Lucio Fulci

Italian genre films of every kind, from a director who worked through nearly all of them. Fulci's catalogue starts with Franco and Ciccio comedies and westerns like Massacre Time, and ends in the gore films that made his name: an abandoned boat drifts into New York harbour with a zombie aboard in Zombie Flesh Eaters, and a young woman inherits a hotel built over a door to hell in The Beyond. Plot comes second to the next shock, and every shock is held long enough to look at.

Signature

• Gore staged in close-up and held (Zombie Flesh Eaters, City of the Living Dead, The Beyond).
• Gateways to the dead in ordinary places: a cemetery in Dunwich, a hotel cellar, a house in the woods.
• Gialli set in a village or a city under suspicion (Don't Torture a Duckling, The New York Ripper).
• Comedies, westerns and two White Fang adventures made for hire before the horror.