Original subtitles

Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to the audio commentary for Conquest.

My name is Troy Howarth. I'm the author of numerous books on Italian cult

cinema, notably in this context a book about Lucio Fulci titled Splintered

Visions, Lucio Fulci and His Films.

And I'm very happy to be here today joined with... Nathaniel Thompson from

Digital and Turner Classic Movies. And I would say that I'm wigging out about

recording for this film, but that would be a terrible pun and I won't do it. But

I love this movie and I'm very excited.

Yeah, it is a weird one, as we're going to discuss.

That's obvious pretty much right from the get -go, with these kind of double

-exposed images, very hazy -looking movie, as we're going to see.

And it'll be interesting when we see the finished Blu -ray, what it actually

looks like, because up until now, this has been kind of a difficult movie to

entirely decipher visually.

Yeah, and in other ways, but in good ways, I think. It's a challenge. It's a

film that I think improves the repeat of viewing.

I know a lot of people have a really tough time with this film when they come

it the first time, and they say the plot is indecipherable and it's hard to

follow, but it actually, I think, it gets more and more interesting the more

go back to it, and you get used to the look of it as well. I think it's a very

unique look, but we'll talk more about the look of it later, of course.

Oh, yeah. Well, it's unique, and it's certainly also very deliberate, and

something that...

You know, there's a tendency with a lot of these movies, as I'm sure you'll

agree with me, to kind of condescend to them a little bit and look at them as

kind of rip -offs, basically, of bigger, better movies, which obviously is not

fair at all. One of the things that we can say about Lucio Fulci is that from a

technical... perspective, certainly at this stage in his career. Now, later on,

some of the later films were more compromised, but the man knew how to

film that looked good, and he was a terrific technician.

I mean, actors may have had their issues with him, as I'm sure we'll get into

that as well.

Some of the volatility of the man on set, he could be a little bit tricky,

say.

Famously so.

Oh, infamously. I mean, so many stories that I've heard, and I'm sure we'll talk

about that too to a certain extent interviewing people for Splendid Visions

the gamut from people who loved him to people who absolutely hated him and I

understand that based on the stories they told me but as to the

quality of the film the plot and so forth what's interesting about it is

of all this is one of a relatively small number of films that Fulci himself did

not have a hand in writing this was not a project that he originated

As I'll discuss in a little bit more detail, this was a film that kind of was

presented to him at a stage in his career when he was looking to kind of

transition to something a little bit different.

I think he had some rather grand and ambitious plans for this film that

quite come to fruition because the movie was just so strange and it didn't go

over well.

But he didn't have anything to do with the actual writing of the film. But

what's interesting to me about watching it is...

It reminds me more than any other Fulci film. It puts me in mind of a Jess

Franco film in the way that it just seems to sort of amble along.

And I don't mean that in a bad way. It certainly, I wouldn't describe it as

necessarily being a super fast -paced, action -packed movie. Although there

is...

a good bit of action crammed into it.

But it is a very dreamy movie, and it does. I think ambling is a good word for

it. It just seems to kind of go wherever it feels like going without any real

sense of a conventional kind of a structure.

You can see there, again, about the screenplay, the screenplay credits.

Fulci's name is conspicuous in its absence, although there are some

technical names in the credits, as we'll discuss. as well yes i think dreaming

is a good word for it and it's also it's one of the very few italian sword and

sorcery films that i think you could qualify as an art film uh as well there

aren't too many others although i think iron warrior is kind of a cheaper

stranger even stranger version of that but there are a few where they kind of

they use the genre in an odd way where it actually becomes more of a mood piece

rather than a normal action or you know or fantasy film

Yes, I would agree with that. And, of course, a lot of this goes back to

basically the 1981 film by Jean -Jacques Arnaud called Quest for Fire,

co -written by Gerard Braque, who, of course, wrote or co -wrote a great many

Roman Polanski's best films and later on co -wrote Phantom of the Opera for

Dario Argento, which not too many people like, but you and I do. I do.

You and I happen to like that movie, and hopefully we'll get a chance to talk

about it sometime in more detail.

But, you know, Quest for Fire was...

almost more of an anthropological type of a film. It was a very serious attempt

to kind of go back to prehistoric times and come to grips with that notion of

man discovering flame for the first time. And I'm sure the more

well -versed scientific types in the audience would find a lot of fault with

film in terms of its detail and so forth. But I think it was kind of a

attempt to present something like that on screen as opposed to the... typical

kind of caveman type films that we're used to seeing and that we enjoy of

you know like the hammer uh prehistoric movies uh one million years bc and one

dinosaur's world the earth and things like that but Obviously, this ties into

the whole Filoni principle of Italian genre cinema, which is that idea of a

streamlet, which is set into motion by the success of a film.

Very often, not always, but very often it is an American film or British film.

There's usually a film that comes out that connects with an audience, does

well, and then producers...

sort of set about trying to make other movies in a similar vein. So obviously

you think of movies like...

Dirty Harry, for example, back in the 70s and the big impact that had on the

Polizio Tesco films.

And I just have to comment here very briefly this introduction to the

the evil, I don't know, sorceress, I guess, Alcron, played by Sabrina Siani.

We're going to be seeing a good bit of her.

In everything.

Well, except for her face, which is interesting.

And we'll get to that at the end because, you know, that's an interesting

element in and of itself.

But, yes, she's probably...

No.

you know, the sword and sandal films of the 50s and 60s, although there are kind

of connections with the whole kind of beefcake aspect, which certainly ties

this film, as I'm sure we'll get into a little bit later.

I don't know if it's intentional or if it just kind of comes with the turf, but

there is kind of a slight homoerotic vibe in the relationship between the two

principal characters that we see.

but it's not a peplum film, certainly, but Sword and Sorcery, I guess, is as

good a description as any. And during this time, too, you also had things like

Deodato's Barbarians, for example, and, of course, the wonderfully loopy and

very, very strange Luigi Cozzi Hercules films.

Oh, yeah.

And I think you also have to look at the context of where these came from,

because in the early 80s, the Sword and Sorcery, genre was almost dead before

quest for fire because the sinbad trilogy that harry often had done was

that was the flagship of those type of films and sinbad the eye of the tiger

been kind of a disappointment and so it kind of went dormant until suddenly you

had quest for fire pop up and then in uk you had the hawk of flare you know

which is absolutely bonkers uh and um and something that was just this flood

so conquest it you know it wasn't it wasn't one film particularly you had

sudden rush you had kind of a burying you had a sorcerer beast master all

films suddenly pouring out And so, of course, then Joe D 'Amato, you know,

of course, I love to death, he does the A Tour of the Fighting Eagle, which, of

course, spawns, you know, a horror film series as well. And so it was just

something in the air, I guess. You know, it's odd how these genres sort of come

in and out, but this tidal wave just suddenly hit. I mean, you even had

like heavy metal.

Absolutely. Which had two sword and sorcery segments, the Den and Tarnus

segments, and that right before this.

Dragon Slayer, Excalibur, it's all these things just happening at once. And so,

not just Italy, but Roger Corman was writing it as well. He had the film

Sorceress, the Jack Hill film, and Death Doctor, and War and the Sorceress. So

it was kind of a magical time, I guess. I remember when I was a kid and suddenly

you'd see all these posters just popping up everywhere, and you're like, what is

this? You know, this is amazing.

Even cartoons, you had Fire and Ice. Ralph Bakshi jumped in on it.

The Black Cauldron, I think, is kind of an honorary, almost word and sorcery

film, kind of a Disney contribution to it.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. I should comment here, too, that the scene that just unfolded, you know,

little bit of the old Fulci ultraviolence there reminds me. Well,

since he anticipates the scene that he did later on in a film, actually one of

the relatively few Fulci films that I don't have any particular affection for

movie called Demonia.

Yep.

Yeah, well, you know, I mean, the ingredients are there, but they're not

cooked.

But he tried.

Yeah,

well, he did. But, you know, the funny thing about that is, of course, I'm

referring to the drawn and quartering effect, the person basically being torn

half like that, which is done, I think, fairly well in this film.

There's some very good makeup and effects.

In this film, not all of them, perhaps. Some of them maybe look a little dated,

inevitably. But there's some very good gore effects. We saw scalping earlier as

well. And that's kind of typical of what Fulci was known for during this period.

But, yes, in Demonia, there's a sequence where a person is sort of wish -boned,

I guess you could say, tied to a tree and torn apart.

could have been very effective but was rather badly executed, unfortunately.

But here, this one I think works very well. And that goes back to what we were

talking about before with Fulci's professionalism as a filmmaker and his

to put really interesting and slick images up on the screen and also in

a way that's very distinctive. I think you can say with certainty that...

You could turn on a TV and not know that it's a Lucio Fulci film, but if you've

seen enough of his movies, you're going to recognize that style, you know, even

without seeing his name on the credits.

This is very strange stuff, too, here, all this material with, I guess they're

supposed to be sort of drug -induced delirium sequences here where she's

writhing around naked on, again, very Jess Franco, like one of the, you know,

the literal floor show scenes that you see in something like Venus and Furs or,

you know, one of the other Franco films where you have...

