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  • The_Void26 January 2006
    Lucio Fulci is one of the leading names in gore-soaked horror cinema, and Touch of Death certainly does that reputation proud! Fulci's films started to get worse as his career progressed (with the exception of the hilarious Cat in the Brain in 1990), and as this film was released in 1988; you can count on it not being as good as his previous output. In fact, with films like Don't Torture a Duckling and The Beyond in mind; Touch of Death is one of Fulci's weaker efforts, but even so - there's plenty here to delight the man's fans. The film is clearly meant to be something of comedy, but the comedy is more of the absurd, over the top variety than one that will have you in stitches. Fulci's use of music helps to instill the absurdity of the film, which sees lonely widower/gigolo Lester Parson taking women home and putting them to use. He likes to mutilate them in horrible ways, such as beating them with a stick and chopping them up with a chainsaw; and just to add to the proceedings, he eats them too. Fulci also installs a subplot about the investigation into the murders, and the murderer's descent into madness.

    This film is something a prelude to Cat in the Brain, and it's obvious that Fulci had Touch of Death in mind when he made his self-starring vehicle, as many of the gore scenes from that film are taken from this one. The scenes of gore are really quite nasty, but their impact is lessened by the comic tone. The first scene of gore sees our 'hero' going to work with a chainsaw (surely horror cinema's finest weapon), and then putting the remains of his victim into a meat grinder. Then we are treated to a beating scene (which features some of Fulci's trademark eye violence), a nasty sequence involving a car, a corpse having it's feet cut off and several other scenes along the same line. The film is really dirty; with the poor cinematography adding brilliantly to the overall unclean feel of the movie. The acting is typically low level, but the actors portray their (mostly silly) characters with gusto, and the result is a film that people will like more it's fun value than its credibility. Being a Fulci fan, I am more susceptible to this sort of trash; and I cant really say that non-Fulci fans will get much of a kick out of it.
  • Hailing from 1988, Touch Of Death is probably the most frustrating Fulci film I've seen to date, prompting me to join the chorus of horror fans who generalise that his films get worse as you get later into his career. Considering the plot synopsis, I was expecting some bloody bad-natured fun with this one, but for all its bizarre flourishes, it feels tedious even at a running time of just 80 minutes, and suffers from nauseatingly shabby production values and film-making craft (or lack thereof).

    El Story: A gambling addict widower wines and dines rich (and strange) women he finds via lonely hearts columns before offing them in gruesome fashion - sometimes eating them or feeding them to animals - and stealing their money to keep his debtors at bay. Sure, it's unlikely that just one man would be the host for so much screwed-up pathology all at once (addict, psycho/sociopath, cannibal), but this is Fulci!

    Touch is actually the cheapest and sparsest looking Fulci film I've seen. There's almost nobody in it, even in the background of shots out on the street, for instance. A newsreader who keeps appearing on the film's televisions to warn the non-existent cast about the maniac's latest doings operates out of the most pathetic TV studio on the planet. He never even gets to look at the camera because has to read all the headlines off misaligned sheets of paper.

    Some scenes just go on and on with the protagonist muttering to himself about what he's done or what he's about to do, but the acting is nowhere near good enough to sustain this kind of thing, so the main outcome is viewer boredom. The film also looks bland and ugly in general. I've read that it was intended to be an Italian telemovie (did it ever screen in that venue? With the amount of gore involved, it seems unlikely), and it does reek of crappy old telemovie production values.

    This is also Fulci's first foray into outright black humour, but he's just too graceless a director to make it work. Sometimes conspicuously cheerful or 'wacky' music is used to play against a gruesome scene, for instance while the hero/villain is carving up a dead body in his basement. The effect isn't really chilling or funny or ironic anything that you'd like it to be - it's mostly just hamfisted and crappy.

    There are of course some redeeming moments of gore (that you'll be waiting for while trying to stay awake), including the eventual murder by oven(!) of a woman who just won't quit life, even after her face has been totally bashed apart with a bloody great club, and a homeless guy who gets a car run back and forth over him about five times. The most outrageous element of Touch, however, is all the physical deformation on the widows courted by the crazy guy. Beards, hairy moles, messy harelips - it's not like he sought out women with these features, it's just the way all lonely hearts widows are, apparently. There are plenty of shots of Mr Crazy secretly grimacing while he's smooching up these women. The black humour of such garish misogyny might have some staying power or resonance if the film wasn't so poorly executed in general. In the end, Touch Of Death just seems like a really lazy, inarticulate mess.
  • A moody, middle-aged gigolo (Brett Halsey) kills off women after he gets bored with dating them and uses their body parts for trophies and for consumption.

