FF#8: House of Clocks (1989)

Here's a Fulci film from 1989 that was originally made for TV. This one was surprisingly good, considering that it's origins made me think going in that this was going to be the worst of the bunch.

It opens with an old house inhabited by an old couple that are keeping an eye on a couple dead bodies they have in another room. Meanwhile a group of young troublemakers is driving through the country side after robbing a convenience store when one of them decides to trap a stray cat in a plastic bag and leave it to suffocate. The symbolism is Fulci-ian in it's obviousness, but luckily the master delivers on the set up in a way that we only hoped for in BLACK CAT!

So once the kids find the old home, they decide to break in and rob the old people. Here is where it actually gets good. Of course, like every old couple taking care of dead bodies, they have a one-eyed Al Cliver in tow and he really makes things interesting when he tries to halt the robbery, only to get shot and cause the quick deaths of all those around him. So now there are a couple dead old people, a struggling Al Cliver, and 3 freaked-out troublemakers with a dying cat in their car.

This all happens at around the 30 minute mark, and from here the film really gets good. The house is filled with clocks, and all of them start running backwards. One by one the kids start freaking out and stranger and stranger things start happening. The film actually holds interest, and leads to an ending that seems bad, but quickly redeems itself in spades!

F for Fair

FF#7: Black Cat (1981)

Lucio Fulci returns, this time with a tale of an old man who is being psychically controlled by a killer cat. Leave it to Mr. Fulci to stick to the narrow minded cliches. The film opens with a mysterious car accident caused by a BLACK CAT, and from there follows a photographer as she slowly (SLOWLY) pieces together an explanation for a few recent murders and connects them to a BLACK CAT. She suspects a man who claims to have psychic powers, but who is seemingly being controlled by his BLACK CAT. As she gets closer to solving the mystery, she not only stumbles into more fake bats (Fulci loves those guys), but she accidentally re-enacts a scene from Fulci's The Psychic, which itself was re-enacting a scene from Edgar Allen Poe.

Seriously this film is slightly amazing, due in no small part to the fact that the killer cat in question NEVER looks threatening! Basically this movie is like watching a CG heavy film before the CG is put in...actors reacting to nothing. The scenes where the cat kills look hilarious, because Fulci never quite communicates what happens, but it somehow leads to death. A man sees a BLACK CAT in his car and drives off a cliff, a couple try to have sex in a boathouse and get locked in a room and suffocate at the paws of a BLACK CAT, another man sees a BLACK CAT and gets freaked out so he tries to walk across some boards at a construction site, sees the BLACK CAT again, gets scratched by said CAT, and falls on spikes Mortal Kombat style.












This movie is so bad that it is actually fun to watch, and Fulci scored high marks for trying to create a Giallo with a cat...and fake bats!

F for Fair

FF#6: Conquest (1983)

Whoa! I'm not really sure where this movie came from. In 1983 Fulci decided to try his hand at the sword and sorcery genre, and here are the hilariously mixed results.

The film is about a young man from a "distant land" who must hang out with this older man until they both fall madly in love and go try and kill the evil Ocrin. One thing that can often be said about the sword and sorcery films is that they almost always contain a gay subtext, and this film is no exception. In this film, if there wasn't a gay subtext, you'd be hard pressed to get through the whole thing without falling asleep. Also, this movie is about Fulci attempting to get artsy with his direction. There are so many filters and weird lenses used that it is often difficult to tell what's going on. Sometimes the sky is purple and the grass is yellow, other times everything is just black...for long stretches of time.

Being an 80's sword and sorcery film, you can't escape bad/awesome laser effects, and again this film does not skimp on them. Besides a bow that shoots glowing laser arrows, our heroes at one point find themselves under attack from hundreds of dubbed in normal arrows, that look like and are simply animated scratches in the film print!

But the real kicker, and the thing that best shows Fulci's love of jumping on trends, is the inclusion of wookies. That's right, like the Star Wars wookies. Those Life Day celebrating dogmen are all over this movie, and a lot of fun to watch as they celebrate life by scalping foes with their giant clubs!

So in the end, this movie is all about a nude lady with a gold mask, wookies, and two closet homosexuals swinging rock-nunchucks and teaching each other how to shoot laser arrows (seriously).

F for Fair (because it is watch-able...but only if you heckle the crap out of it)