Manhattan Baby (1984)

The Surreal Horror Shocker from the Director of ZOMBIE, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD and THE BEYOND

A young girl on vacation in Egypt is given a mysterious charm, causing her archeologist father to be struck blind inside an unexplored pyramid tomb. But when the family returns home to Manhattan, a plague of supernatural evil and sudden violence follows. Can this ancient curse be stopped before it is unleashed on the streets of New York City?

Italian shock master Lucio Fulci combines elements of THE EXORCIST, THE AWAKENING, POLTERGEIST, and more in this bizarre horror thriller. Also known as EYE OF THE EVIL DEAD and THE POSSESSED, MANHATTAN BABY is notable as one of Fulci's final films to be released in America.

Intriguing, but Flawed Experiment

"Manhattan Baby" opens with an excellent prologue set in atmospheric ruins of the Egyptian pyramids. Lucio Fulci seems very at home filming these photogenic sequences which set up a rather daft story about possession via an ancient amulet. Naturally the possessed individual is an irritating child (influences of "The Exorcist"), and Fulci's reliance on his two child actors, and lots of narrative inconsistencies ultimately undoes the promise of this fine opening. Fulci's usually insane editing patterns create an immediate sense of disconnectedness and a filmic space in which time and its ever shifting progress cannot be trusted.

Unfortunately the whole thing goes downhill (as it often does in Fulci's films) when he has to deal with characters and their complex interactions. When the action moves to Manhattan, the clichés begin to pile up, the actors show their limitations and the whole thing collapses into senselessness. But fans of Lucio Fulci, of which I consider myself one don't care about these things. In fact much of the pleasure from Fulci's work derives from this lack of cohesion and sense.

But other things save "Manhattan Baby" from outright disaster. It's clear that this at one time was a very ambitious project, and Fulci struggles to realise the visual ambitions that a limited budget imposed on him. But his efforts are well worth watching. The film is also very self referential, not only too more obvious big budget productions such as "The Exorcist", "The Shining" and "The Awakening", but also too Fulci's own films. The strange alienated and empty landscape of Egypt is oddly evocative of Fulci's vision of hell in "The Beyond".

Fulci's efforts to create atmosphere necessarily lead to a film that is very light on gore (save for a particularly inventive stuffed bird attack), and the director makes little use of the potential of his Manhattan locations. Although the ancient evil which possesses the young girl is never satisfactorily explained, it does provide some nice moments involving snakes and scorpions. In conclusion this is an interesting, intriguing, but ultimately failed experiment which marked the end of Fulci's most creative and successful period.
December 26, 2007

WELL...COULD BE WORSE!

The daughter of a American Egyptologist falls under the influence
of a strange,eye-embossed amulet that can open the gateway into
the netherworld(Hey Lucio! That's a new one?!?) One of Lucio's
most restrained,and dull efforts! This does have a good scene
where a man is clawed to death(don't you just LOVE IT)by stuffed
birds that suddenly come to life. Really not his best at all and
only for completes of that Grand Old Man of Itailian SPLATTER!
I recommend the MASTERS works of THE BEYOND & ZOMBIE for great
FULCHI FOLCH. October 26, 2007

A disappointing waste of widescreen photography

I thought if I finally watched "Manhattan Baby" on DVD in widescreen rather than the poor full-screen video copies of it that were previously available, I'd be able to re-appraise it, but sadly, I still find that it's among Lucio Fulci's worst efforts. Fulci displays no evidence whatsoever in this movie that he knows what to shoot to make an interesting or suspenseful film. Half the time, he can find nothing worth putting in front of the lens except extreme close-ups of the actors eyes. Time and time again, the camera zooms in for lingering close-ups of the actors eyes, when there could have been - there must have been - so many other creative possibilities to choose from...did nobody point this out?

Anyway, whatever the artistic "vision" was supposed to be, the story goes roughly as follows: A husband and wife take their young daughter on a trip to Egypt, so that the husband can investigate an ancient tomb, and the wife can take pictures of all the tourist sights. The daughter, Suzy, wanders off alone and is ambushed by an Egyptian crone who gives her a mysterious amulet. (Cue the first of many extreme close-ups of eyes, and of the amulet, which also bears the design of an eye). At the same time the husband is blinded by a flash of blue light that emanates from a forbidden burial chamber that he has just discovered. Back in New York, the family is reunited with Suzy's younger brother Tommy (played by the same child actor who played Bob in "House By The Cemetery" ), and their nanny. From this point on, Suzy begins to act strangely, wandering about the house (cue extreme close-ups of eyes), scaring the nanny by playing odd hide and seek games with Tommy (cue more extreme close-ups of eyes), and putting the amulet in various random places for some unfathomable kind of dramatic focus (cue more extreme close-ups of the amulet). While all this inconsequential nonsense is going on, the parents of the children drift in and out of the action, occasionally looking fraught or troubled at the goings on (cue more close ups of eyes, naturally). A few people die in unremarkable ways. The end of the film sees Suzy fall more perilously under the spell of the amulet (cue more close-ups of the amulet) and the struggle to save her by a mysterious antique shop owner who comes to visit Suzy and tells the worried family that he can undo the curse (cue more close-ups of eyes).