    Though many fans are divided, generally "Touch of Death" is regarded as a better latter era Fulci film. The overdone black humor touches, "unconvincing" gore effects and baffling ending does turn off some fans. While it is true that some of the film is hard to follow because we are unsure how much is madness and how much is reality, this really is a solid effort from Fulci. And for me, the gore may be unconvincing but still unsettling.

    Where does this fit in his overall canon? Not top three, probably not top five, but I would still have to say it is firmly on the top half of Fulci's works. Certainly superior to "Cat in the Brain", which has gotten much more exposure over the years.
  • "Touch of Death" is the story of Lester Pearson, a down on his luck gambler whom starts seducing wealthy women with various deformities, then killing them off for a prie fixe lunch of human flesh and cash for his horse racing betting debts.

    Fulci has an oft tenuous grasp on his plots, but this has to be the most ridiculously over the top entry in the canon. Though the gore is the usual splatter spectacle (the best of which effects wise is probably the scene where the blackmailing vagrant is run over with Lester's car), it's housed in too goofy of a context to be scary.

    After several of the least politically correct murder scenes in film (a bearded lady meets death in a microwave, an inexplicably opera singing widow who solos in her sleep is interrupted by being strangled)and some darkly comic body disposal (complete with silly cartoonish theme music), Lester realizes he has a larger problem than lady killing. An imitator is leaving incriminating evidence at the scene of his crimes that points to Lester. Before long, his picture, modus operandi and DNA genetic code (?!) are being broadcast on the nightly news. Will his latest target ("Cannibal Ferox"'s Zora Kerova) find out before it's too late?

    The final twist makes no logical sense and shoestring budget shows, but "Touch Of Death" is a mindless guilty pleasure of Fulci poking fun at himself that will entertain his devoted fans.
  • adriangr20 June 2009
    Warning: Spoilers
    This is just dreadful. I regret every second of the 80 minutes I spent watching this dreck. I think it's supposed to be a comedy, but I don't remember laughing much, except at a few blatant inconsistencies and downright glaring errors.

    An unattractive middle-aged man called Lester meets up with rich unattractive middle-aged women via lonely hearts ads, and then murders them for the money he needs to feed his gambling addiction. That's the whole plot, and that's really all that happens. Along the way there is an attempt at intrigue when Lester starts to get phone calls from a mysterious stranger who taunts him about knowing his secret, but its so badly implemented, you may not realise what is actually supposed to be happening. The sequences in which Lester murders the rich widows are all quite brutal but also seemingly dressed up as comedies. One sequence has a woman bludgeoned with a wooden pole and then shoved into an oven. It's very cruelly depicted, but it is played out against blaring big-band waltz music, with Lester pulling faces and adopting comedy poses throughout. Another scene has the victim murdered while she constantly sings shrill opera songs...you have to see this to believe it! Actually - you don't have to see it at all, in fact I strongly recommend you avoid this flop. Fulci does not seem to know which hat he is wearing and there's no evidence of any of the flair seen in his earlier career. One sequence stood out to me as particularly wretched: the revelation when Lester suddenly realises that he has no shadow. Fulci seems unable to think up any visual representation of this phenomena on screen, so from this point on he just films the actor as normal, shadow and all!! And thus totally blows the whole angle. Either he had zero budget for effects, or he just didn't care enough to think up any way of showing it. Whatever it was, that should give you a taste of how lame this whole project is. I couldn't even understand most of the film, and there certainly wasn't anything on screen worth looking at half the time. Even the ending was as flat as a pancake. A real dud.
  • Lucio Fulci is the kind of director who, years down the road, will achieve the stardom he deserves. As of now, he is pretty much infamous. His later works, especially post 1990, are really pretty bad. In truth, they are no worse than many early 90's American horror films, but the dubbing is so bad that it's hard to take Fulci's later work seriously at all, really. When possible, any 1990's Italian horror movie should be viewed in Italian with English subtitles. They are MUCH better that way.

