Manhattan Baby

Lucio Fulci-many horror fans admire his work,I am also among them.However "Manhattan Baby" is one of his weaker efforts.First of all,the script by Dardano Sacchetti and Elisa Livia Briganti is very confusing.It borrows from "Rosemary's Baby","The Awakening","The Exorcist" and even "The Birds".The film is about a girl who,while in Egypt with her archaeologist father,is given an amulet that causes her to be possessed by the spirit of an ancient Pharaohess.There are some atmospheric shots,but the gore is almost completely absent(apart from the scene when the stuffed birds attack Adrian Marcato,rending his flesh as he dies screaming).Anyway if you're a huge Fulci fan like me you should watch this film,if not don't bother.

I'm not sure if Lucio Fulci lost a bet or something and was forced to do this movie, but you can sense his heart isn't in it. Then again, Fulci has always been more of a journeyman director. He'll pretty much take anything offered to him. While many of his films often have a slightly sleepy quality to them, Manhattan Baby has to be one of the sleepiest and most uneventful. Like most Fulci films, it's beautifully shot and looks like someone spent some money on it, but this time, its in service of a story that's barely there. As I came in and out throughout the film, I remember something about a magical amulet from Egypt possessing a young girl in Manhattan. There are snakes and scorpions and someone is impaled on some spikes, but there's never any narrative drive to keep us interested. Now, one could say that Fulci's The Beyond doesn't really have much of a narrative either, but it oozed atmosphere and followed a dreamlike structure that made sense for that particular film. Manhattan Baby plays it fairly straight as if it were The Omen or The Exorcist and is all the worse for it. As most Italian horror films from that time, there are some chuckles to be had over some horrible instances of dubbing and poor translations, but that's about all the joy you'll get from Manhattan Baby. It's easily one of Fulci's worst, most phoned in films.

Oh my word, this is bad. I want nothing to take away from the sheer awfulness of this.. well, I'd stretch to call it a 'film'. Describing the plot is impossible because what transpires is completely incoherent, but at the start a young girl on vacation in Egypt receives a medallion from a mysterious figure. All kinds of weird stuff happens, all depicted by awful dubbing and truly rubbish special effects. How anybody thought this mess was worth distributing I'll never know, but I bet those involved would pay good money to keep it off their CV. Nothing else left to say really apart from: if you love being confused and depressed at the same time.. this is the 'movie' for you.. 0/10

Lucio Fulci, Italy's 'Godfather of Gore', was on a roll in the early '80s, wowing fans of splattery horror with The House by the Cemetery and The Beyond (both 1981), and The New York Ripper (1982). He must have run out of steam (and blood) for his next film, Manhattan Baby, which is a rather 'dry' affair by comparison. It's a great looking film - the cinematography is some of the best to be found in a Fulci film - but the pace is slow and the plot nonsensical, making it one of the director's more disappointing efforts overall. Christopher Connelly plays archaeologist Professor George Hacker, who explores a cursed tomb where he find a strange blue stone that zaps his eyes with lasers, rendering him blind. Meanwhile, his young daughter Susie is given a strange pendant by an old woman. When the family return to New York, lots of weird stuff happens - people disappear and a couple of folk die in strange circumstances - all caused by the pendant, which is possessed by an ancient evil god called Happanubanah (at least that's what it sounded like to me). Fulci is clearly aiming for atmosphere this time around, but rarely achieves anything scary. Towards the end, he gives up trying and resorts to ripping off The Exorcist, before giving his fans a gory set-piece that is even more silly than the pipe-cleaner spider attack in The Beyond: stuffed birds come to life and peck holes in a man's neck and face. In addition to a dumb plot, and one hokey splatter scene, Manhattan Baby also sees the return of Giovanni Frezza, Bob from The House by the Cemetery, as Susie's little brother Tommy. Seriously, Lucio... once was enough!

source: Manhattan Baby

Trailer—Manhattan Baby

Manhattan Baby

"Manhattan Baby" sure is one controversial Fulci flick. I have friends who love the man and hate this movie. I also have friends who don't know the man at all and love this movie. The plot is a bit silly. A girl is given a trinket on vacation in Egypt and it turns out to contain horrific powers of destruction. I told you it was silly. The special effects are very 1982. But wait; this movie was made in 1982. I'd recommend this to someone who has never seen a Fulci film and is not expecting to see "Zombie" or "The Beyond" again. This movie offers something different and something that I, a true Fulci admirer, appreciate and can watch over and over. Yes, I like "Manhattan Baby." While it's not like the aforementioned Fulci greats, it remains entertaining and it does deliver some good scares. And decent gore. 7 out of 10, kids.