Manhattan Baby

"Manhattan Baby" sure is one controversial Fulci flick. I have friends who love the man and hate this movie. I also have friends who don't know the man at all and love this movie.

The plot is a bit silly. A girl is given a trinket on vacation in Egypt and it turns out to contain horrific powers of destruction. I told you it was silly.

The special effects are very 1982. But wait; this movie was made in 1982. I'd recommend this to someone who has never seen a Fulci film and is not expecting to see "Zombie" or "The Beyond" again. This movie offers something different and something that I, a true Fulci admirer, appreciate and can watch over and over.

Yes, I like "Manhattan Baby." While it's not like the aforementioned Fulci greats, it remains entertaining and it does deliver some good scares. And decent gore.

7 out of 10, kids.

If you have some acquaintance with other Fulci films, especially the ones from the so-called "Gates of Hell Trilogy", then you know that eyes are, to say at least, a repetitive motive, from the gore set pieces, like the nail killing in "L'aldilà" (eng: The Beyond), to the many eye close-up shots in the dialogue scenes of "Manhattan Baby". Against this general background, this movie can be regarded as a key film. Here, Fulci is somewhat presenting in a very explicit way the coding of the eyes (and The Eye) in his own cinematic style.

While travelling in Egypt with his mother and his archeologist father, a girl receives an ancient medallion representing an eye (very similar to the Eye of Horus) from a mysterious white-eyed woman that then disappears in the air (literally). Almost at the same time, her father is blinded by the same eye-shaped symbol, only this one is carved in the wall of an underground tomb inside a forbidden pyramid. The family goes back to New York and there the medallion starts to exert its influence, taking control over the girl, triggering supernatural events in the family's apartment and opening a portal to another space-time dimension.

The medallion is the divine Eye (its link with divinity is explicitly mentioned in the film), an access to the world of The Beyond. The blind woman that gives the medallion to the girl has white-veiled eyes, just like the blind young woman with the dog and the main characters at the end of "L'aldilà". We know, from this last movie, what these white eyes can mean in the Fulci code: vision-knowledge of the other side, and the ability to move between that place and this human dimension. But we also have the fragile human eyes (e.g. the eyes of the father) and mundane blindness: the inability to see and to understand.

On a more stylistic level, we have all the already mentioned eye close-up shots during dialogues. The tension, the real intensity is always happening at the level of looks in Fulci and almost never at the level of words. Language is often banal and stereotyped in this film, as in many others by this director. Characters in the worldly sphere also tend to be very one-dimensional: the father is the scientist, the man of reason, the babysitter is the beautiful and lively girl, the parapsychologist is the somewhat sinister and dark man surrounded by antiques and stuffed birds, etc. And then there's that simple and repetitive sax score during many of the urban sequences, an almost vulgar soundtrack that is in violent contrast with the fantastic chaos raised by the medallion. It is Fulci's violent cut between the worlds, the one that seem to disconcert many viewers and that is also violently translated to cinematic form by this director. The cut between an abysmally stereotyped everyday human world, the world of frightened and fragile human eyes and the powerful world of The Eye that lies Beyond.

'Manhattan Baby' is second rate Fulci. People who love/hate Fulci's work usually mention two things - his nonsensical plots and his abundance of gore. Unfortunately this movie has plenty of the former and hardly any of the latter, making it pretty dull and hard going viewing for the most part. It was co-written by regular Fulci collaborator Dardano Sacchetti (who also worked with just about every important Italian horror/exploitation director - Mario and Lamberto Bava, Argento, Lenzi, Deodato,etc.) Sacchetti says that the producers slashed the budget at the last minute, which undoubtedly contributed to making this a poorer movie, but it's hard to know who to blame. The script is certainly very muddled so the viewer has to battle to work out just what is going on half the time, and Fulci himself seems to have deliberately left out his trademark gore. There's only really one notable gore sequence towards the climax of the picture, and while it's pretty good, it's a long time coming, and hardly up to the standards set by Fulci's horror masterpiece 'The Beyond'. Fulci's best movie for my money wasn't even horror it's the giallo 'Don't Torture A Duckling'. That movie had virtually no gore or effects but it had an interesting story and some good actors, neither of which 'Manhattan Baby' has. I wouldn't say 'Manhattan Baby' is a complete stinker, as there are a few effective sequences, but it's extremely disappointing overall, and easily the weakest Fulci movie I've seen to date. Unless you're a die-hard obsessive Italian horror fan, give it a miss.

We selected "Manhattan Baby" from the movie library last night, and I realized that it was to be probably the 7th time I have watched this rather uncelebrated Fulci offering in the past 5 years. Yes, this movie is a bit formulaic, and yes, it does move a bit slow in parts. But there is something undeniably menacing in this movie, an atmosphere of claustrophobia, the tightness of the endless close-ups of people's faces, that I enjoy and (obviously) come back to again and again. No, this is not a gory movie, which no doubt comes as a surprise (disappointment?) to fans of Fulci's other (mostly excellent) films. Even the death scenes, of which there are only 3 or 4, have minimal blood compared to something like "The Beyond", not that I would recommend this as hearty family fare by any means. But if you enjoy the uniquely "European" dreamlike atmosphere created by a combination of cheesy effects, plot holes, wooden acting, bad dubbing, and inexplicable motivations of characters, this may be one you revisit again, and again and again... you get the idea.

On a trip to Egypt with her archaeologist father, Professor George Hacker (Christopher Connelly) and photographer mother, Emily (Laura Lenzi), young Suzie (Brigitta Boccoli) begins having bizarre experiences involving things of a mystical nature. With her parents too busy to notice, Suzie encounters a strange person who gives her a very distinctive amulet. Meanwhile, dad has an Indiana Jones-style adventure of his own, getting blinded in the process.

Back home in NYC, it's back to life as usual.

Oh no!

Suzie's new amulet has its own spooky theme music! This can mean only one thing! Yes indeed, she's become the tool of some peevish supernatural entity! It's not long before all manner of weirdness breaks out.

MANHATTAN BABY is another of Director Lucio Fulci's supernatural horror offerings. As such, it's pretty solid, featuring some of his signature gruesomeness and eyeball closeups. The novel story has a few nice twists and ideas.

BEST BITS: #1- Death by elevator! Not in the usual manner! #2- The overdue demise of Emily's utterly annoying, "wacky glasses"-wearing, imbecilic coworker, Luke (Carlo De Mejo)! #3- Snake-cam / death by cobra! #4- "Poor Jamie Lee!" #5- Dead bird attack! Fishing line holding up the birds? You didn't see annnything!...