Touch of Death (1988)

What a beautiful movie!

Thanks for the memories!

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Running over the tramp was great. The character speaking to someone/or to self by way of tape recorder was interesting. Cinematography was great. Decent acting. Good music. The story was OK, not great. Better if they left out the comedy. The ending sucked. Very watchable.Running over the tramp was great. The character speaking to someone/or to self by way of tape recorder was interesting. Cinematography was great. Decent acting. Good music. The story was OK, not great. Better if they left out the comedy. The ending sucked. Very watchable.

Lucio Fulci is one of the leading names in gore-soaked horror cinema, and Touch of Death certainly does that reputation proud! Fulci's films started to get worse as his career progressed (with the exception of the hilarious Cat in the Brain in 1990), and as this film was released in 1988; you can count on it not being as good as his previous output. In fact, with films like Don't Torture a Duckling and The Beyond in mind; Touch of Death is one of Fulci's weaker efforts, but even so - there's plenty here to delight the man's fans. The film is clearly meant to be something of comedy, but the comedy is more of the absurd, over the top variety than one that will have you in stitches. Fulci's use of music helps to instill the absurdity of the film, which sees lonely widower/gigolo Lester Parson taking women home and putting them to use. He likes to mutilate them in horrible ways, such as beating them with a stick and chopping them up with a chainsaw; and just to add to the proceedings, he eats them too. Fulci also installs a subplot about the investigation into the murders, and the murderer's descent into madness.This film is something a prelude to Cat in the Brain, and it's obvious that Fulci had Touch of Death in mind when he made his self-starring vehicle, as many of the gore scenes from that film are taken from this one. The scenes of gore are really quite nasty, but their impact is lessened by the comic tone. The first scene of gore sees our 'hero' going to work with a chainsaw (surely horror cinema's finest weapon), and then putting the remains of his victim into a meat grinder. Then we are treated to a beating scene (which features some of Fulci's trademark eye violence), a nasty sequence involving a car, a corpse having it's feet cut off and several other scenes along the same line. The film is really dirty; with the poor cinematography adding brilliantly to the overall unclean feel of the movie. The acting is typically low level, but the actors portray their (mostly silly) characters with gusto, and the result is a film that people will like more it's fun value than its credibility. Being a Fulci fan, I am more susceptible to this sort of trash; and I cant really say that non-Fulci fans will get much of a kick out of it.

Lucio Fulci was famous for his Italian splatter movies, mostly his undead films like Zombie or The Beyond. Here he directed a black comedy of sorts, but there's just one problem: its nauseating. I say this knowing that I like City of the Walking Dead (which is also gross but not like this). A compulsive gambler gets money for his habit by romancing ugly and deformed rich women then murdering them and stealing their cash. The film makes this plan look that easy. I guess the women were too ugly to go to a bank, so they always had their cash on person. After the upteenth murder I began to suspect what I've always heard about Fulci: he hated women. He must have. At any rate this film stinks, its not funny, and Fulci should have stayed with giallo and supernatural zombie movies. Avoid this film at all costs.

Caution: Spoilers!With "When Alice broke the mirror", Fulci tried to deliver a black comedy for Italian TV. The result is an extremely mean-spirited and - in the first half - gory movie, even for a Fulci product.The story itself about a serial killer copied and betrayed by his own shadow is not without potential, but what Fulci makes out of it is a rather over-cynical and disgusting film - and it starts right away: The movie opens with Brett Halsey as Lester Parsons eating a steak which he has cut out of his latest victim while watching a video recording of her. A few moments later, he descends to his cellar and dismembers the corpse with a chainsaw. Not enough yet, he passes the remainders through a meat grinder and feeds them to the pigs. Sick, isn't it?Lester Parsons is probably the most unappealing character Fulci has ever created. He is addicted to gambling and horse betting and, in order to finance his costly hobby, he slaughters women.In the first half, Fulci inserts a lot of extreme gore. The effects vary from bad to acceptable.Fulci devised the movie as a black comedy, probably a) to make up for the cheap special effects and b) to disarm it a little bit (recall that it was intended for TV).The result remains problematic because Parsons' victims are mostly women with physical defects and Parsons explicitly mocks about them. Such a premise is simply repulsive and makes the whole movie extremely ugly. Fulci doesn't possess the necessary black humor to treat such material with taste.Most surprisingly, this gory movie was shot for TV - and shown, though only "late at night" as Fulci once declared. These Italians!