Except here, he doesn't zoom in all the way in on certain parts.

But nevertheless, similar kind of very strange and dreamy thing.

You and I, you know, we can make these associations between directors like

you know, obviously just based on the movies that we've watched. But one

sometimes if somebody like Fulci was even aware of a Jess Franco or, you

was influenced by anything that he saw in his films or, you know, just what you

could call a happy coincidence.

Yeah. And, you know, the weird thing is, as much as he gets pegged as someone

who is sort of a rip -off guy, mainly because of Zombie, of course, because

became Zombie 2, I don't really see Fulci as drawing that much influence

other directors that much as far as his style goes.

He's kind of his own thing. But, you know, he's not really much of a mimic.

No. For the most part. So I'm not really sure where that keeps coming up from.

Even just Franco, the same thing. They keep saying, oh, he's a hack, he's a

copycat. It's like, well, not really.

I mean, he's a pretty singular voice, I think.

Franco wasn't copying anybody.

I mean, certainly there's nobody else like him. And the same could be said of

Fulci. The problem, quote -unquote problem with Fulci comes down to the

that obviously he was a, and this is not to be used in a pejorative sense. It's

just a practical reality. He was a journeyman, a filmmaker.

Mario Bava before him, and unlike Adario Argento, who was able to establish

himself as a specialist.

in a particular type of film, or Sergio Leone for that matter.

Fulci was obliged to kind of follow whatever was popular at a given time at

box office. So he started off making comedies, he made musicals, he dabbled

westerns. But importantly, I think that in every genre that he worked in, he did

very good work.

And while it's easy to understand, for example, Dario Argento used to get very

annoyed with Fulci because...

Fauci made movies that were...

quote -unquote similar to his own in the early 70s. So Argento comes out with

Bird of the Crystal Plumage and The Cat in Nine Tails, and then Fulci comes out

with Lizard in a Woman's Skin and Don't Torture a Duckling.

Yes, they're JALO films, and yes, they all have quote -unquote animal titles,

but to look at those films and compare them, they are radically different,

very different in their intentions.

And one of the things that's interesting is, of course, you know, The Fulci

-Argento battle wages to this day as if you have to pick one or the other. I

certainly wouldn't pick one or the other. I love them both.

But the fact of the matter is, 1982, right

before, not long before, Fulci became involved in this particular project that

we're coming to grips with as it unfolds,

said to have marked the end of an era.

Argento came out with Tenebrae.

Fulci came out with the New York Ripper.

And they both kind of pushed the envelope as far as you could as far as

stylistic aspects were concerned and sort of meta aspects were concerned and

also the violence was concerned. And the nudity, yeah, the sexualized violence.

Oh, God, yeah, definitely, very much so. And, you know, Tenebrae obviously went

over much better than New York Ripper.

New York Ripper is still very controversial to this day.

But it's interesting that they were kind of united even there, that that marked

the end of really the classical Jalloh period.

Both of them would go on to make more Jalloh.

Fulci did Murder Rock after this, for example, and Argento, of course,

into the 21st century.

But for all intents and purposes, that was kind of the end of that particular

period of time. But again, they're very, very different filmmakers.

You can't look at Fulci and say, he's just copying Dario Argento in his films,

or George Romero, for that matter. His films are very, very different from

George Romero's.

His zombie films are, you know, you can't even really compare them except in

most broad brushstrokes.

Yeah, they both have a lot of blood. That's about it.

Yeah, I mean...

And obviously, yes, it's true. A zombie wouldn't exist if it weren't for Dawn of

the Dead. We know that. Right.

And, of course, Argento had a hand in producing Dawn of the Dead.

So, you know, Dawn of the Dead comes out in Italy as Zombie.

Then producers decide, well, we need to make something else like this because it

was making a ton of money. So Zombie 2 comes into creation.

And Lucio Fulci wasn't even paid to originally direct that. He wasn't the

director they had in mind. That was actually...

Enzo Di Castellari, he was the first director of the approach to do it.

And Fulci owed Castellari a big debt of gratitude, really, because Castellari is

the one who said, this isn't really my wheelhouse, but I think Lucio Fulci

do well by this, and he certainly did.

but Zombie was another Fulci film that was relatively unusual in that he had no

hand in the writing, so Conquest is yet another one. I think, unless I'm

mistaken, all the films that Fulci had done in between Zombie and this film, he

had had a hand in writing, but these were ones that were kind of, I guess you

could call them gun -for -hire assignments, although I'd be very

read the script for Conquest.

just how strange it was on paper and how much more extra weird it became with

Fulci at the helm.

I would guess quite a bit.

I would think so.

When you're talking about the difference between Fulci and Argento, I think one

thing that separates Fulci is that he is someone who, if you look at all of

Fulci's films, most people know the horror films and maybe some things like

Contraband.

He's someone who worked in a lot of genres, and if you watch a lot of them

of in a row, you can see how he really enjoys sort of pushing the genre as far

as it will go. He actually takes genres and he sort of makes it abstract, which

he definitely does with this.

I mean, this is almost a totally abstract film, and I think the closest

this that he'd done before that was probably Four of the Apocalypse, which

really wonderful sort of deconstruction of the Italian Western.

It's barely even a Western by the time he's done with it. It's broken up into

this kind of sort of dreamy nightmare.

But actually, the look of it, I think, sort of anticipates this one. It's not

quite as diffused and stylized as this is, but it's getting in that direction.

You know, it's very sort of a lot of soft focus, and it's almost like you're

watching sort of a dream unfold through that whole film.

But he's taking the thing just how it's almost... He's sort of more focused on

the wasteland aspect of it. It's this nightmare location where violence rules

and absolutely nobody is safe. Anyone can die in that film, which is true here

too. Like you mentioned, this is a very strangely constructed film. It's not a

normal A to B hero's journey type of story at all. It keeps throwing

at you. Especially near the end, there's a really big shocker.

Mm -hmm.

Which, again, I think is very far of the apocalypse. So, you know, I think this

is very much a Fulci film. It's just not the Fulci that you know from all the

films he did with Sergio Silvati and, you know, those kind of films. It's a

different beast, but it is most definitely Fulci.

Yeah, it definitely is. And, you know, it's a film that, obviously, I don't

think too many people seem to be lukewarm on it. They either really like

they really hate it.

Yeah. I know that Stephen Thrower's book on Fulci didn't...

Give it much love.

I think, if I remember correctly, he said something along the lines of, if

was the only Fulci film in existence, nobody would mourn the absence of any

others.

That's sad.

Kind of, although in fairness, this isn't the movie you're going to be like,

I want to introduce you to Lucio Fulci.

Oh, God, no, no. No, this is definitely advanced studies Fulci.

Yes, yes. This is once you've gotten through all the jally and all the major

horror titles.

Let's, you know, let's look at something weird.

We're seeing something very weird here with these mechanical birds and it's

very, very smoky. It must have been murder on the set, you know, making this

film, not just for the actors, but for the technicians as well, because it's

such a smoky film.

And there's also, as you say, a great deal of diffusion, a lot of soft focus.

You know, something like this is almost sort of a fashion spread from hell that

we're looking at here is this beautiful naked actress sitting on her throne.

It's all sort of very fetishistic and very strange.

Almost looks a little bit like a giant egg, so it kind of puts me in mind of

alien environment, something like that.

This is, again, how much of this was in the script.

Of course, another aspect of it, too, how much of it was budgetary, because

there's also the reality that it could be that they're trying to conceal the

fact that there isn't really a lot in the way of scenery.

The closest...

Kind of antecedent I can think of in terms of an Italian genre film that came

before this was Mario Bava's 1961 film Hercules and the Haunted World, which is

another very sort of strange and dreamy film.

I'd say a little bit more coherent and probably more aesthetically accessible.

is along similar lines, and you get a sense here, like you did there, that

probably didn't have a lot in the way of sets to work with, so better just to

pump in all the fog and all the mist that you can, and just kind of play up

a dreamy environment that it is.

And I should comment, too, this is our leading man, George, or Jorge Rivero,

this guy here is Andrea Accapinti.

I'll have more to say about both of them as we go along, and also about the two

actors that dubbed them on the English trail.

I've never actually seen this film in Italian before.

I don't know if it plays any differently in Italian or not, but I kind of get

the impression that it's a movie that if you stripped the dialogue away, it

really wouldn't matter much. Yeah, the dialogue is so inconsequential for the

most part. You could almost just have music running and pretty much get the

idea.

But Akepinti had just worked with Fulci on The New York Ripper, so he's kind of

a familiar face.

Rivero, this was his only time working with Fulci.

I think they make for a pretty solid and likable team. I think Rivero in

particular manages to give a very strong performance and helps to ground the

movie in some kind of reality.

Not that reality has much to bear on a movie like this.

And this was actually their second film together, technically speaking.

Because Lucky Pinty had had a little tiny part in the movie Priest of Love,

D .H. Lawrence biopic, which also had Rivero in it.

I wonder if that had anything to do with them being cast together. You never

know. Yeah,

it's true. It's entirely possible.

Well, just by way of a little bit of background, you know, from what I've

able to dig up, you know, the particulars of this film are not

super easy to come by.

