After watching Italian horror director and gore-meister Lucio Fulci’s ‘Gates Of Hell’ trilogy last year for spooky movie Halloween season, the collapse of logic was definitely understood as an auteur trademark across all those movies. Manhattan Baby (1982) is Fulci’s Exorcist rip-off, which follows an archaeologist digging around a haunted tomb in Egypt whose family becomes cursed when they move back to New York, specifically the youngest daughter, when she receives a special amulet from a stranger. Fulci’s disregard for anything making sense is in full swing: characters disappear, some return, some don’t, a few people attempt to explain what’s going on only to end up bleeding profusely from their face. Anybody watching will be puzzled by what transpires, and why. In any case, I learned to stop worrying and love the baffling supernatural shenanigans. While Fulci’s other trademark – slow grotesque gore – is dialled down until the last half hour, you can still have a fun ride with the location shoots in Egypt and New York, the eerie mists and glowing orbs, blue supernatural beams that blind people, random violence visited upon tangential characters, and transdimensional glowing doorways. Not to mention some classic Fabio Frizzi synth work on the soundtrack that keeps everything pumping; I did enjoy the saxophone pieces used to remind us that we’re in New York (that and the family’s youngest son having a Noo Yawk accent in the English dub). My favourite sequence was the build-up and pay-off when the wife’s insufferable work colleague with a penchant for pranks goes to investigate noises up stairs – I laughed heartily at his eventual fate (that’s what you get for wearing Groucho glasses in a working office, buddy). While it might not reach the heights of City Of The Living Dead or The Beyond, it’s still a fun spooky time, particularly if you’re on the Fulci wavelength. Available to stream on Tubi in Australia. Recommended.
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