When Alice Broke the Mirror

"Touch of Death" is the story of Lester Pearson, a down on his luck gambler whom starts seducing wealthy women with various deformities, then killing them off for a prie fixe lunch of human flesh and cash for his horse racing betting debts.

Fulci has an oft tenuous grasp on his plots, but this has to be the most ridiculously over the top entry in the canon. Though the gore is the usual splatter spectacle (the best of which effects wise is probably the scene where the blackmailing vagrant is run over with Lester's car), it's housed in too goofy of a context to be scary.

After several of the least politically correct murder scenes in film (a bearded lady meets death in a microwave, an inexplicably opera singing widow who solos in her sleep is interrupted by being strangled)and some darkly comic body disposal (complete with silly cartoonish theme music), Lester realizes he has a larger problem than lady killing. An imitator is leaving incriminating evidence at the scene of his crimes that points to Lester. Before long, his picture, modus operandi and DNA genetic code (?!) are being broadcast on the nightly news. Will his latest target ("Cannibal Ferox"'s Zora Kerova) find out before it's too late?

The final twist makes no logical sense and shoestring budget shows, but "Touch Of Death" is a mindless guilty pleasure of Fulci poking fun at himself that will entertain his devoted fans.

Hailing from 1988, Touch Of Death is probably the most frustrating Fulci film I've seen to date, prompting me to join the chorus of horror fans who generalise that his films get worse as you get later into his career. Considering the plot synopsis, I was expecting some bloody bad-natured fun with this one, but for all its bizarre flourishes, it feels tedious even at a running time of just 80 minutes, and suffers from nauseatingly shabby production values and film-making craft (or lack thereof).

El Story: A gambling addict widower wines and dines rich (and strange) women he finds via lonely hearts columns before offing them in gruesome fashion - sometimes eating them or feeding them to animals - and stealing their money to keep his debtors at bay. Sure, it's unlikely that just one man would be the host for so much screwed-up pathology all at once (addict, psycho/sociopath, cannibal), but this is Fulci!

Touch is actually the cheapest and sparsest looking Fulci film I've seen. There's almost nobody in it, even in the background of shots out on the street, for instance. A newsreader who keeps appearing on the film's televisions to warn the non-existent cast about the maniac's latest doings operates out of the most pathetic TV studio on the planet. He never even gets to look at the camera because has to read all the headlines off misaligned sheets of paper.

Some scenes just go on and on with the protagonist muttering to himself about what he's done or what he's about to do, but the acting is nowhere near good enough to sustain this kind of thing, so the main outcome is viewer boredom. The film also looks bland and ugly in general. I've read that it was intended to be an Italian telemovie (did it ever screen in that venue? With the amount of gore involved, it seems unlikely), and it does reek of crappy old telemovie production values.

This is also Fulci's first foray into outright black humour, but he's just too graceless a director to make it work. Sometimes conspicuously cheerful or 'wacky' music is used to play against a gruesome scene, for instance while the hero/villain is carving up a dead body in his basement. The effect isn't really chilling or funny or ironic anything that you'd like it to be - it's mostly just hamfisted and crappy.

There are of course some redeeming moments of gore (that you'll be waiting for while trying to stay awake), including the eventual murder by oven(!) of a woman who just won't quit life, even after her face has been totally bashed apart with a bloody great club, and a homeless guy who gets a car run back and forth over him about five times. The most outrageous element of Touch, however, is all the physical deformation on the widows courted by the crazy guy. Beards, hairy moles, messy harelips - it's not like he sought out women with these features, it's just the way all lonely hearts widows are, apparently. There are plenty of shots of Mr Crazy secretly grimacing while he's smooching up these women. The black humour of such garish misogyny might have some staying power or resonance if the film wasn't so poorly executed in general. In the end, Touch Of Death just seems like a really lazy, inarticulate mess.

A really explicit and twisted film concerning the grisly happenings in which a series killer with a hidden agenda carries out a criminal spree . A violent shocker with level enough on vivid imagery and pure cinematic style in which a nasty murderer executing grisly killings by means of a chainsaw and other criminal methods . Lester Parson (Brett Halsey) is a cannibal psychopath who usually romances and after kidnapping and mutilating wealthy women, committing a series of heinous murders , carrying out serious cuts and beheading . Subsequently , disposing the rest of the unfortunate women in his backyard to his horde of pigs . The peculiar psycho-killer converces schizophrenically with himself via tape recordings of his own voice and along the way he acts as a cook by eating the remains for his dinner . He is also being tracked by Randy , a mean loan shark whom he owes money to after accruing bad gambling debts . For hell! .Depraved - Demonic - Diabolical - And Beyond!

