as per usual, but are here cast as brothers, representing two-thirds of the current generation of a family with a long and illustrious history in crime.
Yet another bungle
Indeed, the black sheep of the family is the one who became a priest. Tellingly, however, this amounts to nothing more than a gag rather than being used as the springboard for a more thoroughly developed anti-clerical critique as in Fulci's more personal films.
The inversion of conventional morality?
Franco and Ciccio are also, however, thoroughly hopeless as criminals, such that their older and considerably more successful brother Paolo would rather have them stay at home, out of trouble.
To this end, he keeps his brothers supplied with a steady stream of female company, not so much because they are playboy types, instead being content to settle down with one woman apiece in a more traditional, conventional and respectable manner, and more because it has proven exceedingly difficult for Paolo to find women able to tolerate his brothers' idiocy for more than a few days or weeks at the most.
Until now, that is, as a visit to the nightclub reveals two women, Maralina and Rosalina, who are even dumber than Franco and Ciccio and thus look to be the perfect paid companions for them.
The girls
The problem is that Maralina and Rosalina also fantasise about being with tough-guy gangsters, giving Franco and Ciccio a further impetus to prove themselves. (In an ironic turn of fate, the Finnish-born Lena von Martens, who plays Maralina, apparently turned to escorting after her film career came to an end.)
Another botched job leads Paolo to take a different tack. He tells Ciccio his long-planned scheme for one last big score, namely robbing the bank of Italy, in the hope that his younger brother - the slightly more intelligent one of the pair - will realise that a life of crime is just not for him. Unfortunately Ciccio is also smart enough to secretly steal his over-confident brother's plans and resolves to carry out the robbery of the century with the help of Franco and some of their still more inept friends...
While thoroughly predictable in its Big Deal on Madonna Street styled antics from herein on, How We Robbed the Bank of Italy is never less than entertaining and manages to raise more than a few laughs and smiles along the way through the antics of its stars.
It also showcases Franco and Ciccio's versatility as comedians, with a combination of the verbal and the physical, the former relying on language and dialect and thus less accessible to non-Italian or indeed Northern Italians, though another recurring source of humour is the brothers' attempts to learn and use English. ("Frank, please," as Ciccio exasperatedly remarks in nearly every scene.)
The duo also perform a musical number that represents the reduction ad absurdum of the then-popular French Ye-Ye style, with Franco's lyrics comprising nothing more than "Yeah-Yeah" and Ciccio providing the occasional scream. This sequence, which results from the men being mistaken for members of the group on account of their costumes also highlights a connection with fumetti culture, with Franco and Ciccio's outfits being in the Diabolik and Kriminal vein.
An ironic critique of mass / popular culture; a defence of traditional cunning, both or neither?
Such moments again however highlight one of the basic issues in appreciating the film, that it helps to know the background context, one rather removed from the international art cinema.
Tuesday, 30 December 2008
I Ladri
Much like Contraband 20 or so years later, Lucio Fulci's feature debut is a culture clash crime story set in Naples. The similarity ends there, however, since I Ladri is not a blood-drenched gangster tale but rather a comedy in the vein of the director's mentor Steno.
Events are set in motion by the arrival of Italian-American gangster Joe Castagnato in Naples. He is rightfully suspected of having masterminded a multi-million pound heist in the USA, but nothing has been found to definitively connect him to the crime to date.
The head of the Naples police, Commissario Di Savio, brings Joe in for a friendly chat and indicates that he has finally met his match. His faith in his own and his men's abilities seems somewhat misplaced however, with the QDN - Questura di Napoli - seeming to lack anything comparable to the FBI's high-tech scientific methods whilst Di Savio himself constantly forgets his underling La Nocella's name.
Meanwhile stevedore and petty criminal Vincenzo Scognamiglio, who was working when Joe's ship arrived at the dock, discovers gold hidden in amongst a consignment of pineapple jam from the US. His wife Maddalena soon puts two and two together and realises how Joe managed to get his loot out of the US and into Italy.
A noir-ish moment
She thus makes Joe an offer, not so much of the cannot refuse type as of the accepted to humour variety, setting the stage for all manner of double crosses and, in the case of Maddalena's in-laws, bungling...