There hasn't been a lot of serious sort of in -depth.

writing about the film down through the years, it's always been seen as kind of

a minor Fulci film, you know, at best.

And I'm not going to argue that it's top tier, but I do like it a lot, and I'm

glad that we have a chance to sit here and talk about it. But basically, from

what I've been able to glean from other sources, especially Stephen Trower's

book, Beyond Terror, back in May of 1982, Fulci was attached to a film

called Siegfried's Sword.

which was to have been produced by his old friend Edmondo Amati.

Edmondo Amati had produced Perversion Story and Lizard in a Woman's Skin and

the Apocalypse, amongst others. So really he had been responsible for some

Fulci's best films.

and he was one of the producers that Fulci actually respected, which wasn't a

typical scenario, as we'll discuss. He didn't get along with the producer of

this particular film.

That project fell apart, unfortunately, by June of 1982, at which point Fulci

agreed to do a two -picture deal with Giovanni De Clemente, the producer of

film. The first of that little deal that they had made was Conquest, and the

second was going to be a horror project called Alibi.

When Conquest started, originally the title was to be Mace the Outcast.

Of course, you know, Rivero's character is named Mace, so that makes sense.

Shooting got underway around the middle of October of 1982 and stretched into

late November.

Apparently, it was rushed through...

post -production pretty quickly because there were some trade screenings around

January of 1983, which is, you know, again, pretty quick turnaround.

Didn't go over well, which won't shock us, but that necessitated apparently

post -production tinkering. Not entirely clear on what happened during that

phase. I don't know if they did reshoots or if they just went in and kind of

beefed up the special effects a little bit.

But in any event, the Italian theatrical release took place in July and August

of 1983.

Amazingly, it did manage to come to the American marketplace, and I know you

have some information on that that you might want to share with us.

Hard to imagine a film like this playing on American theater screens, but it

did. As far as I can tell, around February of 1984.

So what can you tell us about that?

Well, so yeah, just to fill in a little bit more on the release background.

So this was actually first announced in the American trades on October 20th,

1982, which was two days after they had started principal photography.

It was announced by the film's world sales agent at the time called the

Film Company.

And it was simply a big ad that just said, a barbaric adventure into the

and fantastic with a huge splash for Lucio Fulci's name.

This was back when Fulci was a big selling point, even if you're reading

trades in L .A., believe it or not.

And the artwork on it was just, it was a glowing arrow piercing a rock. Rocky

outcropping. He didn't mention anything about the actors, nothing else. It was

just Lucio Fulci, Conquest, sword and sorcery movie. Here you go.

So the film wasn't officially shopped around in the U .S. until the American

Film Market, which they hold in Santa Monica, California, just a few miles

where I'm recording this, actually, in March of 1983.

And overseas would continue to keep selling the film. Like you mentioned,

pulled it back from initial sales after that.

And they would sell it again the next year back at AFM in March of 84 when it

was screened and promoted as part of a three -pack along with Antonio Clamati's

racing documentary Turbo Time and Jose Antonio de la Loma's Killing Machine,

which also has Rivero in it. And if that name sounds familiar, that's because de

la Loma and his son were also very involved with this film in the writing,

assistant directing, producing.

Their names are all over the end credits, you'll notice.

But he made a lot of films with Rivero.

So that was another vehicle that he made. But those three films were

pushed around together.

Turbo Time obviously has pretty much gone into the ether. I can't actually

a single person who's actually seen the movie, even though it did exist.

But the film was picked up for the U .S. rights by United Film Distribution

Company, which is UFDC, which is a very familiar name back in the early 80s if

you went to the movies a lot.

They first announced their acquisition on December 13th, 1983, with plans to

release it on 85 to 100 screens from coast to coast, and they were going to

spend $150 ,000 on the film's media campaign, which sounds like chump change

as far as movie marketing goes when it's mega millions, but at the time that was

pretty good for an indie.

However...

So they had negotiated the deal. It was actually purchased by the head of UFD at

the time, who was Richard Hassanine, who had gotten it from the Overseas Film

Group's L .A.-based office.

He was the agent for Giovanni De Clemente, who was the producer.

And at the time the film was sold, Fulci was a big name in U .S. theaters. The

Beyond had gotten as much belated.

Practical run at Seven Doors of Death from Aquarius, where it was cut to

but, you know, it was still the beyond or what was left of it.

And Motion Picture Marketing's run of Gates of Hell had just wrapped up in May

earlier that year when they bought it. So, Fulci was big business at the time,

and they thought Conquest would be the same, but really not meant to be.

As you probably guessed, it didn't play remotely the number of theaters they

were planning on.

And the main reason for that is because they ended up picking up a little film

called Sleepaway Camp right before that, which ended up...

pretty much taking all the ad money from the film.

So they released Sleepaway Camp in November before the film came out. When

eventually opened, it was much later, obviously, than what they were

planning. And so Sleepaway Camp got all the love and all the ad money and all

the screens, and Conquest became essentially an afterthought.

Also the fact that the market was very super saturated with sword and sorcery

films at the time didn't really help. They were fighting for screens, and it

much harder to book screens for Conquest than it was.

for Sleepaway Camp, and so that wound up playing much wider. I can attest

firsthand, I remember when that happened, Sleepaway Camp actually played

widely for a slasher movie, especially one that wasn't a big studio film.

So Poor Conquest kind of got left in the lurch there and only wound up playing

about half the screens they were planning on.

Although interestingly, if you did see one of the original prints, which

originally, as you can probably guess, it was cut to get an R rating. The

Wishbone scene in particular was pretty significantly trimmed down.

It wasn't until later that we started getting video versions from Mexico and

Japan and whatnot that we saw the full cut of the film.

But it was one of the very first U .S. releases that bore the new UFDC logo,

which you probably would have also seen at the beginning of George Romero's Day

of the Dead.

They were kind of the George Romero company. Dawn of the Dead was the

hit they had had and remained throughout the company's history.

But they had also released things like 1990, The Bronx Warriors, Knight Riders,

Classic 1984, and Q.

But Dawn was the big one, and after Day of the Dead, things kind of went

downhill, and they wound up being folded into another company called Taurus

Entertainment. which is probably most famous for horror fans as the company

did the U .S. release for Two Evil Eyes, co -directed by, you guessed it, George

Romero and Dario Argento.

So everything comes full circle over and over again here.

But Taurus is technically still around. They did those awful sequels to

Creepshow and Day of the Dead out there, but, you know, whatever.

So, yeah, that's the strange history of the U .S. release of Conquest, and then

it hit VHS, and the rest is history.

Well, there you go. The Sleepaway Camp connection is very interesting. One

wonders what Lucio Fulci thought of Sleepaway Camp. I'm sure he had some

words to say about it after that. Because this was, believe it or not, he

think this was going to be kind of his ticket to another level of filmmaking.

Now, the films that he was doing in the early 80s, primarily gory horror films,

that's what he became known for.

went to by choice it was it just kind of happened once it happened he accepted

it it wasn't like he you know griped about it a lot and you know was going

of his way to try and disassociate himself from that sort of thing but

were not films that were generally very successful in italy

Dario Ageno was one of the relatively few Italian genre directors who made

that were very successful in Italy and that also got theatrical distribution

throughout the rest of the world, at least through the late 80s. Things

unfortunately, not for the better for him after that. But he managed to build

a nice little business empire for himself and was doing very, very well

the 80s.

Darker times came in the 90s, but, you know, you can't ride the horse forever.

But like Mario Bava before him, his films did better, you know, in the

international marketplace.

Movies like City of the Living Dead, which was retitled over here as Gates of

Hell, for example, or obviously, you know, Zombie, which was, you know, just

plain old zombie in the U .S. It didn't need to be zombie, too.

They were much more successful here than they were in Italy.

And I think Fulci was trying to get himself to a place where his career, you

know, bearing in mind he's...

hitting middle age around this time.

He's really wanting to sort of keep up with the younger guys, especially with

people like Argento.

And he's looking to sustain himself and keep his career afloat. I think he was

also well aware of the fact that things were changing in the Italian film scene.

The early 80s saw a big change with regards to television.

television had a tremendously negative impact on the Italian cinema scene. Most

people just started staying home and watching for free instead of going to

cinema. So there were, you know, a lot of Italian directors ended up going into

TV, including Fulci.

Argeno had dabbled in TV here and there as well, but Fulci was obliged for a

period of time to make movies for the small screen. Still incredibly gory

for the small screen, but he was doing them nevertheless.

But people like Umberto Lenzi and Lambert, and so forth, they were going

a lot.

And I think that Fulci saw this movie.

as an opportunity to kind of court a little bit more of a mainstream success,

which is perversely funny to me because obviously it's clear that he went out of

his way to make this as unfriendly for the mainstream audience as possible.

This is a movie that I could see playing very well for a bunch of stoned -out

college kids at 2 o 'clock in the morning on a college campus.

But in terms of taking the kids to go see the latest sort of sword and sorcery

movie, movie at the theater, with all this rape and violence and scalpings and

people being torn in half and, you know, everything's so diffused that you can

barely see what the hell's going on, you know, was it almost kind of a self

-sabotage that he took it down this road? I'm not altogether sure, but, you

know, things were definitely starting to transition for Fulci during this period

of time and not in an entirely good way as far as, you know, what was going to

happen with his career on the whole.

