Laura Lenzi | Through the Shattered Lens

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eikqn9OCGo

“Manhattan, baby!”

That’s what a friend of mine yelled a few years ago. Jack was a choreographer who had just received a call from someone in New York City, offering him the chance to come work on an off-Broadway show. He accepted, of course and then he hugged everyone who had been standing nearby, listening to the call.

“Manhattan, baby!” he shouted.

Now, the show itself didn’t really work out but Jack did get a trip to Manhattan out of it and really, I think that’s what everyone was excited about. No matter how many bad things you may hear about New York City, it’s hard not to get excited when you hear the word Manhattan. For many, Manhattan represents culture, sophistication, and wealth. For others, Manhattan represents crime, inequity, and alienation. Across the world, Manhattan stands for everything that is both good and bad about America. Just the word Manhattan carries a power to it. You would never get excited if someone announced that they had gotten a job in Minnesota, for instance. If Jack had shouted, “Minnesota, baby!,” we all would have been concerned about him. Minnesota? Who gives a fuck? But Manhattan …. Manhattan has power, baby!

Manhattan also lent its name to one of Lucio Fulci’s post-Zombi films and the title just happened to duplicate Jack’s proclomation, Manhattan Baby. Released in 1982, Manhattan Baby is often cited as being the last of Fulci’s “major” productions. While his career was reinvigorated by the success of the films he made with producer Fabrizio De Angelis (including Zombi 2 and the Beyond trilogy), Fulci and De Angelis had a falling out over Manhattan Baby. Fulci claimed that De Angelis essentially forced him to make the movie, despite the fact that Fulci himself did not have much interest in the script. Initially, the film was to be a special effects spectacluar with a large budget but, after the controversy surrounding Fulci’s The New York Ripper, the budget was drastically scaled back and the special effects were done on the cheap. Fulci later said that he felt the movie was terrible and that it set back his career.

As for what the film is actually about, Manhattan Baby deals with …. well, the plot is not easy to describe. Fulci’s films were always better known for their surreal imagery than their tight plots and, even by his standards, Manhattan Baby is all over the place. The film opens in Egypt, where archeologist George Hacker (Christopher Connelly) is struck blind when he enters a previously unexplored tomb. Meanwhile, his daughter, Susie (Brigitta Boccoli), is given an amulet by another blind woman.

Back in Manhattan, George waits for his sight to return and Susie and her little brother, Tommy (Giovanni Frezza, who played Bob In The House By The Cemetery) start to act weird. It turns out that their bedroom is now some sort of demensional gateway, from which snakes sometimes emerge. At the same time, the gateway occasionally sucks people through and they end up stranded in the Egyptian desert. Why? Who knows? Is Susie possessed or does the gateway operate independently from her? Why does she occasionally glow a weird blue color? Why do she and her brother suddenly seem to hate their nannny (played by Cinzia De Ponti, who was also in The New York Ripper)? It all has something to do with the amulet but the exact details of how it all works seems to change from scene-to-scene. Eventually, it turns out that the owner of the local antique shop knows about the amulet and its evil designs. Unfortunately, all of his stuffed birds come to life and peck his eyes out. Meanwhile, Susie’s parents and her doctors wonder why her latest x-ray seems to indicate that Susie has a cobra living inside of her and….

Like I said, it doesn’t really make any sense and, despite the power of the name, the meaning behind Manhattan Baby as a title is never really explained. In fact, more time is probably spent in Egypt than in Manhattan. It’s easy to assume that the film was called Manhattan Baby because it was felt that the title would appeal to American audiences but, when then the film was released in the U.S., it was actually retitled Eye of the Evil Dead in an attempt to disguise it as being a sequel to Sam Raimi’s classic shocker. (This was actually a common practice as far as the Italian film industry was concerned. Many films were retitled to disguise them as being a sequel. Fulci’s Zombi 2, for instance, recieved that title because, in Europe, Dawn of the Dead was released under the title Zombi.)

One can understand Fulci’s frustration with Manhattan Baby but, at the same time, is it really as bad as he often said it was? Yes, the plot is incoherent but that’s to be expected with a Fulci film. Yes, the special effects are cheap but again, that’s kind of part of the charm when it comes to Italian exploitation films. While Manhattan Baby never duplicates the ominous atmosphere of Zombi 2 or achieves the same sort of surreal grandeur as The Byond trilgoy, there are still enough memorable, if confusing, moments to make it watchable. The sequece where a shot of a man standing in a doorway cuts to a shot of him lying dead in the desert works surprisingly well. The scene where the shop owner is attacked by reanimated birds is both ludiscrous and scary, in the grand Fulci tradition. With their emphasis on foolhardy explorers ignoring curses, the Egyptian scenes feel almost as if they could have been lifted from one of the Hammer mummy films. Manhattan Baby may not be Fulci’s best but it’s hardly his worst.

In fact, with its obsession with blindness, Manhttan Baby is actually one of Fulci’s more personal films. Fulci was diabetic and reportedly lived in fear that he would someday lose his eyesight. Many critics, including me, have suggested that he dealt with this fear by having people lose their eyesight in his movies, often in the most violent ways possible. Manhattan Baby is full of people losing the ability to see. George Hacker is rendered blind in Egypt. The mysterious Egyptain woman hands out amulets to people who she cannot see. The store owner loses his eyes. One of George’s colleagues falls on a bed of spikers and, of course, one spike goes straight through an eye. Manhattan Baby is all about blindness and only be getting rid of the amulet can George hope to once again truly see the world and the people that he loves. If only illness could be tossed away as easily as an amulet.