Watching this film is only slightly more fun than watching paint dry. Fulci seems to have entirely run out of ideas about how to make a film that is visually stimulating - there is nothing even approaching interesting on the screen for about 90% of the running time. Just endless talking heads and those never ending eye close-ups. The trademark gore scenes are all but absent, save for one right near the end when a character is attacked by stuffed birds. The slant that the birds are stuffed rather than alive - having supposedly been re-animated by the evil power - is quite a good one, but sadly you can see the wires carrying them around the room in EVERY SINGLE shot during the attack. At least there were some good old-school close ups of bloody flesh-pecking to wake me up at this stage, but the film was over an hour and twenty minutes through by this time...far too late for redeeming the movie as a whole.

The dubbing is also terrible, the worst I have seen for a long time. Especially of the children. When an instant photo turns out badly, Suzy exclaims chirpily "It's a dud, defective stock!"...What the...? And when the parents ask where the babysitter has vanished to, young Tommy exlaims "She's gone on a voyage!" A voyage? What 8 year old boy uses words like "voyage"? It's almost a shame to see poor Giovanni Frezza, who appears to be an unselfconscious and lively child actor, crippled by such a hideous dubbed script. At least be thankful he does not have the same sounding voice he had in "The House by the Cemetery", which similarly ruined his character. But the fault lies way beyond pinning this on lame performances (Although I would have loved to see Katherine MaColl take the role as the mother rather than the lacklustre Martha Taylor, and Christopher Connelly is equally forgettable as the father.). There is really nothing worth keeping your attention on the screen for. A passably attractive prologue filmed on location in Egypt soon gives way to the rest of the film almost entirely taking place in the family's nondescript apartment. The antique shops looks like the set of the basement from "The House by the Cemetery" with just the cobwebs removed, and even the music is lifted from previous Fulci films, most notably some very recogniseable music from "The Beyond". How any self-respecting director can just re-use a score that was (one would presume) originally composed to match the story and atmosphere of one of his previous films is beyond me.

The plot, as usual, does not serve up anything cohesive to the audience, so without any arresting visuals or jolting gore scenes, watching the film is a pretty boring experience. There's no climactic ending, just a rather tame suggestion of the cyclical recurrence of the evil curse, the origins or intentions of which are never explained anyway during the entire plot. And as if you hadn't had enough by now, the film closes with - yes you guessed it - more extreme close ups of eyes and another, final (thank god!) close up of the wretched amulet, not that the sight of it produced any sense of dread throughout the whole dreary story. I will allow that there have been reports of imposed conditions behind the making of "Manhattan Baby" that lead Fulci to make some severe compromises, but he has to take responibility for what he delivered to his audience, and he should be ashamed of the undeniable weakness of the end result. March 29, 2006

Not that bad at all !

Lucio Fulci's "MANHATTAN BABY" is not even close to his best effort,but just like "SWEET HOUSE OF HORROR" it has its tiny moments of Fulci's atmospheric & gorey brilliance. A sure shot for Fulci fans! all others should rent before buying! September 12, 2005

Fulci Misses The Mark

Italian horror will never be seen as art to the masses. Even the hardcore fans admit to the cheesiness as being part of the attraction to them, but even though it's a trashy kind of genre, you can screw up! Lucio Fulci screwed up here. To people now taking an interest in Fulci, I'm sure this dvd cover has stared out at you from the shelf at the store and beckoned you to take it home . Don't listen to it! Yeah, it's Fulci, and yeah, it's from Anchor Bay, but don't let that fool you. Manhattan Baby is BAD, even for a Fulci film. With most of his horror films you could always guarantee to have a fun viewing experience, but this is actually quite painful. Everything you love about his previous works is nowhere to be found here. Fulci was actually trying to make a real horror film with suspense and stuff. Many directors accomplish this, but Fulci never has, and he certainly doesn't here. Fulci's films excel in atmosphere, music, gore, cheesiness and just downright strangeness. This film has none of that. It's basically a reworking of the Charleton Heston mummy flick, The Awakening-which was no masterpiece, but better than this. The only purpose this dvd will serve is to make your Italian horror dvd collection look bigger, coz it will get only one or maybe two viewings-mark my words! You just may be better off investing in a Kiss Koffin. That will at least get more use. March 28, 2004

More reviews at Amazon.com ...