And it's a bit perverse, if you think, because they're sort of aiming this for,

I guess, the You're the Hunter from the Future crowd is what they were shooting

for, because that had gotten a big studio release from Columbia right

this. But if you're going for that audience and what you're delivering is

closer to like a Jodorowsky film, it's in that realm. So I don't know why they

wouldn't promote it more as like a midnight type film as well.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't think, you know, I suspect if anybody

sitting in on the dailies when this was coming through, and especially when, you

know, the first rough cut was presented and everything, I suspect there were a

lot of people just sort of holding their heads in their hands and just not

knowing what to do with it.

It was obviously a film that was aimed at a specialized audience.

The people that get it, I hate to put it that way, it almost sounds

condescending, but it's true. You either respond to this or you don't. You

either appreciate it. for what it is or you're just not going to be able to get

into it. And I know the first time that I saw it, I didn't have the warmest

feelings in the world when I first saw it.

A lot of Fulci's later films actually really disappointed me when I first saw

them. It was only later on that I started to look at them in context and

appreciate the arc and understanding why his career was the way that it was and

why those later films were the way that they were that I started to understand

them and appreciate them a little better.

I will never come around to Demonia or Ghosts of Sodom.

You say that now.

I say that now.

Maybe one day they'll put out a deluxe Blu -ray of Ghosts of Sodom, but I don't

know that that will happen anytime soon.

Yeah, you know, but the others, for the most part, I find them very interesting

and a lot more worthy than they're given credit for, and that includes this

film. Now, this is a big -budget movie compared to those later ones. This

actually, you know, there's some pretty impressive scenery here. There was a lot

of location filming in Sardinia.

And, you know, with all the fog and all the mist and everything else, but you

can still see that it's a movie that's got a little bit of scope. It's not

entirely claustrophobic and hemmed into one soundstage with just a few pieces of

scenery, for example.

And, yeah, the look of this film, you know, is usually the big stumbling block

for people. But what's odd is I think in a way it's almost ahead of its time

because if you look at a film like, for example, last year we had the movie

Mandy. which people just went ape over because they said it felt like they were

watching a live action heavy metal album cover.

And it's like, well, that's what this is. I mean, this is like watching a 90

minute prog rock album cover, you know? Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

So if you like Mandy, it's like this, I mean, you could say this is like way

ahead of the curve almost because almost any image in the film, you could freeze

that. I mean, like right here and there you go.

We need to put that on the front of the case. If you like Mandy, this is the

film for you.

But look, I mean, you've got these sort of Chewbacca creatures here.

You know, are they aping Chewbacca? I'm not sure.

But you have, you know, there are these kind of weird sort of sci -fi and horror

elements that are in here. So you do get a sense, it's kind of a everything but

the kitchen sink approach.

So let's put in some monsters.

Let's put in some gore. Let's put in a little bit of...

Not really sex per se, but there's a certain amount of eroticism involved

some of the, I was saying before, the sort of drug -fueled vision sequences

where Sabrina Siani is laying on the ground and sort of writhing around and

whatnot.

You know, there's a little bit of everything, kind of something here for

everybody to appreciate.

But the very diffused look of it, the very unusual look of it, you know,

this isn't what people are accustomed to seeing. And I think that, you know, a

lot of viewers are kind. of trained over the years to believe that there there

is a particular way a movie is supposed to look and there's a particular way

that a story is supposed to unfold and if it doesn't fit into that schematic it

is a failure and i don't agree with that at all and i'm sure you don't either

definitely not uh this is why a lot of these films i think that's why you know,

a lot of viewers gravitate to these films because we get so tired of the

conventional mainstream approach, and so to see something like this, which is so

utterly bonkers and off the wall, is very refreshing.

I mean, say what you want to say about the film, there's nothing else quite

it, even though it's part of a group of movies, you know, that were saturating

the market at this time.

You know, you have all these, you can toss into Conan the Barbarian and all

these other types of films as well.

You know, they all are part of a particular movement, and yet this is the

duck of the bunch.

Oh, absolutely.

Since you mentioned eroticism, I think it's curious that for some reason when

Fulci tries, when he handles things like nudity and sexuality, and there really

isn't any full -on sexuality in this film. I mean, there's sort of these sort

flickerings where you have nudity.

It's very removed, and a lot of his films are that way. When there is

even in something like The Black Cat or New York Ripper, it's definitely not

meant to be erotic.

It's almost anti -erotic in a way. I think the only film I can think of

where he actually sort of succeeded in creating a genuinely erotic air is

probably One on Top of the Other, which is almost like an anomaly in his career.

Well, I would add in The Devil's Honey.

Yeah, well, The Devil's Honey, that's a whole other beast.

Yeah. That's sadistic sexuality.

Yeah, that's dealing with S &M. As he put it, with the loneliness of

sadomasochism. So it's a very somber and sad film, but it does have its moments

that are genuinely erotic. Yeah.

Fulci wasn't a prude with anything, really. I mean, that's one of the things

that really endears him to a lot of people.

The people who love him love the fact that he just didn't give a damn about

going where other people wouldn't go.

The ultimate example of that, of course, is the splinter in the eye sequence in

Zombie. Most people would have cut away.

He taught that. He certainly went even further than that in movies like The New

York Ripper, obviously, but there's a question there. Did he go too far?

Not for me, he didn't. I understand what he was trying to do, and I think he

pulled it off brilliantly, but a lot of people find the...

The level of violence, especially combined with the sexuality in that

should be very, very queasy stuff.

It's meant to be.

It's not an unintentional thing. It's not like he didn't realize that people

were going to be provoked by that. He liked to provoke.

And I think that's a constant throughout his career.

If you go back to his really early films...

that he was doing the early sort of rock and roll musicals and comedies. They

all have their kind of anarchistic streak to them. They're all kind of

their nose at authority figures and things like that. But it wasn't really

he did a really fine Western with Frank O 'Neill called Massacre Time, which is

also known as The Brute and the Beast.

that he really started to delve into violence.

And he always seemed to have this fascination, and we're going to see it

this movie as well. There's some sequences later on where it's really

This fascination with, well, you can see it right there, with the destruction of

the human body, kind of that emphasis on the frailty of the human body and the

level of trauma that it can take.

He's almost like a little kid pulling wings off of butterflies.

In a way, there's this kind of strange fascination, which also, I think, in a

way goes back to his early training to be a doctor.

I don't know how well -known that is amongst a lot of people that Fulci

originally set out for a career in medicine.

And the story that he always told was that...

He was with a girl at the time that was from

a well -to -do family, and she ditched him because he didn't have any money.

And so he decided to go ahead and ditch the medical study in favor of going into

film because he figured he'd make more money that way. But then he said that he

ran into this woman later on when he was working on, I think he was working on

An American in Rome, the film that Steno directed with Alberto Sordi.

And he saw the girl getting out of a limousine, and he went up to her and

out his hand, and she thought that he was a beggar. So he said it didn't

do him any good, and he never got as wealthy as he wanted to get. Although

period of time, he was doing very, very well.

Through the 70s into the early 80s, I think he had a very prosperous period.

And unfortunately, that all kind of came crashing down right around this time,

actually. His health started to deteriorate.

Unfortunately, he went through a very bad period of time not long after this

movie, and the film started to suffer accordingly.

Yeah, and this was kind of a strange turning point in his career anyway

he had split from his longtime screenwriter, and this is sort of where

tend to think of the classic Fulci period as coming to an end. You know,

Manhattan Baby was sort of like the coda to that.

And so you have to wonder if his health hadn't deteriorated, where would he have

gone from there? Because you have things like Murder Rock, for example, which I

think are very worthy films, but it's obviously a bit different. The voice is

little different. The approach is a bit different.

And so had he not had basically that year in the wilderness health -wise, you

can only remember what could have been.

Yeah, that's true. I mean, Murder Rock is interesting because in some respects

it's almost a kind of companion piece to New York Ripper. They actually have

very similar thematic interests.

but it's almost like he was cowed by the New York Ripper and all the

controversies that generated, so he decided to make a giallo without any

So you have a movie where the murders are committed with an ornate hat pin,

which is not the most colorful method in the world, although it's different.

I really like Murder Rock. I think it's a good film.

I think, unfortunately, for a lot of people, the music is a stumbling block.

Although, again, I kind of like the music myself.

But it's adorable.

You know, and that's not good for a giallo, but yet at the same time it is.

And some of those songs really do, I get their earworms. I get them into my head

and, you know, they just make me happy.

Keith Emerson, obviously a great composer, did an extraordinary score for

Argento on Inferno, but Murder Rock, probably not really one of his great

scores, but, you know.

Still, it's a much better film than a lot of people give it credit for.

But then after that, through health reasons,

he's having a bad time of it. He's not able to work, although he very much

to and needs to because he has bills that need to be paid.

And then he eventually comes back with The Devil's Honey.

And from then on out, it's basically making movies that are very, very

underfinanced. And an interesting connection to this film and The Devil's

is actually the fact that apparently they share the same cinematographer.

say apparently because the cinematographer in question, his name is

Ulloa.

