Celebrating Lucio Fulci with Fulci Lives Film Week

I love a good themed film week, and on June 15th 2025, one of the best returned for its 5th year. Every year Fulci Lives Film Week skewers Instagram through the eyeball with a week celebrating that mad genius of Italian cinema Lucio Fulci. It's always a shit ton of communal fun with heaps of Fulci fans getting in on the action with creative pics, giveaways, Insta Lives, and thoughts on the man and his films.

It's hosted on Instagram by Jeff , Will , Roman and Paul who do a bloody awesome job each year, so if a week of Fulci films sounds like your cup of blood, go and follow these lads and get amongst the madness! What's super cool about the week and the way these dudes run it is everyone is welcome, from the hardcore lifelong Fulci fanatics to the newbies who might have seen Zombie and want to find out more.

If you’re a Fulci fan, then you know what you’re in for. If you’re new to Fulci’s films and want to know where to start, then you can’t go wrong with Zombie aka Zombie Flesh Eaters - it’s a total blast and a good way to kick off before getting stuck into the weirder stuff like The Beyond or gnarlier stuff like New York Ripper. I would also highly recommend The Psychic aka Seven Notes In Black, which is much less extreme and plays in the giallo / gothic genre. Cazzo sì!

I also realised that I have a bunch of Fulci film reviews over on Instagram, so I thought I'd drop them below in honour of the Maestro and #fuclilivesfilmweek.

The Beyond (1981)



Beyond death...beyond evil...beyond the dreaded gates of Hell.


How to describe The Beyond? Writing a synopsis of the plot wouldn’t make much sense. All you need to know is that Lucio Fulci’s film involves a hotel that contains a gate to Hell, which can both kill people and reanimate their corpses with no rhyme or reason. Everything else is pure nightmare logic perfection, drenched in blood.



The Beyond is an odd, beautiful, bloody slice of Italian horror, but set in New Orleans, which lends it a nice Southern Gothic tone. Liza Merrill (Catriona MacColl) inherits the cursed hotel, and within minutes of beginning renovations on it, workers are being thrown off scaffolding or having their eyes popped out by zombies in the basement.

 And that basement is a gothic watery deathtrap, all running water, crumbling walls and oozing corpses.

Fulci builds a potent, sweaty atmosphere and then goes to town in the kills, which are slow-moving bloodbaths including the infamous acid face melt in the morgue, which turns into a viscous flood of bloody fluids chasing a young girl around the room. Plus, the legendary five-minute tarantula face munch. One could assume that Fulci hates faces (and eyes), given his absolute glee in destroying them.



The finishing touches to Fulci’s film are Fabio Frizzi’s amazing, sinister yet funky score, vivid sound design - the water / those noisy tarantulas - plus the New Orleans locations.



As I’ve said before, there are only a few filmmakers who can nail the dream / nightmare logic tone (David Lynch being the master), and Fulci can be counted among the few.



5 tarantula face munches out of 5.

The House By The Cemetary (1981)



Read the fine print. You may have just mortgaged your life!



Fulci does a haunted house movie, and of course it comes complete with throat rippings, stabbings, maggots and lots of blood.



A doctor and his family move to an old house in the country to continue the research of his predecessor, who killed himself and may well be haunting the property. The young boy Bob (“Bob! Bob!”) is guided by a young girl who knows the house's secrets, but that doesn’t stop him from repeatedly going into the creepy basement.



Catriona McCall returns from The Beyond to be freaked the fuck out once more and Paolo Marco (who will show up in The New York Ripper) plays the Doctor whose decision to continue the research puts his family in harms way.



Like The Beyond, this is a nightmarish descent into horror, where plot and reason take a back seat to atmosphere, creeping death and glorious Fulci gore - the blood is a dark deep red, unlike the poster paint version from other Italian films of the era.



Fulci was such a versatile director - making everything from Westerns to Giallo, but this era from the early 80’s & his Gates of Hell trilogy is pretty unstoppable, beautifully made nightmares to get lost in.



5 “Bob! Bob! Bob!”s out of 5

The New York Ripper (1982)



Slashing up women was his pleasure.