    "Touch of Death" is so funny in parts that I almost peed myself the first time I saw it. The woman's head in the oven, the car mauling, the baseball bat scene...the list goes on from there, trust me. It's got pretty decent gore, too. I'm sure Fulci focused a lot more effort on that than he did on the plot, which is not meant to be taken too seriously. "Touch of Death" is just a fun movie. It's not going to scare you, it might gross you out in some parts though! Watch it with all this in mind, and you'll enjoy it for what it is.

    7 out of 10, kids.
  • Lucio Fulci was famous for his Italian splatter movies, mostly his undead films like Zombie or The Beyond. Here he directed a black comedy of sorts, but there's just one problem: its nauseating. I say this knowing that I like City of the Walking Dead (which is also gross but not like this). A compulsive gambler gets money for his habit by romancing ugly and deformed rich women then murdering them and stealing their cash. The film makes this plan look that easy. I guess the women were too ugly to go to a bank, so they always had their cash on person. After the upteenth murder I began to suspect what I've always heard about Fulci: he hated women. He must have. At any rate this film stinks, its not funny, and Fulci should have stayed with giallo and supernatural zombie movies. Avoid this film at all costs.
  • I was actually very pleasantly surprised. I didn't go into this expecting much as i've never been a huge Fulci fan, but I do enjoy him, and as far as Fulci this probably had tighter editing and a more straightforward storyline than anything else I've seen by him. The 'twist' was obvious the entire time but it didn't make the film any less enjoyable and there were no plot holes- maybe a first for him? This film was less surreal than most and mainly focused on dark comedy and a simple crime tale, not much in the way of sets or cinematography, but it did what it set out to do, and with less stumbling than I've come to expect from the 'godfather of gore'. All in all a worthy watch if you can get your hands on the BluRay edition.
  • Lucio Fulci, a director not exactly renowned for his subtlety, ill-advisedly tries his hand at black humour in Touch of Death, a made for TV movie about Lester Parsons (Brett Halsey), a psycho who seduces and murders rich widows in order to pay his gambling debts.

    Starting off with a wonderfully gory scene in which the lethal lothario disposes of his latest victim via chainsaw, mincing machine and hungry hogs, Touch of Death starts promisingly enough, but Fulci soon loses control of proceedings, introducing a weird sub-plot involving a mysterious copycat killer and some heavy handed 'comedic' scenes. There are several more graphic murders which, in true Fulci fashion, are extremely violent and gruesome, but even the high level of bloodletting doesn't stop this from being one of Fulci's poorer efforts.

    As I have found with many of his other movies, a comprehensible storyline is not exactly high on the agenda when Lucio is behind the camera. This film has many peculiarities which left me more than little perplexed: why didn't Lester dispose all of his victims using the dismemberment method seen at the beginning? Why are all of his victims either hairy or disfigured? What the hell is that ending all about?

    Fulci is considered by many to be one of the 'greats' of horror cinema; I don't understand his popularity, finding the majority of the films of his that I have seen so far to be generally lacking both decent narratives and technical proficiency. Touch of Death certainly does nothing to change my opinion.
  • This films shows all the characteristics that have made Fulci a clearly-recognizable filmmaker: no logic, no plot, very bad actors on one hand ; but on the other, lots of fun and an incredible sense for splatter which has turned him into a world-wide acclaimed king of the genre. This film in particular offers gruesome and spectacular representations of deaths and murders , very well expressed by incredibly-low-budget but proper special effects : Fulci here is disgusting probably as never before, but if you like the kind it's an experience to be made...
  • Warning: Spoilers
    Caution: Spoilers!

    With "When Alice broke the mirror", Fulci tried to deliver a black comedy for Italian TV. The result is an extremely mean-spirited and - in the first half - gory movie, even for a Fulci product.

    The story itself about a serial killer copied and betrayed by his own shadow is not without potential, but what Fulci makes out of it is a rather over-cynical and disgusting film - and it starts right away: The movie opens with Brett Halsey as Lester Parsons eating a steak which he has cut out of his latest victim while watching a video recording of her. A few moments later, he descends to his cellar and dismembers the corpse with a chainsaw. Not enough yet, he passes the remainders through a meat grinder and feeds them to the pigs. Sick, isn't it?