If you look at the credits on this film, it's credited to Alejandro Alonso

Garcia.

To the best of my knowledge, that is a nom de plume for Alejandro Ulloa.

Everything that I've found has indicated that that's the case. I haven't been

able to find any other credits for an Alejandro Alonso Garcia, so let's assume

that it's accurate.

If it's not, then somebody can top my head off about it. But as far as I know,

Ulloa is the one who photographed this, and Ulloa would also go on to shoot The

Devil's Honey. And much earlier, he had shot One on Top of the Other or

Perversion Story for Fulci, which is one of his most beautiful films. looking

films. Obviously, very, very good cinematographer.

This film, you know, again, going with the very strange aesthetic that it does,

people may not necessarily guess, you know, what a world -class

he was, but if you look at a lot of his other films that include, we did the

Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing Horror Express, which is one of my all -time

favorite movies.

Oh, yeah.

Jeff Franco's Diabolical Dr. Z, and he also did a bunch of Paul Nashy movies

like El Caminante, which I think is Nashy's best film.

and Human Beasts and Night of the Werewolf, amongst others. So a very good

cinematographer. I think there's some very arresting imagery in this film, and

as usual, Fulci uses camera work very expressively and very interestingly.

You can see here the usual zoom -ins on people's eyes. He loved those close -ups

on people's eyes, and that's a stylistic device that you see in a lot of his

movies. In fact, when I was this little kid and didn't know who Lucio Fulci was,

The first full -length film I ever saw was The Black Cat.

Oh, Lord.

They used to run that on the USA Network, believe it or not, on Saturday

Nightmares.

A lot of noses.

Lots of noses. Well, you know what they did, though, and I didn't understand

this at the time. I remember when I saw it as a kid that every time they had

those close -ups, they were squeezed so you could fit the eyes in. Otherwise, it

would just be close -ups of people's bridges of their noses. And I couldn't

understand why everybody's faces were so skinny.

I did not understand what that was all about until much later.

But, yeah, Fulci, this is not one of his widescreen films.

You know, this isn't. not in the 235 aspect ratio, but for my money.

If you want to talk in terms of people who use widescreen really well, I'd put

him up there with Sergio Leone and John Carpenter as far as use of the frame.

There's no wasted space in this either, but this is obviously on a more intimate

scale, which is interesting because this is a movie that has a lot of outdoor

shooting, a lot of locations.

It's kind of a movie that has a certain scope and ambition in a way, so I kind

of wonder why they didn't shoot it in 235.

Yeah.

And it's interesting that you'll notice when he does his scope films, he tends

to do some really fascinating things with depth of field, for example,

especially if you look at something like The Beyond or House by the Cemetery,

where it gets really extreme and fascinating, whereas when he does films

are thought flat, like this one, it has a bit of a different feel to it. This is

more like something like Lizard Woman Skin, for example, or Four of the

Apocalypse, where it's more formally framed.

It's more painterly, the way that he shoots it.

He doesn't go quite as crazy with the depth of field effects in this one.

Yeah, and as a stylist, I don't think he tends to get the credit that's due to

him.

If you go back and look at a movie like Perversion Story, he's doing things in

1969 that...

Brian De Palma got a lot of credit for later on, you know, as far as split

screen is concerned and split diopter and things like that. He's a very, very

interesting visual stylist.

I like the use of the foregrounding of the grass here or the reeds, for

that kind of fixation on elements in the scenery or elements within the frame to

kind of give it a little bit of extra depth.

He had that very painterly sensibility. You can see that in, you know, Pretty

much all of his films.

It's a little harder to see in some of the later ones because they're a little

bit more sort of rough and ready, so to speak.

But, you know, nevertheless, he was not a hack.

And I really dislike it when I see him described as such. I think it's easy to

dismiss. A director like Fulci, if you've only ever seen a really butchered

of Gates of Hell or House by the Cemetery, I seem to recall the House by

Cemetery, at least one transfer, the reels were in the wrong order.

Yeah, the old veteran tape, yeah.

Yeah, that's right. That was how I first saw it. And, well, you know, in a way,

can you tell? I don't know.

Wait, to the live again, what?

Yeah, yeah.

Very strange, although it still doesn't explain why nobody bats an eye that

they're mopping up all that blood on the floor at one point. But never mind.

I do it all the time. What are you talking about?

Oh, well, you know, it happens.

It's just, you know, it's no big deal.

But, yeah, it's easy to see why if you were watching really bad copies of

like that or even, you know.

Somebody who is renowned nowadays, like a Sergio Leone, if you were going back

and just watching those panned and scanned eyesores on TV back in the 80s

of Good, Bad, and Ugly and For a Few Dollars More and so forth, the artistry

lost and the attention to detail in the frame is lost.

And unfortunately, in Fulci's case, it's been a long time coming that we've had

an opportunity to see

a lot of his best films being rescued, but fortunately now they are being, and

lot of them are getting nice special editions like this, and it's always

to have an opportunity to talk a little bit about them and try to set the record

straight that he wasn't just this imitative hack who pretty much just

what everybody else was doing and didn't bring any of his own personality to it.

And it's interesting to see how much love some of these films get now, just

beyond the ones that are, you know, obviously the Beyond, of course,

became, you know, a classic thanks to Tarantino re -releasing it. But films

this and Murder Rock, for example, you know, when you say they're coming out on

Blu -ray, people are freaking out, and people have actually grown to love these

films. Like, they're part of their DNA now, which I think is fascinating.

And this is a side note, because that's Winston Murder Rock, but I think one

similarity that's interesting is, since he was following New York Ripper and he

decided to make a bloodless Jallo,

It's curious that he decided to take a page from this film and make it far more

stylistically extreme.

New York Ripper is very naturalistically shot. It's very gritty.

Whereas Murder Rock, I think, is more like this. It's very diffused. And I

for God's sakes, in half the film, he's flashing a strobe light right in your

face. It's really aggressive, which I think is to compensate for the lack of

gore. He says, well, I'm going to provoke the audience a different way. So

prodding you in your eye, not with bloodshed, but rather just with the

look of the film itself, which I think was an interesting choice.

Absolutely. Well, I've always thought that Murder Rock was like he was taking

the antique shop murder scene in Bava's Blood and Black Lace and expanding it to

feature length because it is that flashing strobing light the whole way

And, you know, again, very deliberate. I think, you know, it looks great. But

speaking of looking great, you know, more emphasis on the kind of destruction

the body here.

the gross -out effects, and that's something that he did very, very well.

I think, too, also because of his background in medicine, that explains

it, that he has this sort of attention to sort of seeping and oozing and sort

nasty, you know, kind of wounds and things like that.

Franco Ruffini did the makeup effects on this film, and he had actually worked

with Fulci already on City of the Living Dead. He did some of the makeup effects

on that as well.

And he's another guy who doesn't tend to get his due very much, but worked on

some interesting films. He did a very, very good Damiano Damiani film called I

Am Afraid with Gian Maria Volante, which...

If you haven't seen Seek It Out, it's a great film.

He also did Sergio Martino's The Scorpion with Two Tails, which should

confused with The Case of the Scorpion's Tail.

Very different.

Very different, and I think most people would prefer the 70s film, The Case of

the Scorpion's Tail, but whatever. That's a big bet, yeah.

I would think so.

And he also did a film that you know intimately as well, Lamberto Bava's

Fighter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Which also has an odd connection to this film as well, in that Lucio Fulci was

supposed to make a film called Blast Fighters, and that was largely

for his rift with Dardano as well. And so, again, we can only wonder if he and

Dardano had stayed partners, or his career would have gone after that. But

Fighters would have been a sci -fi film that he would have made. Of course,

Fulci did make science fiction films, which, again, are almost as crazy, not

quite as crazy as this film, but they're definitely distinctly Fulci films.

Oh, yeah, definitely.

I think the funniest thing is that we should probably talk about the score,

the funny thing is that Claudio Simonetti, you know, who scored this

up doing, you know, there were two films called The New Barbarians and The New

Gladiators that came out after this. One was a Fulci film, the other was scored

by Simonetti.

And if you're not paying attention, you can always confuse the two and think

that, you know, like, wait, why are there two different films?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, well, speaking of Simonetti, he obviously contributes a very good score

this film. It's one of the standout aspects of the film that I suspect a lot

people who don't even necessarily like the film like the soundtrack, which

entirely unusual.

He was interviewed for an upcoming book that I'm working on about Dario

Argento's films.

which is to be called Murder by Design, the Unsane Cinema of Dario Argento. Nice

little plug there.

And we asked him about working with Fulci and what he thought of Fulci, and

basically said, couldn't tell you, I never met him.

By the time the post -production got to the scoring phase, Fulci had moved on to

Fresh Pastures.

I'm not entirely sure that that was always the case with Fulci. I think that

would typically like to be involved.

But in this case, he had had a lot of problems with Giovanni Di Clemente and

also with the Mexican co -producers.

Apparently there was some bad blood.

And in fact, Fulci, as I mentioned earlier, was supposed to do another film

Di Clemente called Alibi.

