|
"A succession of images," Hitchcock's definition of cinema honored by Lucio Fulci as a sensory experience: The blind girl (Cinzia Monreale) presses her fingers to a canvas, a bell shrieks, she runs off with bloody palms. Sepia and unspeakable violence in Louisiana kick it off, an acid crucifixion for a gaunt aesthete at the hands of a lynch mob looking for a warlock. The unholy setting is a decaying hotel erected on an infernal gateway, its owner (Catriona MacColl) comes to New Orleans to repair it and unleashes a parade of astonishing necro-lyrical frissons. Flesh crumbles as readily as plaster, a long shot of a distant figure cuts to a mega close-up of blank eyeballs, caustic liquids are poured on a woman's face until it becomes a puddle of raspberry foam inching toward her pigtailed daughter. "I won't accept irrational explanations," declares the physician (David Warbeck). Fulci disagrees because he knows that film is made for nightmares, and casts himself with bowtie and dubbed-in Dixie drawl to ring in a doozy—the inquisitive clod (Anthony Flees) takes a tumble from a library ladder and tarantulas crawl out for lunch, feasting on lips, nose, eyelids, tongue. While reviewers complain about logic and dialogue, the director does some of his best work with nauseous moods and textures, having a maid reach into black fluid to discover a bluish, bearded ghoul in the drained bathtub, or sullying the sterility of hospital hallways with spilled viscera. ("Autopsy theatre," announces one sign.) Corman's House of Usher anchors the despairing tableau at the close, the last incantation is a warning and an invitation. "And you will face the sea of darkness, and all therein that may be explored." With Antoine Saint-John, Veronica Lazar, Giovanni De Nava, and Maria Pia Marsala.
--- Fernando F. Croce |