Quando Alice ruppe lo specchio

Lucio Fulci is one of the leading names in gore-soaked horror cinema, and Touch of Death certainly does that reputation proud! Fulci's films started to get worse as his career progressed (with the exception of the hilarious Cat in the Brain in 1990), and as this film was released in 1988; you can count on it not being as good as his previous output. In fact, with films like Don't Torture a Duckling and The Beyond in mind; Touch of Death is one of Fulci's weaker efforts, but even so - there's plenty here to delight the man's fans. The film is clearly meant to be something of comedy, but the comedy is more of the absurd, over the top variety than one that will have you in stitches. Fulci's use of music helps to instill the absurdity of the film, which sees lonely widower/gigolo Lester Parson taking women home and putting them to use. He likes to mutilate them in horrible ways, such as beating them with a stick and chopping them up with a chainsaw; and just to add to the proceedings, he eats them too. Fulci also installs a subplot about the investigation into the murders, and the murderer's descent into madness.

This film is something a prelude to Cat in the Brain, and it's obvious that Fulci had Touch of Death in mind when he made his self-starring vehicle, as many of the gore scenes from that film are taken from this one. The scenes of gore are really quite nasty, but their impact is lessened by the comic tone. The first scene of gore sees our 'hero' going to work with a chainsaw (surely horror cinema's finest weapon), and then putting the remains of his victim into a meat grinder. Then we are treated to a beating scene (which features some of Fulci's trademark eye violence), a nasty sequence involving a car, a corpse having it's feet cut off and several other scenes along the same line. The film is really dirty; with the poor cinematography adding brilliantly to the overall unclean feel of the movie. The acting is typically low level, but the actors portray their (mostly silly) characters with gusto, and the result is a film that people will like more it's fun value than its credibility. Being a Fulci fan, I am more susceptible to this sort of trash; and I cant really say that non-Fulci fans will get much of a kick out of it.

A moody, middle-aged gigolo (Brett Halsey) kills off women after he gets bored with dating them and uses their body parts for trophies and for consumption.

Though many fans are divided, generally "Touch of Death" is regarded as a better latter era Fulci film. The overdone black humor touches, "unconvincing" gore effects and baffling ending does turn off some fans. While it is true that some of the film is hard to follow because we are unsure how much is madness and how much is reality, this really is a solid effort from Fulci. And for me, the gore may be unconvincing but still unsettling.

Where does this fit in his overall canon? Not top three, probably not top five, but I would still have to say it is firmly on the top half of Fulci's works. Certainly superior to "Cat in the Brain", which has gotten much more exposure over the years.

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.

Lucio Fulci is the kind of director who, years down the road, will achieve the stardom he deserves. As of now, he is pretty much infamous. His later works, especially post 1990, are really pretty bad. In truth, they are no worse than many early 90's American horror films, but the dubbing is so bad that it's hard to take Fulci's later work seriously at all, really. When possible, any 1990's Italian horror movie should be viewed in Italian with English subtitles. They are MUCH better that way.

"Touch of Death" is so funny in parts that I almost peed myself the first time I saw it. The woman's head in the oven, the car mauling, the baseball bat scene...the list goes on from there, trust me. It's got pretty decent gore, too. I'm sure Fulci focused a lot more effort on that than he did on the plot, which is not meant to be taken too seriously. "Touch of Death" is just a fun movie. It's not going to scare you, it might gross you out in some parts though! Watch it with all this in mind, and you'll enjoy it for what it is.

7 out of 10, kids.

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.