And Fulci basically broke his contract that he wouldn't work with him anymore.

And he got... sued by DiClemente, although apparently DiClemente did not

Fulci didn't suffer anything as a result of that lawsuit, but obviously they

never worked together again and there was no love lost there.

Simonetti was picked to do the score, obviously, because he was a big name at

the time.

He'd been part of Goblin, which shot to tremendous success with the soundtrack

to Deep Red, Profondo Rosso, and, you know, a rock star in the literal sense

the term. And this scene here, though, just to interrupt briefly, looks very

much like something out of one of Fulci's zombie movies.

Very atmospheric stuff here with these kind of creatures coming out of the

water, very much...

Very much like zombie terrain.

He just couldn't escape that sort of stuff, apparently.

But, yeah, Simonetti said that he did not meet Fulci.

He never met Fulci, period, although he did meet his daughter Antonella years

later.

basically worked with the producer on scoring the film, delivered his music,

that was the end of it. It's a good score.

It definitely works well for the movie and helps to bolster the sense of

atmosphere.

It's not typical kind of adventure film scoring, though, is it?

Definitely not.

It is almost more like kind of horror film scoring in a way.

And it almost reminds me, it's almost like Popol Vuh meets sort of Giorgio

Moroder meets Brian Eno meets Tangerine Dream. It's very much in that mold.

And also it's interesting that Simonetti was kind of in an odd place in his

career because he had left Goblin, you know, the history of Goblin is very

tangled, but essentially sort of the last real bona fide Goblin score to that

point had been Tenebrae, which was actually credited to three of the

it's Goblin, you know, per se.

But Simonetti had gone off and had a sort of a side career doing disco music.

which, of course, Disco died right before this film came out. So he was

kind of finding his voice as a composer.

So it's not quite the Simonetti that we know who jumped to the forefront with

Phenomena a year later. So if you listen to this in New Barbarians, it's kind of

fascinating because you're hearing a Simonetti that's not quite the Simonetti

that you know.

Yeah, that's definitely true. I mean, he had left Goblin even earlier than that.

Obviously,

they did Deep Red and Suspiria and Dawn of the Dead.

The Heroin Busters, the Castellari film, did a great score for that. But then

there were a bunch of Goblin scores that he wasn't involved in, like for the

Italian release of Patrick, for example, or Intamination.

Yeah, exactly.

He wasn't involved in those.

There was a lot of bad blood between them, and it pretty much remained so.

Even when they reunited to do Sleepless, they didn't get along, and it was not a

happy experience, according to him. So, yeah, at this point, he's definitely

coming. kind of finding himself, so to speak, and developing his own sort of

signature solo style.

So this is not necessarily a representative, emblematic score by him,

very good score, and it definitely adds to the film. I wanted to mention this

scene, too, by the way. This is a nifty little scene with the...

doppelganger. The villain has taken the form of the hero.

And so we get this sequence, which kind of reminds me a little bit of a similar

sequence in Mario Bava's Kill Baby Kill, where Giacomo Rossi Stewart is chasing

himself through the scenery.

Except in that case, it's almost like a cartoon. It's the same piece of scenery

over and over and over again.

Here, obviously, they're outdoors, and it's an energetic fight sequence, but

there is something interesting about the idea of this villainous character,

Zora, taking the form of the hero and creating this kind of confusion, which,

you know, I don't know. Is it always entirely clear who is who in this

or is it not meant to be clear? I leave that to you to decide.

I wonder if there's a little dab of Empire Strikes Back as well where Luke

Skywalker is fighting himself in the cave dressed as Darth Vader as well.

That's true. That's true. I mean, that was another thing that was very much in

the ether at the time. You know, the success of Star Wars obviously inspired

whole slew of Italian science fiction films as well.

So, Fulci did, as we mentioned before, he dabbled in sci -fi. And around this

time, too, he had made a film called 2072 A .D. The New Gladiators, which...

It's an interesting film. It's compromised by the fact that the budget

there for what they're trying to do, but it's got a lot of good ideas.

Just to mention here, too, this character, we never see his face, and

we don't even hear his voice on the English track because it would be

but apparently played by a rather distinguished actor by the name of

Martin.

And San Martin is probably best known to Euro cult viewers for playing Inspector

Tanner in Jess Franco's The Awful Dr. Orloff back in 1962. That was the...

the first sort of major Spanish horror film.

He'd been around since the 1940s, and he was in over 100 movies, well over 100

movies, obviously apart from working with Jeff Franco on a couple of

You can see him in things like The Colossus of Rhodes, which is Sergio

first official full -length film as a solo director.

Just about everybody in Spain was in King of Kings, so it's not surprising

in it.

But he also did Paul Nash's Beastman, The Magic Sword, and José Ramón

Edge of the Axe. Perhaps appropriately, his final movie was a remake of José

Ramón Larraza's best -known film, Vampires, from 2015.

I read that he actually died at the age of 98 just recently, as a matter of

fact, April 26th. So there you go.

Very prolific actor.

Anybody in the world could be under that mask. I'm not going to lie to you.

There's no opportunity here for him to stand out in the film.

But he is billed.

Obviously,

he is at least credited with doing the film. But again, it's kind of a mystery

how somebody who was a little bit of a name ended up playing that part.

We'll take their word for it, I guess.

Well, we'll have to, unfortunately.

I have nothing to the contrary to offer on that particular topic.

I want to mention, too, about...

Andre Accapinti here.

Obviously, he's going to be departing the film here in short order. I should

talk about him a little bit.

You know, he's kind of an interesting guy. He's been active in movies since

late 70s.

As I mentioned earlier, he had been in New York Ripper before this, so this was

his second time working with Fulci.

And he also played the lead role in Lamberto Bava's

Jallo, Blade in the Dark.

He's in Miranda, the Tinto Brass movie.

Which is weird, because he's supposed to be the lead in that, and he's only in

about a third of it.

Exactly, exactly.

But unfortunately, he's probably best remembered for playing opposite Bo Derek

in Bolero, which earned him a Razzie nomination as the worst new star. So not

very fair to him, unfortunately. But more recent years, he's been working

successfully as a producer.

He's done everything from the American version of...

funny game to Lars von Trier's Antichrist, amongst other things. So,

he's had an interesting and eclectic career.

He's actually dubbed on the English track by an actor by the name of Steven

Luoto.

He's one of those voices that you know, even if you don't know the name.

And if you're familiar with Al Capinti in some of these other films, you'd be

forgiven for thinking that... That's his real voice because he actually dubbed

him also in The New York Ripper and Blade in the Dark as well as this movie.

he also did the voice for Mark Gregory in those Enzo Castellari, you know, 1990

Bronx Warriors and Escape from the Bronx movies.

And Christian Borromeo, he dubbed in House by the Edge of the Park. A ton of

different movies. It's one of the things I always like to try and...

mentioned in these tracks is the people who did the dubbing because they don't

get their due. Obviously, they don't get a screen credit, so you start to

recognize certain voices down through the years.

certain voices become very heavily associated with certain actors. I mean,

obviously, one that always comes to mind for me is Nick Alexander with Al

Cliver.

You know, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this Italian has a very thick

English accent.

It's still jarring to me when I hear Al Cliver's real voice.

It is. I'm not used to it. It is. It's very strange. And, you know, obviously

with these films, you know, there are...

sort of built -in caveats as far as the dubbing is concerned. Sometimes the

dubbing is better than others.

I do think that at this stage, certainly through the 80s, the quality of the

English dubs on most of these Italian films was actually exceptionally good.

Just another note about Andrea Capenti, because like you mentioned, he's going

to be departing soon, but he's a bit of a fascinating figure in the Italian film

industry now because, as mentioned, he was sort of kind of known as sort of a

pretty boy actor when he first started out.

and his Americanized name on New York River was Andrew Painter, which I just

find really amusing for some reason.

But he eventually decided that he wanted to go into film production and

distribution, so he started his own company, and he stole the founder and

CEO of it, called Lucky Red, and they handle a lot of Italian films, but they

also handle things like Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World, for example.

It's one of the more recent ones.

But they've put the money into films like Open Your Eyes, for example, which

fantastic. A lot of Michael Haneke films, like The White Ribbon, for

This Must Be the Place.

But he also made history because Luca Pinti is openly gay, and he was the very

first film distributor to offer full LGBT rights to all of the employees,

including maternity leave and child benefits and that kind of thing. So he

quite the groundbreaker in Italy for that.

Well, that's interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah. So, yeah, put on him for

that one. Which I think brings us to the other point we mentioned earlier, which

is the sort of odd homoerotic vibe that runs through this film, but in a strange

way, because if this were a peplum, it would sort of focus on the men's bodies,

but this doesn't really. Holstie, like I said, even when he's trying to be

sexual, it's like the way that he shoots the human body, it's very detached, and

he doesn't really focus on...

the men's looks that much.

If you look at like Miranda, for example, it makes Roger Pinty much more

a sex figure than he is in this film where he's just kind of a cute puppy

So there isn't really a normal kind of sexual attraction in this film between

anybody. But yeah, there is this kind of odd undercurrent. And he's got Rivero,

who's also...

