MovieChat Forums > Una lucertola con la pelle di donna (1973) Discussion > Fulci could actually direct!

Fulci could actually direct!

posted 18 years ago by cherootvendors
18 replies | jump to latest

Just saw Lizard for the first time. Great, great film. How can someone who pays this much detail to the art of film editing and mise-en-scene make amateurish crap like Zombi 2 and The New York Ripper. I do like those films but Lizard is a proper, professional film. What a waste of talent! I've just bought Don't Torture a Duckling in the hope that it is as well made as Lizard...

Lizard in a Woman's Skin is the finest giallo I've seen, better than anything Argento or Bava has ever done.

I recommend the film highly, especially to fans of Morricone.

You shaid you wanted to know how to get Capone? Well here'sh how you get him...

[–] LJ27 12 years ago

His later works are kind of slap-dash. I think the biggest reason why his earlier films are more polished is because I think early on he figured if he did better looking films, he would get better known and be able to choose better projects with higher budgets. I think by the time he did ZOMBIE 2, GATES OF HELL, HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, THE BEYOND, etc. he knew he was never going to take off and be a big name director and just decided it was better to finish a movie quick and sloppy and move on to the next one, rather than take pains that the drive-in audiences weren't gonna notice anyway and that American distributors could care less about.

I think THE PSYCHIC is the most professional-looking film of his I've ever seen. GATES OF HELL aka CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD is almost like watching a home movie at times.

[–] filmscholar35 11 years ago

Fulci himself was interviewed in the 90s (shortly before his death), and he stated that he thought his best period was between 1969 and 1974. He loved "Beatrice Cenci", "Perversion Story", "A Lizard in a Woman's Skin", "Don't Torture a Duckling", and "Four of the Apocalypse". He felt that those were his best films as a director.

He stated that the later gore films were made for the money.

He also complained how everyone trashed his films back in the early 70s, and then he found he had a huge cult for his 80s horror films much later on.

He actually said, "Twenty years ago, people called my art crap, and today they call my crap art."

Brutal honesty there.

[–] brianctyler-11531 9 years ago

I think he did a fantastic job with with his horror films from 1979-1982, and even did some great work after, it's just a different style of filmmaking. Those movies have a lot of great camerawork in them and there's wonderful atmosphere, no one could make a cemetery look quite as foreboding as Fulci could. It seems people get distracted by all the violence, gore and confusing storytelling that they don't pay attention to the fact that there's still good filmmaking backing it up. For me, those films are as good for horrifying atmosphere as they are for brutality and amazing gore effects.

Perversion Story, Lizard in a Woman's Skin, Don't Torture a Duckling, Four of the Apocalypse and The Psychic are all films with much better scripts (or at least easier to follow stories) and less onscreen violence and gore, so people simply seem to pay more attention to the camerawork instead of writing it off as trash.

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin is a legitimately slick production. The Psychic (1977) is another refined product which shows Lucio Fulci had all the skills to be a solid director.

It is a shame some people view him as some hack who relied on gore and little else. The man could direct.

His later films did become a bit more amatuerish and sloppy. And of course it's true he did ramp up the gore, but his early Gialli films such as the aformentioned and One on Top of the Other (1969) plus Don't Torture A Duckling (1972) show he was very capable of going toe-to-toe with the likes of Dario Argento.