I voted for House By The Cemetery. I can watch that again and again and it never gets boring. THe scenes between the redheaded little girl and Bob are just amazingly haunting to me (despite the awesomely hilarious dubbing!).
Sorry man - it was 2.30am in the morning and I was just recovering from Lon Chaney's The Penalty. OR - I can be a humorless bastard sometimes. :lol:
Fulci is on the whole, such a bad filmmaker, that my favorite film is Zombie which I think is also clearly his best film. The Beyond has some beautiful scenes. But none of those include any gore. Those gore scenes are like a racecar driver hitting the break petal during the Indy 500. It kind of crashes the whole thing. Sinks the whole ship.
I had to vote for The New York Ripper. It's hard to beat a homicidal Donald Duck. It also makes a good pairing with The Gore-Gore Girls. City of the Living Dead and Zombie would be next. Although I can see why people like The Beyond better because of its execution I think City of the Living Dead had the better ideas.
Yeah, without an ending, and being the middle child, it's really easy to overlook CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD. I greatly prefer ZOMBIE and THE BEYOND, but Bob and the frame shatter ending are still enough for me to, at the very least, never forget COTLD. That and Lustig's wonderful homage in UNCLE SAM.
I always sound like I'm bashing City of the Living Dead - but it's not really the case at all. In fact, back in the day, it was the imagery from COTLD that stuck in mind over that in The Beyond or Zombi 2. It does indeed have some very fine moments. Over time though, I've come to appreciate the other movies better. They have better soundtracks, and I think overall a better tone. The ending in COTLD is indeed classic, but in the end, not in a good way for me. It's curious, strange, and down right WTF. But it's not "good". So I dock it for that.
I picked New York Ripper. I also love Zombie, the Beyond, and House by the Cemetery. City of the Living Dead is just OK to me, but Manhattan Baby blows. Haven't seen The Black Cat.
The Black Cat is hilarious to me. Basically, its a homicidal cat, but its so damn cute I don't understand how anyone could be afraid of it.
NEW YORK RIPPER is the film I wish I had seen in a theater on Times Square. I don't recall it playing any theaters in San Francisco, L.A. or other big cities. I remember GATES OF HELL was advertised heavily in 1983. ZOMBIE was, as well. I remember staring at the poster at our drive-in and thinking that it's gotta be the scariest movie ever made. THE BEYOND didn't reach my hometown until 1985 as "7 DOORS OF DEATH". Had I known it was a Fulci film (instead of Louis Fuller) I would have gone to see it. I clipped and saved the newspaper ad anyway hoping to see the flicks, but after 6 days...gone. Another one missing from screens in my area was THE BLACK CAT and EYE OF THE EVIL DEAD (MANHATTAN BABY, of course ). Both films had some sort of mention in Fangoria and, not knowing how films were distributed (if at all), I watched the newspaper ads every Friday for almost a year waiting for those films to show up. So far, DVDs have given Fulci's films much better due than the cinemas have.
So 1979-82 would be Fulci's "Classic Period." What would be considered Argento's? 1975-1987? (But he had the animal trilogy of giallo, so perhaps 1969-1987?)
The Beyond is a stroke of genius, it all clicks in that film, the strangeness/otherworldliness is overpowering more than in any other Fulci. Zombie second, COTLD third, The Black Cat fourth, THBTC fifth, Manhattan Baby sixth, New York Ripper 7th.
I remember being very disappointed the first time I saw 'The Beyond', back in '98(?) when Rolling Thunder Pictures did the theatrical re-release. I was expecting a zombie gut-muncher and got something completely different. While the film has grown on me quite a bit and it might be technically better, my favorite Fulci film still is and will always be 'Zombie'.
Yeah I held onto my vhs with that title just because I think its a better title. My vote went to The Beyond. Typical choice I know, but I still think it was the most stylish and atmospheric of the bunch.