Before this, he was a really big sort of beefcake star.

I think his big international claim to fame for mixing audiences that wound up

going wider was a film called The Sin of Adam and Eve in the late 60s, where he

spends like about a third of the movie butt naked.

So he wound up getting sort of a big fan following there because they're like,

oh, my God.

So that was a big deal when he did that film.

But Fulci doesn't really exploit that with either of them, but he still has

kind of thing that's not really quite a brotherly bond between them. It is,

especially when he...

I assume you've seen the films that are going to ruin it, but when Ancavinte's

character dies and his essence essentially starts getting carried over

burning him at the fire and sort of absorbing his power, that's interesting

stuff.

So it's like they have this sort of spiritual bond. It's not quite all

but it's not really quite friendship either. It's something in between.

I'm not sure how you qualify it.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And, you know, like you said, that is a big

difference with the Peplum films. Obviously, the Peplum films, typically,

are much more scantily clad here.

I mean, you know, you've got lots of leather and things like that, which, you

know, depending on your point of view, that's a good thing or not. But

certainly, you know, there's...

It seems to come with the turf. It seems to come with the terrain. And it's just

something that was very typical in the Peplum films that there's always that

emphasis on, you know, clearly they went through the trouble of getting these

people who had, you know, almost sort of supernaturally extraordinarily well

-developed muscles and things like that. They're not going to put them

underneath a lot of clothes and cover them up. The idea is to sort of show

off as much as possible by having them doing all kinds of, you know, feats of

strength. None more famous than Steve Reeves, you know, with... with the

in Hercules.

So it kind of comes with the terrain. In this movie, yes, it's definitely not as

foregrounded, but it's there a little bit. I don't know. It could have been

something that the actors brought to the table. I don't know. It might have been

something that Occupiente and Rivero just amongst themselves kind of

as kind of a bit of business to kind of give the...

to put a little bit more flesh on the bone, so to speak.

That's entirely possible.

Or maybe it was something that Fulci encouraged them to include as well. I

know for sure, but there is a sense of they are sort of like brothers, but at

the same time...

there are these little bits of kind of exchange looks between them.

And it definitely, it's there. It's one of those things that, you know, film

theorists love to kind of, you know, write dissertations on. You can go with

that and really develop that into something if you want to, or if it's not

something that interests you, it's not going to get in the way. It's just kind

of, it's there if you want to see it, and it's not there if you don't, I

Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the famous, well, now famous anecdote about

-Hur. where Gore Vidal and Stephen Boyd realized they were kind of bored with

the material and so they invented this whole sort of gay subtext for his

character in Charlton Heston but they never told Charlton Heston about it so

you've kind of got two stories running at the same time with one actor playing

it one way and the other playing it the other way so it's like you can watch it

with the gay angle or not it doesn't really matter either way but if you do

kind of makes the movie more fun and just gives it an extra layer if you're

looking for it.

Oh, yeah, I agree. Well, of course, in that case, too, you have, you know, very

conservative Heston, you know, finding that out later on and denying it

strenuously and saying, no, that's not true. And then Stephen Boyd, yeah, of

course, that's what we were doing. So, yeah, it's funny how, you know, lack of

communication sometimes on a film set, you know, people were playing very

different things. And, you know, Fulci, his relationship with his actors in

general was ambivalent. I think some actors really liked

him. Yeah, he's very inconsistent depending from one actor to the other.

not across the board at all.

What's interesting, though, is a lot of the people that I interviewed made a

point of saying, well...

He could be really nasty to people, but he was never nasty to me.

There's a lot of stories about that. And, of course, famously, because

wants to harp on the idea that Fulci was misogynist, which I don't think is

entirely accurate. I think Fulci was more of a misanthrope than anything

He was not nice to men.

No, he could be very mean to a lot of different men, and a lot of men come to

very bad ends in his films, as we're going to see here.

Poor Andre Accapinty.

Obviously, we're not spoiling anything. If you're listening to us first, you're

just going about it the wrong way, so you deserve to have it spoiled for you.

But it's just true that he was kind of an equal opportunity sadist, I think.

But he was...

Let me put it this way. If he thought you were taking it seriously and you

professional and you showed up and you knew what you were doing and you didn't

cause trouble, he loved you.

But if you were a prima donna or if you were lazy or if he got the impression

you only got the role because you were sleeping with the producer.

then he would make your life a living hell, and it just really depended.

Giovanni Lombardo Radice, for example, was coming to City of the Living Dead

from having had a pretty distinguished background as a theater actor.

Fulci was aware of that, and he respected that.

Fulci respected the hell out of Richard Johnson on Zombie. He knew that he was

an actor who'd done a lot of things on stage and on screen, and he let him have

his head. He let him go and improvise all those wonderful monologues about

everything that's going on on the island of Matul.

most of which wasn't written.

Johnson was just kind of ad -libbing, and Fulci loved it.

But if he had somebody who didn't know what they were doing or who was causing

problems on the set, he would really lay into them.

I think he also liked to test people, and I had that happen with a lot of

I talked with, that they would kind of start off on the wrong foot with him.

For example, Paolo Malco, who was in New York Ripper and House by the Cemetery,

when he showed up in, I think it was Boston, to do House by the Cemetery for

part of the location filming, Fulci was very nasty towards him, very curt

towards him, and Malco eventually told him, okay, I'm getting on the plane and

going back to Rome.

And Fulci liked that.

He threw it back at him. He let it be known, I'm not going to stand here and

your whipping boy.

They ended up getting along beautifully. As a matter of fact, Malco was his best

man at his, I think, his second marriage, Fulci's second marriage. And

you know, great close personal friends with him and remained very close with

him. So it wasn't that Fulci was, you know, a horrible person that, you know,

was impossible to get to know or to like, but he could be tricky. I don't

that I would have liked interviewing him because I've heard some bad stories

about, you know, how changeable his mood was. could be and uh you know depending

on what day of the week you caught him uh even al cliver told me that that

was the type of person if you saw him in public he would either greet you with

open arms or act like he had no idea who you were.

He was kind of a tricky guy, but on the set he demanded absolute professionalism

from everybody, including his crew, and he was very loyal to his crew members,

and you'll see a lot of the same names cropping up in his movies over and over

again because if he knew that somebody was capable of doing good work, he would

hold on to them as best he could. On this film, for example, you have

Tomasi as the supervising editor.

I'm not sure if that's a token credit because of the Spanish -Mexican co

-financing, and they needed to credit a Spanish and Mexican editor, and Tomasi

really did the editing. I'm not entirely sure, but his name is on the film.

And all told, he edited 17 films for Fulci between 1970 and his death in

so that tells you something.

Prior to Vincenzo Tomasi, Fulci worked a lot with a female editor, speaking of

equal opportunity. female editor, Ornella McKellie, who edited 16 of his

between 1963 and 1978.

So, you know, again, he gravitated more towards the technical people, obviously.

Cinematographers like Sergio Savati, editors like Vincenzo Tamati, composers

like Fabio Fritzi and Rizzo Talani.

Simonetti did this film, of course. This was the only film that he did for

Fulci, but nevertheless.

A lot of the technical people he would bring back again and again. The art

director on this film, too, is another one that did a lot of films for Fulci.

That's Massimo Lentini.

He'd gone back all the way to Challenge to White Fang in the mid-'70s and did a

lot of movies with him.

This was, I believe, the last film that he did with Fulci. But he also worked on

The Beyond and The Psychic and a bunch of really good films.

So, yeah, I mean, very loyal to his crew.

as far as actors were concerned, if you could deliver the goods and you didn't

challenge him or give him a hard time, he could be very loyal to them as well.

You hear a lot of horror stories about him on the set.

And I think one of the things about him... Oh, I was going to say, one of

things that was also true about him was that he apparently was a bit of a slob.

He was known for not really caring what his appearance was like, and he was

known to often look as though he was very rumpled.

But there was a very interesting contrast there because he was a very,

-read intellectual man.

He was not stupid.

He was very well -versed in literature and in art and music, and so he was a

music fan. As a matter of fact, early on in his career, he had actually co

-written a couple of very popular songs.

And so he was a man of many talents, but very well -read, very intelligent man.

He did not care what he looked like, though. And he was always very super

-focused on what he was doing on the set. So sometimes a bit lacking in his

social graces, I think, comes with that.

But, you know, people told me about how he would just...

He would get so animated, he would just be sort of slobbering all over the place

sometimes, or he'd dribble coffee out of his mouth.

David Warbeck said that he used to like smoking a pipe, and sometimes he was so

into what he was doing that he put the pipe upside down so he'd always be

catching his shirt on fire.

You know, things like that. He was an eccentric.

Clearly. And the people who liked him liked him a lot, were very, very loyal

him. But some people did not like him at all.

And obviously those people were the ones who tended to only work with him once

or twice. They didn't get an opportunity to really know him.

But a very blunt man, too. If you ever see any interviews with him or read

interviews with him, you can't take everything that he says at face value.

is a certain amount of embellishing.

in terms of what he says, but he was definitely his own man, and he was

very, very proud.

