Lucio Fulci

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Lucio Fulci

Born June 17, 1927
Rome, Italy
Died March 13, 1996 (age 68)
Rome, Italy
Occupation Film Director, Screenwriter, Actor

Lucio Fulci (June 17, 1927 – March 13, 1996) was an Italian film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is perhaps best known for his directorial work on Gore films, including Zombi 2 (1979) and The Beyond (1981), although he made films in genres as diverse as giallo, western, and comedy.

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[edit] Biography

Fulci was born in Rome and had a Catholic background.[1] After studying medicine, he opted for a film career, working in a wide variety of genres in Italy. In the early 1970s he moved into the thriller arena, directing giallo films that were both commercially successful and controversial in their depiction of violence and religion. The first film to gain him notoriety in his native country, Non si sevizia un paperino (Don't Torture a Duckling) mixed scathing social commentary with the director's soon-to-be-trademark graphic violence to stunning, hallucinatory effect.

In 1979, he achieved his international breakthrough with Zombi II, a violent zombie film that was marketed in European territories as a sequel to George Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978). He followed it up with several tales of horror and the supernatural, many also featuring zombies. His features during this time were described by some critics as being among the most violent and gory films ever made. City of the Living Dead (1980), The Beyond (1981), The House by the Cemetery (1981), and The New York Ripper (1982) were some of his biggest hits, all of which featured extreme levels of on-screen blood and cruelty. Several of Fulci's movies were censored by the film distributor to ensure an R rating (such as The Beyond, which was originally released in edited form as Seven Doors of Death) or were released unrated in order to avoid an X-rating (as with Zombi II and The House by the Cemetery), which would have greatly restricted the films' target audience to adults only. The unrated films often played worldwide in drive-ins and grindhouses to hordes of delighted teenagers and horror fanatics.

Many of Fulci's movies were banned in Europe or released in heavily cut versions. Most of his movies became synonymous with video nasties in the 1980s. After viewing Fulci's New York Ripper, the British Board of Film classification not only refused the film a certificate but also ordered that all copies of the offending film be removed from the country.

German gore director Andreas Schnaas (left) and the late Lucio Fulci (right) at the 1994 Eurofest, London, England.
German gore director Andreas Schnaas (left) and the late Lucio Fulci (right) at the 1994 Eurofest, London, England.

Some of Fulci's fans have retroactively argued that at his peak, Fulci's fame and popularity were on a par with that of Dario Argento, another famous Italian horror film director that Fulci had avoided working with and openly badmouthed. The two finally agreed to collaborate, but Fulci died before the project was finished and the film, M.D.C. - Maschera di Cera (The Wax Mask, 1997), was eventually directed by Sergio Stivaletti.[citation needed]

Fulci's films remained generally ignored and/or dismissed by the mainstream critical establishment, who regarded his work as pure exploitation. However, genre fans appreciated his films as being stylish exercises in extreme grue, and later, some of his splatter films (notably The Beyond and House by the Cemetery) began receiving occasional positive critical retrospective notices outside of the Fulci cult.[citation needed] His earlier, lesser-known giallos (notably A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971) and Don't Torture a Duckling (1972), starring Barbara Bouchet, as well as the western Four of the Apocalypse (1975), received some critical acclaim as they became more widely available around the world.[citation needed]

After the mid-1980s, Fulci was far less successful. He moved onto TV production horror movies, some of which never aired due to the high amount of gore and violence. Soon after he began to suffer from personal and health problems, somewhat due to a marked a decline in the quality of his work. He died in Rome on March 13, 1996, allegedly by his not taking his insulin injection to treat his diabetes in effect suicide.

In 1998, Fulci's The Beyond was re-released to theaters by Quentin Tarantino, who has often cited the film, and Fulci himself, as a major source of inspiration.[citation needed]

[edit] Fulci vs. Sacchetti

Fulci and screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti share many screen credits from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. Their relationship deteriorated over the 1987 film The Changeling 2. Luca M. Palmerini and Gaetano Mistretta's book Spaghetti Nightmares, publishes two full interviews, one with Fulci and one with Sacchetti, explaining the reasons for the fallout.

Fulci's version is as follows: "One day I told him the story of Evil Comes Back (later retitled The Changeling 2), a sequel on a fantastic note to The Postman Always Rings Twice and he proposed it several times over with my name on it as director and then, one day, he registered it with his name on it (laughs). I later found out that he'd sold it to a friend of mine - Martino, but, in view of our past friendship, I decided not to sue him, I just broke off all relations with him. He is, indeed, a very good scriptwriter."

Sacchetti's version differs: "When I proposed him the treatment, which was nothing more than a sequel in fantasy style to The Postman Always Rings Twice, in which a dead man returns, he became really enthusiastic and had it read by a producer, who then commissioned me to write the script. Then, for various reasons, problems arose and the film wasn't made. Four years later, Bava used the script to make Per Sempre and Fulci, who wasn't working at the time got angry with me and started hurling these accusations. It's one thing to say that we were supposed to make this film together, but to claim that the story was his and that I stole it from him is pure science-fiction".

[edit] Trivia

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[edit] Filmography (as director)

[edit] Bibliography

  • Il terrorista dei generi, tutto il cinema di Lucio Fulci by Giacomo Cacciatore, Un mondo a parte, Rome (2004)
  • Beyond Terror, the films of Lucio Fulci By Stephen Thrower - Fab press (1999)
  • Spaghetti Nightmares by Luca M. Palmerini and Gaetano Mistretta, Fantasma Books, Key West, Florida, 1996.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Lucio Fulci interview

2. http://www.kqek.com/dvd_reviews/p2r/3303_PauraLucioFulciRememberedVol1.htm

[edit] External links