    Lester Parsons is probably the most unappealing character Fulci has ever created. He is addicted to gambling and horse betting and, in order to finance his costly hobby, he slaughters women.

    In the first half, Fulci inserts a lot of extreme gore. The effects vary from bad to acceptable.

    Fulci devised the movie as a black comedy, probably a) to make up for the cheap special effects and b) to disarm it a little bit (recall that it was intended for TV).

    The result remains problematic because Parsons' victims are mostly women with physical defects and Parsons explicitly mocks about them. Such a premise is simply repulsive and makes the whole movie extremely ugly. Fulci doesn't possess the necessary black humor to treat such material with taste.

    Most surprisingly, this gory movie was shot for TV - and shown, though only "late at night" as Fulci once declared. These Italians!
  • "The name is Parson, Lester Parson. That's right, almost like a person. But not quite."

    Such a strange little, gory Fulci movie. Lester Parson is a sadistic serial killer with a gambling problem. He also talks to his shadow by pressing play on a tape recorder. His shadow talks back with advice and words of wisdom. Yes, this is a freak of a movie which is why I like it so much. Of Fulci's later movies, Touch of Death is definitely one of his best. It has some decent gore and is short and sweet(82min). Most of the clips from Fulci's Cat in the Brain film were taken from Touch of Death.

    This movie is only for Fulci fans. It might be considered crap by normal folk.
  • I got hooked on Fulci thanks to Zombi 2, New York Ripper and The Beyond, after which I started collecting Fulci DVDs. Although I'm still in progress, this movie convinced me that Fulci lost most of his "touch of death" after 1982.

    Touch of Death was originally conceived for Italian TV, and if you consider that, it's a pretty gory movie. If you just watch it as a normal movie it is quite boring. Although it contains some good gore - that's why you watch Fulci, right? - it is a long way from The Beyond and not nearly as scary.

    This movie was released on DVD by EC Entertainment in Europe. It seems to be taken from a very bad copy. Nonetheless, we should be grateful that EC took the time and effort to release it, because it will probably sell badly.
  • This latter-day Fulci schlocker is a totally abysmal concoction dealing with an incurable gambler (Brett Halsey) who decides Bluebeard-style to pay off his ever-rising debts by seducing some of the ugliest bitches you will ever lay your eyes on and who just happen to be wealthy widows! The Fulci-penned script also contrives to incorporate a few blackly comedic elements - which only result in some unfunny business involving a corpse which won't stay put, an opera singer victim who won't stop singing, etc. - not to mention a doppelganger theme straight out of THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE - although, in this case, the two personas communicate via pre-recorded radio messages!! In the end, I can't say I'm surprised that this film shows no sign of the sophistication of Mario Bava's HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON (1970) which it resembles in several ways and that it is content to merely pile up the disgustingly gory (but none-too-convincing) effects of dismembered limbs and squashed or melting faces with which, alas, Fulci had by then become completely associated.
  • For an 80 minute TV flick from Italy you could do a lot worse I'm sure. It's got a made for TV look. I'm guessing it was videotaped rather than filmed since it was made for TV. That is the main downfall in what is otherwise a pretty decent horror flick.

    We have some top notch splatter here. Very disgusting and vile. Nothing pleasant whatsoever. But it never really takes itself seriously since it's a black comedy. Portions of the score are good and then portions are atrocious making this TV cheapie seem even cheaper.

    Fulci does what he can with the budget and provides some interesting camera work and makes us laugh at some nasty stuff (interesting since Fulci didn't do too many straight up black comedies). As with many Fulci films, the ending leaves one with a feeling of 'WTF?' Which is exactly what we should expect from this king of horror.

    Not a great film by any means but if you're a Fulci fan, pick it up.
  • A really explicit and twisted film concerning the grisly happenings in which a series killer with a hidden agenda carries out a criminal spree . A violent shocker with level enough on vivid imagery and pure cinematic style in which a nasty murderer executing grisly killings by means of a chainsaw and other criminal methods . Lester Parson (Brett Halsey) is a cannibal psychopath who usually romances and after kidnapping and mutilating wealthy women, committing a series of heinous murders , carrying out serious cuts and beheading . Subsequently , disposing the rest of the unfortunate women in his backyard to his horde of pigs . The peculiar psycho-killer converces schizophrenically with himself via tape recordings of his own voice and along the way he acts as a cook by eating the remains for his dinner . He is also being tracked by Randy , a mean loan shark whom he owes money to after accruing bad gambling debts . For hell! .Depraved - Demonic - Diabolical - And Beyond!