Though now Euro-cult interest in I Ladri concentrates more on its director than star, Toto; attractive female lead, Giovanna Ralli; or the not entirely coherently inserted Guys and Dolls-style song and dance number featuring Fred Buscaglione, it's probable that at the time of its release Fulci's name was the least thing attracting audiences to the film.
Specifically no-one in 1959 would be aware that it was to mark the debut of a director who would go on to exert a strong influence on horror cinema worldwide, and if anything would seem likely to have pegged Fulci's career as following that of his mentor or other Italian style comedy figures like Big Deal on Madonna Street's Mario Monicelli or Love and Larceny's Dino Risi in trajectory.
Or maybe Fulci's 1960s career was, with the critical - if not commercial - difference that he ended up making vehicles not for Toto or Alberto Sordi, as respectable / international / art house faces of Italian comedy, but rather Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia, their disreputable domestic-only equivalents.
Fulci's direction here is basically classical, with a preference for two- and medium length shots rather than close-ups and for fluid camera movements over montage style editing. In this regard it's fascinating to watch I Ladri and contrast Fulci's approach here to his later style, with the film serving to demonstrate just how radically Fulci's film-making practice changed over the course of the 1960s with the twin inspirations of new wave explorations of the hand-held camera and the zoom lens and Sergio Leone's experiments with the wide-screen frame and Techniscope process in particular.
The local gangster
The other obvious difference is the aforementioned absence of violence. Everyone, including the gangsters, is presented as basically harmless, preferring outsmarting to rubbing out the opposition. Admittedly this is in tune with the film's generic nature - though here we can also note that the same year's Some Like it Hot indicates that even the St Valentine's Day Massacre could be used as unlikely springboard for comedy - but it is still far removed from what many would expect give Fulci's later work and reputation.
Guys and Dolls
The closest the film gets to a "violence number" is the aforementioned production number, in which Fulci goes out of his way to make what could easily have been a somewhat stagey interlude cinematic. If the relationship between it and the narrative is perhaps something of the inverse of a film like Zombie, where the narrative exists more for the set pieces rather than the other way around, it nevertheless thus confirms that, even at this stage, Fulci had a talent for the big moment. (I would exempt The Beyond from this split, arguing that like Argento's Inferno, it is a film where the set-piece / narrative distinction no longer withstands.)
Those familiar with Don't Torture a Duckling may also see certain precedents in Fulci's position on issues of Italian identity, with the Neapolitans often proving smarter than they let on in using time-honoured cunning against more modern technologies, and the always-ambiguous figure of the Italian-American gangster. Depending on one's point of view, or indeed, who is asking the question, he is an admirable figure and / or a reprehensible one, demonstrating the best and / or worst of Southern Italian character traits.
Those who see the director as an arch-misogynist may be surprised by his treatment of Ralli's independent and resourceful heroine compared to her somewhat dim-witted husband and his immediate famiglia, the one a habitual layabout and the other a religious / superstitious - delete as you see fit - kleptomaniac.
Those not concerned with Fulci's status as auteur, meanwhile, may simply concern themselves with the question of whether or not the film is sufficiently funny, entertaining and worth a watch. The answer on each count has to be a yes.
Events are set in motion by the arrival of Italian-American gangster Joe Castagnato in Naples. He is rightfully suspected of having masterminded a multi-million pound heist in the USA, but nothing has been found to definitively connect him to the crime to date.
The head of the Naples police, Commissario Di Savio, brings Joe in for a friendly chat and indicates that he has finally met his match. His faith in his own and his men's abilities seems somewhat misplaced however, with the QDN - Questura di Napoli - seeming to lack anything comparable to the FBI's high-tech scientific methods whilst Di Savio himself constantly forgets his underling La Nocella's name.
Meanwhile stevedore and petty criminal Vincenzo Scognamiglio, who was working when Joe's ship arrived at the dock, discovers gold hidden in amongst a consignment of pineapple jam from the US. His wife Maddalena soon puts two and two together and realises how Joe managed to get his loot out of the US and into Italy.
A noir-ish moment
She thus makes Joe an offer, not so much of the cannot refuse type as of the accepted to humour variety, setting the stage for all manner of double crosses and, in the case of Maddalena's in-laws, bungling...
Though now Euro-cult interest in I Ladri concentrates more on its director than star, Toto; attractive female lead, Giovanna Ralli; or the not entirely coherently inserted Guys and Dolls-style song and dance number featuring Fred Buscaglione, it's probable that at the time of its release Fulci's name was the least thing attracting audiences to the film.