That tagline could also be referring to Lucio Fulci himself, such is the almost pornographic way he films the violence here (and in most of his films), lingering on the bloody aftermath of the squeaky duck-voiced Ripper.

 The plot is fairly minimal - a killer is terrorising the women of NYC, and like his namesake Jack, taunts the Police with messages and clues.



The New York Ripper is a nasty, toxic movie that will repulse and draw you in with equal measure. It’s saved from being mere cheap exploitation by the craft of maestro Fulci, who captures the carnage with consummate skill, almost too good for such a vile turn of events.



Early 80s NYC was still a seething cesspool of sex and violence, which is the perfect playground for Fulci to roam around. His camera floats past and into the porno theatres and live sex clubs. There is a live sex scene that is shown in almost real time, as Fulci cuts between the couple fucking, an upper class woman pleasuring herself to the spectacle and a man who may or may not be the Ripper, adding a strong thread of tension to the kink. But the violence is filmed with equal amounts of lust on Fulci’ part, with his longing closeups of nipples, eyes and stomachs being sliced open. As Perry Farrell sang, “sex is violence.”



The detective element of the film is fairly well done and keeps the momentum going between the kills. Francesco De Masi’s score does the classic Italian thing of lurching between styles - a mix of disco, synths & dark funk jams, lending a jaunty pulse to the carnage.



Hard to recommend to anyone but Fulci and grindhouse fans, this nasty piece of work is gnarly, fascinating and a potent time capsule
 of the dark and decayed NYC of the era.



4.5 sliced eyeballs out of 5.

Manhattan Baby (1982)



Little Susie is very young, very pretty, and very very evil

A young girl travelling in Egypt with her archaeologist father is given a cursed amulet which unleashes all sorts of barely explained horror nonsense in NYC as filtered through the masterful lens of the maestro Lucio Fulci.



The opening sequence in Egypt feels big and expansive - here Fulci creates a potent mystical atmosphere. The Professor and a guide crack open an ancient tomb, which results in a gnarly impalement scene and some cosmic power being unleashed, which blinds the Professor.



Once back in New York, weird dream logic shit ensues, including glowing door portals, scorpions, and in the most Fulci scene in the film, a long brutal attack by reanimated taxidermied birds featuring some of the Maestro's patented closeup facial trauma.



I cannot for the life of me recall the plot and what the evil force is trying to do, but like The Beyond, the confusion adds to the nightmare vibes and is all part of the fun. Frizzi’s score is an all timer, flicking on a dime from evil dronescapes and deathfunk to light jazz and back again.



Manhattan Baby is an odd but fun film that feels like The Visitor (‘79) meets Poltergeist and while not quite up there with Fulci’s classics, is still a worthwhile slice of horror strangeness.



4 reanimated taxidermied birds out of 5

Conquest (1983)


In a place beyond time, comes a terrifying challenge beyond imagination!


Fulci does fantasy. 5 stars!

 This film is a fog and synth drenched fantasy fever dream populated with werewolf wookies, laser arrows, snake humping villainesses, water zombies, chirping rock monsters, lots of caves, scalpings, oozing skin pustules and more. And it's not quite as good as that makes it sound. But then it is too!

There is a vague quest involving a young warrior and his bow that becomes a laser bow towards the end for no reason other than laser arrows! He meets a big-wigged barbarian dude and they become buds and quest their way through a smoky landscape filled with cheap-looking creatures and topless women (Fulci! 80s!).



This is a goofy ass film that is very nearly shit, but - BUT, it's got that Fulci sensory magic all over it. It's dripping with smoky visuals (so much smoke) and the soundscape is filled with animal noises and a near-constant distorted rumble, which makes the world feel a lot bigger than it is. Plus, Goblin’s Claudio Simonetti going ‘80s wild on his synth over the top of it all.



It’s kind of a 3 star film when watching it by yourself, but in a lounge or theatre packed with stoned metal heads and Fulci fans, it would undoubtedly be a 5-star experience.



