Manhattan Baby

Introduction

George, an archaeologist, is excavating a tomb in Egypt whilst his wife, Emily and daughter Susie take in the sights. George and his colleague open a hidden door and plunge down a hole, killing his friend and leaving George to investigate alone. Those Egyptians were fond of their booby traps and laid a doozy for George to find - part of the wall glows bright blue and shines lasers into his eyes, blinding him.

Meanwhile, Emily has left Susie alone for a few minutes and she is approached by an old, blind woman, who gives her an amulet.

Back in Manhattan, George finds out that his sight should return in about six months (although, inexplicably, it returns before then when he is shot in the eyes with the same blue lasers again!), and the amulet begins to have strange effects on the household: one door appears to turn into a portal to another dimension; the behaviour of Susie and her brother Tommy, who missed out on the trip to Egypt, changes dramatically for the worse and people start disappearing.

Video

The anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer is actually pretty good, with bright colours and deep contrast, scenes in the dark are clear. Some of the effects leave a lot to be desired, with quite poor special makeup effects and a visible string on an attacking bird.

Audio

The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono English track is very clear, thanks in part to the dubbed dialogue and lack of any 5.1 requirement.

There are no subtitles.

Features

Theatrical trailer

Forthcoming Attractions:
- The New York Ripper
- The Black Cat
- Flavia the Heretic
- Night Train Murders
- The Frightened Woman
- Torso: Carnal Violence

Conclusion

Fulci has always been a director who`s more concerned with mise-en-scène than narrative coherence or, to put it another way, how a film looks, rather than if it makes sense. This is the case here as he`s put a great deal of effort into making sure `Manhattan Baby` looks good, with some decent set pieces and location shooting in Egypt, but the story and screenplay by Elisa Briganti and Dardano Sacchetti is, quite frankly, chaotic.

In their eagerness to reference as many horror films as possible, the narrative takes second place to the citations, resulting in a confused and rambling mess. The amulet changes the house into something resembling `The Amityville Horror`, Susie turns into Reagan from `The Exorcist`, Tommy (Bobby from `The House by the Cemetery`) disappears like Carole Anne in `Poltergeist` but reappears unharmed, though with an evil glint in his eye, a man is attacked in a manner not too dissimilar to Hitchcock`s `The Birds`, the children`s behaviour resembles that of Damien in `The Omen` and one character is named Adrian Mercato in a meaningless homage to `Rosemary`s Baby`. There is so much random material thrown at the screen that the film completely loses focus and no effort is made to maintain a consistent story.

Whether the dialogue, which is at times unintentionally funny, is poor because of the translation from Italian to English or if it was poor to begin with is impossible to say, but lines like "You can take my life with stuffed birds, but you shall not take my immortal soul!" sound ridiculous in any language.

I`m a big fan of `Zombi 2` and enjoyed `The House by the Cemetery` despite its silliness, but the more I see of Fulci`s work, the more rubbish it appears his oeuvre contains. I recently reviewed the boring `The Black Cat`, with its constant close-ups of eyes, which I thought was unique to that film - surprisingly it`s not, as the theme continues here with many shots of eyes in a dull and forgettable movie. Fulci completists might want to check it out, but other genre fans should give it a miss.