    Eerie and creepy thriller with full of killings , loathsome and lots of blood and gore , sexual violence , and abominable murders by means of a saw executed by an ominous psychopath . A typical Fulci butcher's tableau with plenty of explicit scenes of wicked violence , nudism , sheer sensationalism , grisly commerciality and no for squeamish . Here Lucio Fulci directs in his usual style filled with flaws , failures and gaps , but professionally made because being a nice artisan . It has flamboyant imagery , graphic gore and moody atmospherics . Stars veteran Brett Halsey proving an acceptable acting as a middle-aged gigolo who kills women and uses their body parts for trophies and for consumption. Halsey was a beefcake who emigrated to Italy and played a lot of B films , often billed as "Montgomery Ford" . Brett starred as several sword-and-sandal type heroes in including the spectacles ¨The Seventh Sword¨ and ¨The Avenger of Venice" . He also settled comfortably into the fashionable international spy , "spaghetti" western and Giallo genres with a slew of work including ¨Berlín , Spy in Your Eye¨ , ¨Espionage in Lisbon¨ , ¨The Hour of Truth¨, and ¨Kill Johnny Ringo¨. Being accompanied by a fine and attractive support cast of usual Italian B actors , such as : Ria De Simone , Sacha Darwin , Zora Kerova , Marco Di Stefano , and Maurice Poli .

    The motion picture was middlingly directed by Lucio Fulci , and being entertaining enough . Fulci was one of the most controversial filmmakers in terror genre. Critics are divided over both the moral and talents of Fulci (1927-1996), who sometimes directed under the alias Louis Fuller. For some reviewers many of his flicks are extremely cruel and savage , yet their gory surface often concealing social, religious , or provoking commentaries or other thoughful , intelligent issues . Nevertheless , most of them considering his works have undeniably provided a considerable influence on the terror genre , creating decent efforts on low budget flicks . Standing out his ¨Don't Torture a Duckling¨ deemed to be one of his best pictures . And in the adventure genre with two financially successful Jack London 'White Fang' adventure movies in 1973 and 1974 which were ¨Zanna Bianca¨, and ¨Il ritorno di Zanna Bianca¨. Also during the mid and late 1970s, Fulci directed some 'Spaghetti Westerns' : ¨Four of Apocalypse¨ (1975) and ¨Sella d'argento¨ or ¨Silver Saddle¨(1978), and another 'giallo' ; ¨The Psychic¨ (1977), as well as a few sex-comedies which include the political spoof : ¨The Eroticist¨(1972) , and the vampire comedy ¨Young Dracula¨ (1975) , and the violent Mafia crime-drama ¨Luca the smuggler¨ (1979) . Furthermore , Sci-Fi and Fantasy genre as ¨Rome 2033: The Fighter Centurions¨(1982) and ¨Conquest¨(1983) . In 1979, Fulci's film making career successfully another high point with him, breaking into the international market with ¨Zombi 2¨ (1979), an in-name-only sequel to George A. Romero's Zombi: Night of the Lving Dead (1978), which had been released in Italy as 'Zombi'. And his big hit ¨New York Ripper¨ , at the time rated as a video nasty , due to it and why the excessive extra violence was heavily cut or prohibited in a large number of countries . With this film established Fulci as a gore director par excellence . Over the next three years, Fulci plied his trade with finesse and flair-play , rivaling even the popularity of his "opponent" the great Dario Argento, with such sanguine classics as ¨City of the Living Dead¨ (1980) , ¨Beyond¨ (1981) , ¨Manhattan Baby¨(1982) . These films are actually intelligently crafted, with sound commentaries on everything from American life to religion. And he went on his fall with lousy movies, but eventually Fulci at least found work in television . Rating : 5/10 . Average , only for Lucio Fulci completists .
  • Warning: Spoilers
    Wow, this one really swiped me off my feet. When seeing a Fulci movie, you really don't expect much of an intentional comedy, but this time it's exactly what you get. At least in the macabre, grotesque way. With a healthy dose of gore and disturbing images.

