Manhattan Baby (Widescreen)

This Lucio Fulci production, released following the effective but shoddy HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1981) and the shocking and sadistic NEW YORK RIPPER (1982), is essentially the last Lovecraftian horror he directed, and is a strangely subdued movie for Fulci. Editing is even more lackadaisical than usual, and the story is a hodgepodge of plot points and setups lifted from POLTERGEIST, THE EXORCIST, THE BIRD, THE AWAKENING, THE SHINING, to name only a few. Christopher Connelly, Martha Taylor and other principal actors walk around in a daze. (The child actor who plays the possessed girl is quite good, however, and the dubbing is less annoying than usual) There is also a tendency to rely on matte painting and other optical special effects, which can be construed as a bad strategy depending on one's point of view. (Shots of some blue rays shone into a character's eyes, and so on; some viewers may find them laughable) Of course, this being a Fulci film, there are a few impressive set pieces, including an extremely atmospheric opening sequence set in Egypt, a cobra attack shot with a "crawlercam," and the final fate of the au pair girl, nicely suggested rather than explicitly shown. However, gorehounds are warned that there is ONLY ONE bona fide Fulci-style gore scene, involving attacks by stuffed birds, in the entire movie!

As for DVD production qualities, MANHATTAN BABY boasts transfer from one of the cleanest prints I have ever seen, comparable to the Mario Bava collections from Image, with hardly any scratches or artifacts. The cinematography, by Guglielmo Mancori, is given a tremendous boost as a result. Sound quality is not as top-notch, though; I wish the sound mix favor evocative music score (there is no listing of the composer anywhere on the film!) rather than insipid dialogue, which is little help for the movie anyway. The DVD also contains a 9-minute interview segment with the film's screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti, who is amusingly frank with the difficulties of production, Fulci's mysogyny, his among other topics, although he acknowledges only one film, THE EXORCIST, as BABY's "influence." All in all, another superior production from Anchor Bay.

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.

Manhattan Baby, considered a failure by many critics that wanted Fulci to conform to the formula of horror that made him successful, was actually one of his more entertaining movies. This was because it did break from the proverbial mould, building more on a storyline and an ever-present, overwhelming scene of doom. Unlike many of his earlier movies (Zombie, The Beyond) that brought this bleak overview with them as well, Lucio decided to try a new avenue in this presentation, one that only briefly sprinkled gore into the cinematic formula, causing much of the fallout experienced. He said that he wanted to present a more metaphysical terror, using a small array of special effects in the process, that would give his film a more Catholicist, "evil can be beaten but not truly destroyed," mentality. Well, mission accomplished.
The storyline, with its Egyptian focal point, deals with the manifestation of an ancient evil that is awaken (and overused) by a little girl after her foolishly curious archeologist father prods at things best left alone. It has some nice scenes with pieces of dark humor mixed together with catchy "manifesations/proofs of the dark forces present," plus some humorously cheap scenes that keep the movie from taking itself too serious. All in all, its fun and a bit dark at the same time, and is a good film for horror lovers/Lucio fans that remember his Sci-fi trials/Westerners and not simply his gore films.