For those not in the know, Lucio Fulci is one of the greatest paradoxes of Italian horror cinema. His movies were often stunningly shot with handsome cinematography and gorgeous colours, but he also revelled in staging staggering acts of gruesome brutality that not so much pushed the envelope of on-screen gore as viciously shoved it onto some, jagged razor sharp surface. However, possibly the most debated aspect of his genre output of the 70s and 80s is his rapidly waning interest to sticking close to anything even remotely approaching logic and one of his most bizarre, confounding and head scratching entries in his bizarre, confounding and head scratching cannon is Manhattan Baby.
Idiosyncratic to the point of being obnoxious, this 1982 exercise in obtuse mind fuckery is presumably Fulci’s attempt at producing his version of a “spooky child” movie much like The Omen, or The Exorcist, only with more sand and Egyptian shit, the result proves to be confusing, slow paced and unintentionally hilarious.
Archaeologist George Hacker has brought his family along to Egypt while he explores a dank, dangerous tomb that’s loaded with booby traps. As horrendously irresponsible as that sounds, the worst case scenario happens twofold when George’s tinkering stirs a dark, ancient force that repays him for his meddling by zapping his eyes sightless with some minty blue laser beams. Meanwhile, while George is being rendered as blind as a bat by a malevolent Egyptian evil, his daughter, Susie, is gifted an ornate amulet by a wizened old lady while her journalist mother, Emily, swans around snapping photos of the sights, and this kicks off a series of events that are as alarming as they are completely confusing.
Long story short, the amulet that Suzie has been given is a conduit to an ancient evil that gifts the young girl with strange, inconsistent, abilities that she shares with her younger brother, Tommy, which causes all manner of supernatural issues to everyone around them. Before you know it, people are dying in freak elevator accidents, getting suddenly teleported to the middle of the Egyptian desert where they die of thirst, or suddenly get assassinated by poisonous snakes that suddenly appear out of nowhere. However, probably most random of all is that shortly after arriving back home to Manhattan, George is once again zapped with those laser beams that now inexplicably returns his sight with no explanation given whatsoever.
While George naturally thinks that science is the answer, bug-eyed antiques dealer Adrian Marcato may be the last chance the Suzie has to keep her soul.
Of course, while I’ve made the above sound like a rather straight forward experience, I can assure you the finished product is anything but.
“It’s useless that I explain. You would never understand.” Dramatically announces one character during the film, which not only means the film cheekily gets to avoid actually explaining its unhinged plot, but it seems like old Lucio himself is warning us directly not to expect any of this warmed over crap even remotely seriously. I’ve always been quite partial to the rubber reality that comes with Fulci’s horror entries that happily dispenses with logic in order to deliver mind blowing moments of exaggerated insanity. In the past it’s delivered such showstopping moments as an underwater zombie brawling with a shark, a girl vomiting up her own innards and numerous instances of eye-popping, ocular, assaults; but with Manhattan Baby, the director’s flair for the surreal fails him thanks to the fact virtually nothing in the movie even tries to have a shred of reason behind it. Fulci obviously does not give a single, solitary fuck if you understand what’s going on – possibly because he has no bloody clue himself and the fact that it’s also weighed down with a pace so languid it feels like it’s died in the middle of the desert itself.
If you’re going to deliver an utterly nonsensical, supernatural, epic; as least have it be a bit light on its feet, much like Giulio Paradisi’s impressively berserk The Visitor – another film that cheerfully hurls logic off the nearest cliff – but because Manhattan Baby drags its arse through its indecipherable plot (assuming there actually was a plot) it genuinely feels like everyone was making things up on the day.
However, much like a lot of Fulci’s other movies, when you embrace Manhattan Baby’s pyramid-sized flaws in order to milk it for its camp crapness, the movie proves to have a second life as a goldmine of unintentional laughs. Fulci’s long running habit of zooming in directly into his actor’s eyes is ratcheted up to such a degree, some of the characters oily eyebags get more screen time than their entire face does, while lead actors Christopher Connelly and Laura Lenzi share so little charisma together they feel less like husband and wife, and more like two people who have awkwardly nudged into one another on a bumpy bus ride. Elsewhere, you’ll repeatedly be pausing the film while you try and wrap you battered psyche around the latest, wildly random plot twist as to try and discern what the hell Fulci was trying to achieve. What was the point of removing George’s eyesight when the movie inexplicably restores it again barely fifteen minutes later; what the hell is the deal with the disappearing and reappearing Polaroid of the villainous amulet; when little Tommy disappears on a “voyage”, why is his panicked “help me” message written on a mirror in neat, cursive handwriting; and most of all, why, after all this chaos, is the curse cleared with relative ease?
While all of the above (and so much more) proves to be immensely entertaining for all the wrong reasons, that old Fulci magic is still haunting the piece like a malicious Egyptian spirit as the movie lurches into time a couple of times and the climax, which sees a hugely overacting Marcato getting packed to death by his own taxidermy while screaming “You can take my life with stuffed birds, but you shall not have my immortal soul!” recalls the directors more outlandish greatest hits.
Also, Fabio Frizzi’s amusingly jaunty theme may be as scary as yawning sloth, but it’s fiendishly catchy and bizarre compliments the directionless plot oddly well.
Good horror is always more effective when the unknown remains just that; but Manhattan Baby proves that sometimes, maybe a little logic wouldn’t go amiss when your movie is as impossible to decipher than fucking hierogyphs.
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