Eerie and creepy thriller with full of killings , loathsome and lots of blood and gore , sexual violence , and abominable murders by means of a saw executed by an ominous psychopath . A typical Fulci butcher's tableau with plenty of explicit scenes of wicked violence , nudism , sheer sensationalism , grisly commerciality and no for squeamish . Here Lucio Fulci directs in his usual style filled with flaws , failures and gaps , but professionally made because being a nice artisan . It has flamboyant imagery , graphic gore and moody atmospherics . Stars veteran Brett Halsey proving an acceptable acting as a middle-aged gigolo who kills women and uses their body parts for trophies and for consumption. Halsey was a beefcake who emigrated to Italy and played a lot of B films , often billed as "Montgomery Ford" . Brett starred as several sword-and-sandal type heroes in including the spectacles ¨The Seventh Sword¨ and ¨The Avenger of Venice" . He also settled comfortably into the fashionable international spy , "spaghetti" western and Giallo genres with a slew of work including ¨Berlín , Spy in Your Eye¨ , ¨Espionage in Lisbon¨ , ¨The Hour of Truth¨, and ¨Kill Johnny Ringo¨. Being accompanied by a fine and attractive support cast of usual Italian B actors , such as : Ria De Simone , Sacha Darwin , Zora Kerova , Marco Di Stefano , and Maurice Poli .

The motion picture was middlingly directed by Lucio Fulci , and being entertaining enough . Fulci was one of the most controversial filmmakers in terror genre. Critics are divided over both the moral and talents of Fulci (1927-1996), who sometimes directed under the alias Louis Fuller. For some reviewers many of his flicks are extremely cruel and savage , yet their gory surface often concealing social, religious , or provoking commentaries or other thoughful , intelligent issues . Nevertheless , most of them considering his works have undeniably provided a considerable influence on the terror genre , creating decent efforts on low budget flicks . Standing out his ¨Don't Torture a Duckling¨ deemed to be one of his best pictures . And in the adventure genre with two financially successful Jack London 'White Fang' adventure movies in 1973 and 1974 which were ¨Zanna Bianca¨, and ¨Il ritorno di Zanna Bianca¨. Also during the mid and late 1970s, Fulci directed some 'Spaghetti Westerns' : ¨Four of Apocalypse¨ (1975) and ¨Sella d'argento¨ or ¨Silver Saddle¨(1978), and another 'giallo' ; ¨The Psychic¨ (1977), as well as a few sex-comedies which include the political spoof : ¨The Eroticist¨(1972) , and the vampire comedy ¨Young Dracula¨ (1975) , and the violent Mafia crime-drama ¨Luca the smuggler¨ (1979) . Furthermore , Sci-Fi and Fantasy genre as ¨Rome 2033: The Fighter Centurions¨(1982) and ¨Conquest¨(1983) . In 1979, Fulci's film making career successfully another high point with him, breaking into the international market with ¨Zombi 2¨ (1979), an in-name-only sequel to George A. Romero's Zombi: Night of the Lving Dead (1978), which had been released in Italy as 'Zombi'. And his big hit ¨New York Ripper¨ , at the time rated as a video nasty , due to it and why the excessive extra violence was heavily cut or prohibited in a large number of countries . With this film established Fulci as a gore director par excellence . Over the next three years, Fulci plied his trade with finesse and flair-play , rivaling even the popularity of his "opponent" the great Dario Argento, with such sanguine classics as ¨City of the Living Dead¨ (1980) , ¨Beyond¨ (1981) , ¨Manhattan Baby¨(1982) . These films are actually intelligently crafted, with sound commentaries on everything from American life to religion. And he went on his fall with lousy movies, but eventually Fulci at least found work in television . Rating : 5/10 . Average , only for Lucio Fulci completists .

I saw this in Japan. My first fully laden gory Fulci, although I had seen a heavily censored version of Zombi a few years earlier. Nonsensical storyline, misogynistic "humour", and poor gore FX. However, the level of sadism in this film is its redeeming factor, if you like that sort of thing.

A killer who sleeps with and then kills women (presumably for their money) is being shadowed by someone who is either copying his murders or placing clues as to his identity at the scenes of his crimes. The movie has a poor narrative so we are never quite sure what the position is.

Well, that's enough of that. You don't get a Fulci film to watch plot but gore, so here goes.....

The first scene consists of our hero chopping up a dead body with a chainsaw, but the body is quite obviously a mannequin loaded with red paint. He is then seen cooking a nice steak (de human) and feeds some to his cat. Other notable gore scenes include a head being microwaved (Fulci was obviously not a physics major nor one who had ever used a microwave before) which again is quite obviously a mannequin and a homeless witness to a murder being run over and over again by a car. This scene is actually quite well done. My favourite scene has to be one where the hero kicks a cat across the room. I put the video in slow motion time and time again looking for strings or any sign of mercy to the poor cat but cannot find any. My conclusion is that the cat was actually kicked across the room to film this scene. No Italian Humane Association involvement here then. To wrap things up is a thoroughly stupid conclusion and explanation for the movie's events.

Notwithstanding that, I think that this film is actually worth seeking out. Not only is it very rare, but it has a high level of violence and doesn't get boring. It is also quite short. Notwithstanding complaints about plot (it has to be said that the story here is one of the worst in Fulci's canon), it is something which you can quite healthily pass an hour or so vegging in front of.

I was actually very pleasantly surprised. I didn't go into this expecting much as i've never been a huge Fulci fan, but I do enjoy him, and as far as Fulci this probably had tighter editing and a more straightforward storyline than anything else I've seen by him. The 'twist' was obvious the entire time but it didn't make the film any less enjoyable and there were no plot holes- maybe a first for him? This film was less surreal than most and mainly focused on dark comedy and a simple crime tale, not much in the way of sets or cinematography, but it did what it set out to do, and with less stumbling than I've come to expect from the 'godfather of gore'. All in all a worthy watch if you can get your hands on the BluRay edition.