Specifically no-one in 1959 would be aware that it was to mark the debut of a director who would go on to exert a strong influence on horror cinema worldwide, and if anything would seem likely to have pegged Fulci's career as following that of his mentor or other Italian style comedy figures like Big Deal on Madonna Street's Mario Monicelli or Love and Larceny's Dino Risi in trajectory.
Or maybe Fulci's 1960s career was, with the critical - if not commercial - difference that he ended up making vehicles not for Toto or Alberto Sordi, as respectable / international / art house faces of Italian comedy, but rather Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia, their disreputable domestic-only equivalents.
Fulci's direction here is basically classical, with a preference for two- and medium length shots rather than close-ups and for fluid camera movements over montage style editing. In this regard it's fascinating to watch I Ladri and contrast Fulci's approach here to his later style, with the film serving to demonstrate just how radically Fulci's film-making practice changed over the course of the 1960s with the twin inspirations of new wave explorations of the hand-held camera and the zoom lens and Sergio Leone's experiments with the wide-screen frame and Techniscope process in particular.
The local gangster
The other obvious difference is the aforementioned absence of violence. Everyone, including the gangsters, is presented as basically harmless, preferring outsmarting to rubbing out the opposition. Admittedly this is in tune with the film's generic nature - though here we can also note that the same year's Some Like it Hot indicates that even the St Valentine's Day Massacre could be used as unlikely springboard for comedy - but it is still far removed from what many would expect give Fulci's later work and reputation.
Guys and Dolls
The closest the film gets to a "violence number" is the aforementioned production number, in which Fulci goes out of his way to make what could easily have been a somewhat stagey interlude cinematic. If the relationship between it and the narrative is perhaps something of the inverse of a film like Zombie, where the narrative exists more for the set pieces rather than the other way around, it nevertheless thus confirms that, even at this stage, Fulci had a talent for the big moment. (I would exempt The Beyond from this split, arguing that like Argento's Inferno, it is a film where the set-piece / narrative distinction no longer withstands.)
Those familiar with Don't Torture a Duckling may also see certain precedents in Fulci's position on issues of Italian identity, with the Neapolitans often proving smarter than they let on in using time-honoured cunning against more modern technologies, and the always-ambiguous figure of the Italian-American gangster. Depending on one's point of view, or indeed, who is asking the question, he is an admirable figure and / or a reprehensible one, demonstrating the best and / or worst of Southern Italian character traits.
Those who see the director as an arch-misogynist may be surprised by his treatment of Ralli's independent and resourceful heroine compared to her somewhat dim-witted husband and his immediate famiglia, the one a habitual layabout and the other a religious / superstitious - delete as you see fit - kleptomaniac.
Those not concerned with Fulci's status as auteur, meanwhile, may simply concern themselves with the question of whether or not the film is sufficiently funny, entertaining and worth a watch. The answer on each count has to be a yes.
Thursday, 30 October 2008
A couple of new locandine
One on top of the Other / Perversion Story
I really like the fragmented, collage / photomontage type look here, and the way it echoes the film's visual style.
Cat o' Nine Tails
The hands round the woman's neck are a bit of an artistic liberty here, since one of the distinguishing things about Cat o' Nine Tails is the almost dismbodied nature of the killer, with an avoidance of black glove shots and suchlike
I also got 5 Dolls for an August Moon (strapline: "the assassin always kills slowly and cruelly") but don't have a picture of it. It's basically this one, but in the locandina format
I really like the fragmented, collage / photomontage type look here, and the way it echoes the film's visual style.
Cat o' Nine Tails
The hands round the woman's neck are a bit of an artistic liberty here, since one of the distinguishing things about Cat o' Nine Tails is the almost dismbodied nature of the killer, with an avoidance of black glove shots and suchlike
I also got 5 Dolls for an August Moon (strapline: "the assassin always kills slowly and cruelly") but don't have a picture of it. It's basically this one, but in the locandina format
Monday, 15 September 2008
City of the Living Dead poster
When I think of City of the Living Dead I think of this artwork. which I fondly recall seeing on the video box covers in the early 80s, or the US Gates of Hell zombie face over the city image. What does the Italian locandina art looks like?
Anyway, it was just on Ebay but was 'too rich for my blood' at the moment.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)