3 or 5 laser arrows out of 5*

*This was written after my first watch a few years back. I rewatched it for last year's Fulci Lives Film Week whilst a touch stoned, and the rating is a resounding 5 stars now.

Warriors of the Year 2072 (1984)

These notes from the pitch meeting for Warriors of the Year 2072 were recently unearthed, and I'm pleased to be able to share them with you here:

Fulci to the film studio (having just seen Blade Runner): ‘Hey, I wanna make a Blade Runner.’

Studio: ‘No Lucio, we wanna make a Mad Max. With motorcycles.’

Fulci: ‘Sì, but the film is set inna the future no?’

Studio: ‘Sì’

Fulci: ‘So I can do the Blade Runner city with the lights and the flying tings, no? And then we do the Mad Max on motorcycles that look like they are made by the Village People & Siegfried and Roy sì?”

Studio: ‘Sì, but we only have enough money for one big action scene with the motorcycles.’

Fulci: ‘Fkn cheap bastards! Sighs. Okay, we make one big model of the city & I shoot it 20 different ways to fill out the time & make it look like a Blade Runner. Then we make the Gladiators train & fight each other in one room for most of the movie, okay?’

Studio: ‘Okay.’

Fulci: ‘Okay.’

This is some of the ridiculousness I got up to during Fulci Lives Film Week.

Murder Rock (1984)

Save the last dance...for hell!

I also have the studio pitch notes for Murder Rock too:

Lucio Fulci (having just watched Dressed to Kill): Hey I wanna make an American giallo like a Brian De Palma. He ripping off Dario & me, so we rip a him back!

Studio: Okay, but Lucio, we wanna make a dance picture. Like a Fame. Like a Flashdance. Like a Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo!

Lucio: Hmmm. How about a giallo set at a dance studio so I can still do a the killings? Peoples like the killings. Peoples like the dancing. It will be a smash hit! We could call it Smash Dance. Or Slash Dance. Or Murder Rock.

Studio: Okay Lucio, but there must be lots of leg warmers on the ladies like a Flashdance, okay?

Lucio: Si. I can have a naked lady going to the shower in her leg warmers.

Studio: Why would you wear leg warmers to go to the shower? Nevermind. Just have lots of dancing and leg warmers okay?

Lucio: Si. I do that. I also want to film a break a dance crew busting their moves okay? We can get Grandmaster Flash to give us a phat beat for the scene. I meet Mr Flash at Andy Warhol’s party in New York when I make Ripper.

Studio: Okay, but you know we have already paid Keith Emerson from Emerson, Lake & Palmer to score the whole picture. We cannot afford to pay Mr Flash for um - how you say a phat beat?

Lucio: Fkn cheap bastards! Okay, they break a dance to the Emerson pop music then. It will look fkn weird, but what choice do I have?

Studio: Okay. Deal.

Lucio: Okay.

Aenigma (1987)



Lucio Fulci mixes up a horror cocktail with 1 part Carrie / 1 part Phenomena, but the main ingredient is that ole Fulci magic - which is a healthy dose of weirdness / stunning camera moves and enjoyably bad dubbing.



A cruel prank leaves a female student at a Boston college in a coma, but she possesses the body of the student who takes her spot so she can enact revenge on her tormentors. There’s also some weirdness with the victims mother who can’t speak but has red glowing eyes, a poser ass grabbing gym teacher, an even more sleazy doctor who can’t stay away from college girls (seriously the dudes in the film are real pieces of shit) and some good kills.



The highlight is ‘death by snail’ which features one of Fulci’s patented long drawn-out death scenes and some squelchy sound fx. Nothing else really measures up to that setpiece, however, which makes this a 3.5 star Fulci effort - but still worth a watch for the Fulci-ness of it all. The score is bombastic 80’s synth rock from Carlo Mario Cordia and needs a release on wax asap.



If anything, Aenigma has me dreaming about what a Fulci-directed Nightmare on Elm Street sequel would’ve looked like. If only....



3.5 snail boobs out of 5.

I had to break out the bass for a crack at Fabio Frizzi's awesome Zombie theme.