If you like directors Dario Argento or Lucio Fulci, and soundtracks by the likes of Goblin and Ennio Morricone, then worth a watch!
Well, three out of the Four. Morricone's a genius - full stop. Goblin's soundtracks are never boring. Argento? Never really lived up to the hype IMO, but "Suspira",
"The Bird with the Crystal Plummage
",
"The Cat o'Nine Tails" and even his re-edit of "Dawn of the Dead" have stood out for me. His use of colour can be very imaginative and evocative...or sometimes overbearing and less than subtle depending on the film (and my mood lol).
But Fulci?
I have only seen "Don't torture a Duckling" from his Giallo repertoire and found it quite shocking, even for this day. I have been more exposed to his films from the late seventies and onwards. The infamous "Zombie Flesh Eaters" was my introduction, viewed uncut before the UK video recordings act (Had to wait 25+ years to see it in a non-cut/uncensored form again - thank you James Ferman! [mad]). For all its dubbed hackiness and awful dialogue, it still delivers in its excellent make-up and effects (puts Tom Savini to shame), fantastic soundtrack, overall ambience and it's surrealism (the zombie-shark scene!). And of course, the gore/violence was as strong and extreme as was claimed, the main component to it's infamy and place on the DPP 72 list. "The Beyond" is probably my favourite film he has done, like an improved verson of "Zombi 2" - the atmosphere for the whole films duration is excellent, with a dark twist at the end. "City of the Living Dead" is kind of fun too. But here comes the rant...brace yourself!
I absolutely hate "The New York Ripper" with a passion. This is where Fulci's unbridled mysogeny is exposed at it's worst and most repugnent. Please dont misunderstand - I am fascinated by certain films and genres often labelled as "extreme" or "controversial". I am certainly no prude when it comes to violence in cinema. But the "New York Ripper" just makes me sneer and feel contempt towards Fulci. It is not just the actual sexualised violence I find disdainful but the WHOLE FILM. Low-budget "sleaziness" can actually add to certain films' atmospheres, giving them a genuine ugliness and unsettling quality and ambience that benefits a dark and controversial story. What Fulci does with "New York Ripper" is crass in the extreme though. The sleazy atmosphere, the horrible, horrible dialogue, chronical bad script and performances (so far, sounds like all his films, eh?), highly controversial sexualised violence, passive female victims, etc. When you put all these factors in the mix it just adds up to exploitational mysogenistic crud (IMHO!). Really, I ask "What's your problem with women, Mr Fulci, that justifies this risable, schoolboy approach to a most controversial subject?!" Holy cow! I'm beginning to sound like Mary Whitehouse! Anti-New York Ripper rant over. I'll have to birch myself now and binge-watch a Serbian film & Cannibal Holocaust double bill to exorcise this pervasive Daily Mail subliminal attitude!
The thing I find about the Giallo genre though is you saw a lot of the Italian film-makers at their height, before they jumped on to the next craze/money maker [WORLD WAR TWO to WESTERNS to GIALLO to GANGSTER to JAWS RIP-OFFS to ZOMBIES to MAD MAX/ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK RIP-OFFS to SOFT P*RN , etc, etc] and decended to the utter depths of exploitation cinema...I'm looking at you Luigi Cozzi, Lamberto Bava, Sergio Martino and especially you...Umberto Lenzi!
Sorry for the rant - pet hate of mine - can you tell?
