Cursed New Yorkers

Manhattan Baby (1982)

Another Fulci movie that tries to shine out with other abilities than just gore. An archeologist discovers an ancient Egyptian tomb and ends up blind by the "curse" of the tomb. At the same time his daughter gets a strange medallion from a creepy blind old lady. The two incidents seem to be connected somehow and as they return to Manhattan things start going crazy. Even though the story was thin, the movie started off nicely with some very good looking scenes and the style was quite great. But then it kind of stalls and doesn't really move anywhere. Sure enough this movie did have some great looking scenes, but other than that it had very little to offer. It felt like it was trying to copy every horror hit out there but not being able to fit them all into the small script. Hell it even copies Fulci's previous movies as well, though that might have been a joke as I bet he knew this movie was as far from original as a movie can be. The biggest problem in addition to the thin script is that this is not what Fulci does best and you can almost see that he's uncomfortable with this material, kind of like not sure where to go next and which point to focus on. Though I read that the funding for the movie was cut heavily, so maybe that also effected how uneven it ended up to be. The cast is not great either, so that didn't help either. One thing I really loved, in addition to the few stylish scenes, was the soundtrack by Fabio Frizzi, absolutely brilliant as always, but even there I could hear quite a many recycled ideas from his other soundtracks. So it looks good at parts and the music is brilliant, but unfortunately it wasn't a good movie.
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