Despite Fulci’s disdain for the final result, Manhattan Baby is hardly the disaster that it’s often made out to be. Those who aren’t familiar with Fulci’s unique aesthetic will undoubtedly confused by the film but, for those of us who know the man’s work, Manhattan Baby may be a minor Fulci film but it’s still an occasionally intriguing one.

(Lisa recently discovered that she only has about 8 hours of space left on her DVR! It turns out that she’s been recording movies from July and she just hasn’t gotten around to watching and reviewing them yet. So, once again, Lisa is cleaning out her DVR! She is going to try to watch and review 52 movies by the end of Tuesday, December 6th! Will she make it? Keep checking the site to find out!)

On November 10th, I recorded 1985’s The Adventures of Hercules off of the Encore Family channel.

Let’s see if I can explain exactly what this film is about. Bear with me because this is going to be a strange one. For that matter, you might also want to bare with me because The Adventures of Hercules is all about displaying the physique of body builder Lou Ferrigno. Ferrigno plays the legendary Greek demigod Hercules. Or I should say that he provides Hercules’s body and occasionally a facial expression or two. Since The Legend of Hercules was an Italian film, the entire cast is obviously and frequently awkwardly dubbed. That includes Ferrigno. Though Hercules doesn’t say much, when he does speak, he does so in a voice that really doesn’t go with his body, his personality, or anything that seems to be happening on screen.

Anyway, I guess I should try to explain the plot. I should mention that The Legend of Hercules is a sequel to another Hercules film. I haven’t seen the first Hercules film. Maybe the Legend of Hercules would have made more sense if I had, though I somehow doubt it.

Basically, bad things are happening on Earth. Why? Well, it appears that four of the Gods have gotten together and stolen Zeus’s 7 Mighty Thunderbolts. They’ve hidden the Thunderbolts across the planet, entrusting them with various monsters. As a result of Zeus no longer having his thunderbolts, the Moon is now on the verge of colliding with Earth and human sacrifices are also being committed to a monster that looks a lot like the ID Monster from Forbidden Planet.

What does a Mighty Thunderbolt look like? Here you go.

Two sisters, Urania (Milly Carlucci) and Glaucia (Sonia Vivani), appeal to Zeus for help but, of course, Zeus is powerless without his thunderbolts. However, he can still sends his son Hercules (Lou Ferrigno) to Earth. Working with the sisters, Hercules goes on a quest for the thunderbolts. This basically amounts to a series of scenes in which Hercules battles various people in rubber suits. Whenever Hercules throws a punch, he’s filmed so that appears that he’s punching the camera. Whenever Hercules’s fist makes contact, there’s a flash of red. Whenever anyone is knocked off their feet by Hercules, they flip around in slow motion. This happens every ten minutes or so.

Now, I don’t want to spoil the movie but I simply have to tell you about this. There is a scene, towards the end of the film, in which Hercules literally grabs hold of the Moon and prevents it from crashing into the Earth.

Anyway, the plot makes no sense and that’s a huge part of this film’s enthusiastic, if frequently inept, charm. As directed by the famed Italian director, Luigi Cozzi, The Adventures of Hercules has this cobbled together feeling to it that is undeniably likable. Much as with Cozzi’s best-known film, Starcrash, The Adventures of Hercules is a film that wins you over by pure determination. Cozzi set out to make a mythological epic and he wasn’t going to let something like a complete lack of budget stop him.

How strange an experience is The Adventures of Hercules? Check out some of these randomly assembled screen shots:

The other fun thing about The Adventures of Hercules is that, since this was a Luigi Cozzi film, the cast is full of Italian exploitation vets, the majority of whom were best known for appearing in far less family-friendly fare.

Here’s just a few of the performers you’ll find in The Adventures of Hercules:

Sonia Vivani, who plays Glaucia, also played the doomed sculptor in Umberto Lenzi’s infamous Nightmare City.

William Berger, who plays the villainous King Minos, appeared in several classic Spaghetti westerns, including Sabata. Sadly, his promising career was cut short when he was framed for drug possession and spent several years in an Italian prison. When he was finally freed, he ended up doing movies like The Adventures of Hercules.

Zeus was played by Claudio Cassinelli, an acclaimed actor who appeared in several giallo films. He also co-starred in 1978’s infamous Mountain of the Cannibal God.

The evil High Priest was played by Venantino Venantini whose credits include everything from The Agony and the Ecstasy to Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead to Umberto Lenzi’s Cannibal Ferox.

Aphrodite is played by Margit Newton, who somewhat infamously starred in what is generally considered to be the worst zombie film of all time, Hell of the Living Dead.

Serena Grandi played Euryale (a.k.a. Medusa). Grandi is probably most remembered for his grotesque death scene in Antropophagus. She was also the star of one of my personal guilty pleasures, Lamberto Bava’s Delirium.

And finally, the mad scientist Dedalos was played by Eva Robbins, who achieved immortality by playing the Girl on the Beach in Dario Argento’s Tenebrae.

The Adventures of Hercules might not be “technically” a good film but it’s definitely (and rather compulsively) watchable.