And I think even though he would say, I don't care what the critics think of me,

deep down inside I think he did. I think he wanted his work to be recognized and

to be given a certain amount of validation, which unfortunately was not

forthcoming. Like we were saying before,

there was just this tendency to dismiss him as a hack because he was making a

certain type of movie, and most critics just couldn't be bothered to really look

at the work. seriously and try to give it some kind of a proper appreciation.

Yeah.

What's interesting is that, well, first of all, I guess it wasn't toward the end

of his life, I think, that he realized just how huge his fan following was in

the U .S. I'm glad at least he had some inkling of that.

It's interesting that his name actually was recognized in the U .S. to an extent

when this came out among film critics. If you read the reviews, they're pretty

dismissive, but they definitely knew who Fulci was. I guess they had to see a

lot of his films. But Hollywood Reporter and Variety, for example, were very

familiar with him, even though they weren't crazy about this particular film

whatever. But it is curious.

On a related note, since you're working on a book on Argento, I think it's odd

that Argento...

became known very quickly as sort of a major pop culture personality mainly

thanks to things like you know during the darkness for example or later short

-lived show jalo but he's almost i hate to try out the hitchcock comparison but

he almost did try to be like that sort of a name that people would know and his

faith whereas doesn't seem like even though fulci made cameos in his film um

here and there but it doesn't seem like he really wanted to be that kind of

person do you have any idea why or

Well, I'd say, first of all, what a missed opportunity for him not to have

played one of the Beastmen in this film.

You know, it is interesting.

There is a big difference in their personalities, and you can see a big

difference in their personalities in their films.

Fulci's films are fire and brimstone. They're very passionate. Argento's films

are much more sort of studied and cool and aesthetic.

They're both made very visually interesting and frequently beautiful

very, very different.

And Argento...

up in this period as well, didn't really do gross -out movies.

More so the movies he produced, like Demons. Those were gross -out movies,

he didn't direct those.

His films didn't really go for that until later.

Argento's later films are much more Fulci -esque.

Well, Phenomenon, I think, is the first one that felt very Fulci -ish.

Yes, there is that. That's true. That was a movie that kind of went... That's

such an unhinged movie that was almost an anomaly at that time.

But later on, movies like Mother of Tears, for example, are very Fulci

some respects.

Not good Fulci -esque, but there is a Fulci -esque component to that.

Fulci wasn't shy about being on camera. Even earlier in his career, you can see

him as a young man in some of the films that Fennel made, for example.

He has little acting roles in some of those movies.

He showed up in a lot of his movies in cameo roles.

Obviously, ended his career.

One of his last films, Cat in the Brain, or Nightmare Concert, he ended up

playing the lead role in it, apparently only because the actor that was

contracted to do it didn't show up.

At least that's the story.

I don't know if I buy that or not, but that's the story he always told. I can't

imagine with anyone but Fulci in it.

Well, take him out of the film and it's worthless.

I hate to say that, but that's what's interesting about it because it's such a

grab bag of kind of clips from random movies and not amongst his best films

either that if you took him out of it, you know.

But I couldn't see a Mario Bava doing a movie like that. I couldn't see him

putting himself on camera like that because he didn't like to be on camera.

Fulci was not shy about that.

I don't know. I think he aspired to establish that kind of a bond with

the audience, but he didn't quite. I think it's partly a generational thing

an extent, because Argento was a young guy, and he kind of had his finger on

pulse of what was popular at that time.

in terms of, you know, you can't imagine Lucio Fulci going and licensing Iron

Maiden music to be in one of his films.

But Argento understood that. He understood where the audience was at and

their interests were and everything, and he just formed that connection. And by

going on TV and doing Door to Darkness and, you know, kind of playing up that

Hitchcock comparison, even though they're very radically different

he was able to establish a bond with the audience. that Fulci was never quite

able to. I don't know that Fulci wasn't interested.

I just don't know that he, well, it could also just be the fact, let's face

the man was a little bit socially maladjusted.

And it could be that he just didn't quite understand how to play that and

capitalize on that, which is a shame. But as you say, at this time, because of

the success of the films in the international marketplace, he was a

commodity.

The bloom was coming off the rose around this time, and things weren't going to

get any better anytime soon, that's for sure.

But yeah, at this stage, he was still a known filmmaker, but not to the

extent... But, you know, another thing, too, Argento has that very unusual look,

doesn't he? He always kind of had that kind of Edgar Allan Poe quality to him.

He looks like a guy who makes spooky movies.

Lucio Fulci was just kind of an ordinary -looking middle -aged guy, you know? So

I don't think that he had that going for him either.

Also, we should probably mention that, again, the plot turn that we've taken

here is highly unorthodox. I can't think of too many other films that have tried

to pull this off.

at the risk of spoiling two really big 80s films that I hope you've all seen.

don't hate me if I've ruined it for you. But the only other two films I can

think of around the time that pulls something this audacious would be

Friedkin's Live and Die in L .A., where you have one of your two heroes get his

head blown off ten minutes before the end of the film, just like this one.

And then, of course, The Hitcher, where you have your heroine gets killed right

before the end of the film. So I don't know what was going on in the mid -80s,

but for some reason they decided they were going to be really ruthless and

slaughter their main characters really graphically before the climax of the

film.

Which, it's a bizarre choice, and I think that's one reason why these films

linger with you, because they take these sudden U -turns, and it's still pretty

shocking stuff.

I mean, you just don't think it's going to happen this way.

Nowadays, very few filmmakers would have the audacity to do something like that.

I can think of Scorsese, for example, with The Departed, some of the things

happen in that film as you get into the last act where people are getting their

heads blown off left and right, and it's quite shocking, and it doesn't

necessarily go the way you expect it to.

This period of time, filmmaking was, I think, a little bit more experimental

a little bit more willing to take chances and take risks.

Whereas now, I dare say the big part of the problem is everything is so

massively overproduced.

There's so much money on the line with every single film that they just can't

afford to take those kinds of risks.

A movie like this could get away with doing strange things, and let's face it,

as we're seeing here, as this bow is going over the landscape, it's doing a

of strange things.

But there's not a lot of money to be lost here, and I think the mentality

some of these movies, too, was that, let's be honest, as long as there's

sales, they're going to make a little bit of a profit.

And by having Fulci's name on it at this time... It was a guarantee enough that

there was going to be some money, you know, made in the process of selling

movie. So, yeah, I mean, it's not a movie that got by on name value in terms

big name actors. Although, again, you know, Jorge or George Rivero.

had had a certain amount of success and was well -known. Obviously, in America,

it would have been relatively well -known to audiences because he was in

Lobo for Howard Hawks and, of course, Midnight Blue.

So those were films that he was familiar with, audiences would have been

familiar with. But it was really more sold as a Lucio Fulci film than as a

George Rivero film, for example, I suspect.

And now even this ending here is also not what you expect. You expect to have

this sort of long, satisfying final demise for your villain, and it's not

what you get.

No, she turns into a dog. Yeah, it's like, wait, what?

It's strange. I remember having to, you know, even seeing it again, I had to

rewind it a bit and think, wait a minute.

Did I miss something?

Sabrina Siani, I should mention, who plays this character, and we're going to

getting a look at her face, but of course it's not her face. The red

there probably helps obscure what looks, frankly, a little bit like a joke store

mask, but nevertheless, a lot of the effects and makeup in this film are very

well done. I like that contrast, though, between the kind of beautiful physique

with the horrible face. It kind of anticipates you a little bit. I guess

could say the Argento -directed Masters of Horror Jennifer.

There's a lot of emphasis placed on that, of course, based on a comic strip

that case. But she had been around since the late 70s and had done a lot of

roles like this, which really required her to walk around a lot without her

clothes on.

In addition to this movie, I think a lot of people might remember her for the

Jeff Franco movie White Cannibal Queen.

which was also cannibalized itself for another cannibal movie called Cannibal

Terror.

And, you know, she's an Umberto Lanzi's daughter of the jungle and did a couple

of Joe D 'Amato movies, including a tour of the Fighting Eagles. So, yeah, it's

kind of a familiar face in movies like this. But, yeah, there you go. I mean,

the villains are reduced to animal form, and that's...

all that happens to them, and it doesn't seem that bad to me.

Yeah, it's kind of refreshing in a way, because, again, like I said, this movie,

it never quite works the way you think it will, and I think that's why a lot of

people either love it or hate it. I mean, it is so off the beaten track that

really sticks in your brain, for better or worse. I think very much for better,

personally. Oh, I would agree.

I mean, again, it's not top -tier Fulci. I'm not going to argue that it's a

neglected masterpiece or anything like that, but I think it's a very

film.

I think that it's a movie that, for many years, it's suffered from bad

transfers, and now, obviously, with this Blu -ray, people can actually kind of

see what's going on.

Again, I don't know how good the HD will be able to cut through all the fog, but

nevertheless, you can kind of get the impression of what's going on. It's just

good movie to put on and enjoy.

And just let the images wash over you. It's a fairly immersive film in that

sense. If you can get into it, it's well worth watching.

It's been a lot of fun sitting here talking about it with you. It's

movie we both enjoy.

So, yeah, there you go. Very much. Thanks for listening, everybody.

This has been great. And thank you, Troy.

And thank you.