Internado diabólico (Aenigma)

Judging by the amount of other user-comments and their content around here, this "Aenigma" (love the alternate spelling!) is a lesser known and thoroughly hated Lucio Fulci film. Well sure, it's not a patch on his earlier work but still it remains a remotely enjoyable bloodbath with some inventive killings (the snails!!) and an appealing cast of young & sexy schoolgirls. The story, although highly unoriginal, is easy to follow, unpretentious and fast-paced. Black sheep of Catholic girl's dorm Kathy is involved in a near-fatal car accident after a prank with the school's gym teacher. Shortly after, a new and extrovert girl makes her entry in the dorm but her mind seems controlled by the comatose Kathy. Through Eva Gordon, Kathy and her spiritual mother see a chance for revenge, starting with the death of the insufferable macho gym teacher. Fulci keeps the gore under control this time and focuses more on the brooding atmosphere. "Aenigma" features some beautiful camera-work, although admittedly, the same camera angles are often re-used several times. The girls' acting is extremely hammy and it's a good thing they all all look so cute, otherwise it would have been a lot more difficult to struggle yourself through the movie. Nothing spectacular or special, but it certainly isn't terrible, neither.

I didn't have high expectations going into this, which is the right way to approach it. I mostly wanted to see the infamous death-by-snail scene, which did not disappoint.

The film didn't make a lot of sense in general, but it's mostly well shot and has Fulci's trademark atmosphere and grit.

Overall, there's nothing earth shattering, but its story is told in unusual ways and I enjoyed it. That's good enough for me.

I've seen several movies made by Fulci. And this one is the least terrifying and scary among the others I've watched. For me it was much more easier to watch "Aenigma" then, for example, "Black Cat" or "House by the Cemetery" (which are, of course, the must seen ones). Nevertheless it has everything a good horror movie should have. I really like it, especially the ending, which shows brilliant work of camera and music together. This movie is an example of Lucio Fulci remarkable capability generated from his very own vision of reality to create the unique mood and atmosphere.

One of Fulci's lesser efforts, Aenigma is a blatant copy of so many other films, it's hard to count them all. Set in a school, it involves a misunderstood loner called Kathy who is cruelly taunted by her classmates, but takes revenge by means of psychic powers. So far, so "Carrie". But here, the cruel prank puts the victim into a coma, and it's from here that she wreaks havoc, which echoes "Patrick". She somehow manages to possess another student, who goes through the school leaving a trail of destruction and death on Kathy's behalf.

Sounds great for Fulci fans, but don't hold your breath. The various revenge murders are all very unimpressive and often ridiculous, including death by being scared of a museum and death by being confronted with a boyfriend's corpse! What's wrong with these people!? The film has no highlights of gore whatsoever, which is a major shortcoming in a Fulci film. Even it's set piece murder, a "death by snails" sequence will probably leave you laughing (how exactly do snails manage to overpower someone??). This, along with the film's title, makes me think that Fulci is actually trying to emulate Argento's far superior "Phenomeona".

The film is generally pretty confusing, as Kathy's power, and her hold over the possessed girl are never properly explained. The acting is awful, the lead character (the possessed student) wanders around looking totally bored, so you won't really care about any of the characters. It's also ugly and dull to look at, even though Fulci tries to ape Argento yet again by bathing many shots in lurid coloured lighting, mostly a tiresome bright blue, but it just doesn't add up to anything coherent. The dubbing is poor as usual ans there's a really REALLY, bad ballad being crooned over the prologue when Kathy is looking forward to her big night out! Even Fulci completists could rest easy without ever watching this one. A real stinker.

At a school for wayward girls that would give any British/Australian TV presenter/entertainer from the seventies a stroke, a prank has gone way, way wrong. Cathy, the weirdo daughter of the weirdo cleaner, has been set up on a date with Fred, the gym instructor (more on him later). After being given a horrendous eighties make up job by her two 'friends', to the tune of horrendous eighties song that wouldn't be out of place on a Bowie album from the same era, she sets out with Fred, who puts the moves on her. What Cathy doesn't know is that everyone else at the school, and their boyfriends, are all listening in and shortly chase her around in their cars, causing her to be run over.

Now in a coma and because this is a Fulci film, we get to see Cathy's spirit float above a model town (with some leftover model buildings from The New Gladiators – I wonder if Fulci kept them in the same cupboard as Jared Martin, who stars in both films). She decides to possess the body of new pupil Eva, who's goal in life is to shag as many men as possible. There's about six other actresses playing pupils in this film but for the life of me I can't remember any of their names.

Eva's first port of call is Fred. Now, he's not in the film long, but he's worth a mention. Fred is the gym teacher for the school, and he loves to date the pupils, slap them on the arse, give them leg massages, tell the pupils that they're fat, and inadvertently cause them to get run over by cars. So Eva sets up a date with him but doesn't quite get there as his reflection comes to life and strangles him, as they tend to do.

Basically, Fulci at some point has watched both Carrie and Patrick and thought "Me too!" Cathy is now possessing Eva, and causing the deaths of all involved in her accident. At one point Eva throws a hissy fit which brings her to the attention of Doctor Jared Martin, who of course is also Cathy's doctor, and they hit it off.

So the rest of the film plays out like you'd expect, with those girls all meeting their demises in various surreal ways (death by snail, death by a statue coming to life in an art gallery after a picture comes to life and stabs itself, raining blood on one of the girls, a run of the mill falling out the window gag), until Eva's family show up suddenly and take her home, causing Jared to go out with yet another one of the girls. This doesn't make Cathy a happy camper.

What surprised me after watching Aenigma was how it wasn't a pile of crap at all. In fact, I quite enjoyed it! Judging by how ill Fulci looks when he makes his usual cameo, I'm surprised he managed to make something that has an actual storyline (see Manhattan Baby for the opposite of this). Sure, it's your run of the mill late era Italian horror, but the snails, art gallery bit and completely original storyline if you haven't seen Patrick make it worth a watch. It's got all the visual trademark's of our Lucio, and looks pretty good in general. The fake heads look…faker than usual, but that seems to go with the low budgets. Seriously, see the fake head in Red Monks for a further example of the decline in fake head quality.