Majority of Fulci movies are boring
Today I talked with an horror expert about the work of Lucio Fulci. In his opinion, Fulci was the 'Godfather of Gore', because most of his so-called 'masterpieces' had been banned in several countries. I decidedly refused his opinion.
A good example of Fulci's boring and stupid 'horror' is 'The New York Ripper' where an moron with the voice of Donald Duck goes on a killing spree because some beautiful women came across him and didn't behave the way he wanted. While in other horror movies (even modern ones like 'The Fly' by David Cronenberg)the suspense runs up sucessively, in 'Lo squartatore' Fulci's misogynistic stance is lived out immediately after the killer runs into the women, and gets furious about them.Fulci obviously, and erroneously, mixes violence with suspense, thereby trying to shock the audience. And, i guess, movies made in the early 80's (when the violent 'nasties' period began) broke a lot of taboes by simply playing to the gallery. But it was not the quality of those movies that made them famous, but the poor expectations of the audience that were craving for cheaps shocks.
That's the case with Fulci's oeuvre: delivering cheap shocks seems to be his paramount interest, leaving logic and suspense aside. That's the case in 'New York Ripper','House by the cemetary', and culminated in the utterly funny movie 'A cat in the brain' in which Fulci's making sport of his own 'violent' movie career.
On the whole: Fulci's oeuvre delivers cheap shocks and gore galore, but repeated violence and torture may be breaking taboes. But they do no reveberate, like 'The Sixth Sense or The Ring (Japanse version) were Horror is created not by a simply repetition of murder and mayhem, but by a creaping and growing feeling of insecurity and disorientation.
Fulci lacks a sense of reality the audience can identify with. To create that sense of reality, he needs a setting that is not as far-fetched as the mayority of his slashers.