    Lester Parson is a cannibalistic psychopath and a degenerate gambler who kills ugly, rich women and steals their cash and personal property to fund his lifestyle. And he has meaningful conversations with a mysterious person he knows (or perhaps with his own voice?) through a tape recorder. Pretty soon Lester finds out that there's also the other killer around, who imitates his killings and leaves out evidence that all points to Lester.

    This film is like a low-budget version of American Psycho. (And even with it's problems way better than the said drivel of Hollywoodism that so poorly tries to turn Bret Easton Ellis' text into film.) Lester's "adventures" are projected in a grotesque and hilarious light, and Fulci has succeeded in creating a very twisted humorous mood, which abruptly changes into horrific carnage. I found myself several times laughing my buttocks off, and within seconds I'm cringing and staring in shocked disbelief at the brutality of violence. That's a pretty hard stunt to do for a film maker, also considering that I've pretty much seen everything there is. :) I must say that Fulci has always had some extraordinary nihilistic vigor in the depiction of violence.

    Too bad that the film doesn't follow this line to the end, and the last 30 minutes is plunged into senseless drivel with some obscure doppelganger plot. Maestro Fulci fell into this kind of goofing so regrettably often, I must say. Also, the obviously small or almost non-existent budget unfortunately shows on this one, and the photography is depressingly ugly to watch. Still, I have to say that Fulci's experience shows in doing the best that can be done with the limitations.

    Despite being flawed, ridiculous (in a bad way) at times, and ugly looking, my thumbs are way more up than down on this one. Still, it leaves me asking, what this movie could have been with better production and more thought out ending. Well, I guess we'll never know. Definitely recommended for the friends of grotesque comedy, despite the poor ending.

    This is my truth. What is yours?
  • Warning: Spoilers
    TOUCH OF DEATH (1988, original title Quandro Alice ruppe lo specchio) is another low budget gorefest from Lucio Fulci, made at the tail-end of his career. His heart is still there but sadly the elements required to make a decent film just aren't at his fingertips and the end result is a rather boring little piece highlighted by a few sequences of stand-out gore and little more besides. This slimly-plotted tale sees Brett Halsey - whom you may remember from RETURN OF THE FLY all those years before - as a man who makes his living by romancing rich widows before bumping them off, hiding their bodies, and stealing their fortunes. There's little more to it than that, and the only thing memorable here is the gore. There's a very nasty scene involving an oven but the most unpleasant part is a chainsaw dismemberment which goes way beyond the bounds of taste. Halsey comes across as a pure misogynist and a calculating sociopath so it's hard to spend so much time with his character. There are sub-plots involving gambling associates (and a cameoing Al Cliver of ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS fame) and a psychological twist involving Halsey's 'double', but it all leads to a very underwhelming climax that dials back on the mayhem and plays out in a very ordinary way. A disappointment.
  • Warning: Spoilers
    I'm a big fan of Fucli and i was a bit skeptical of this film when i heard that its a dark comedy. But i saw it, and it was simply hysterical. I loved the dark comedy in it. And the character of Lester Parson has a lot in common with American Psycho's Patrick Bateman, but also has many opposites. For example: while Patrick lives in a fancy apartment, Lester lives in a fancy house. Or while they are both rich, Patrick is in no financial problems, but Lester is starting to get into deep debt with gambling (and he also takes money and jewelry from the women he kills to aid his troubles). And one more example - while Patrick's killings basically go unnoticed and dismissed by everyone as a joke in American Psycho, Lester's killings get slowly revealed to everyone by his mysterious nemesis, which turns out to be his own shadow! There are many more examples of their differences, but if you decide to watch this film, you'll notice them along the way.

    Also, Fulci's gore effects are (as always) top notch.

    This is not a perfect movie by any means, but damn is it fun and gory as heck! If you happen to love Fulci's work and love American Psycho, (or if you simply just like gore) then this is a match made in heaven!
  • There are certain horror directors for whom I've built up so much respect & admiration over the years, that they can't possibly disappoint me know matter what garbage to decide to put on film. Lucio Fulci is surely one of them, but damned, he's trying to disappoint me with his later efforts! You can easily afford yourself to skip most of the films Fulci directed or produced during the late 80's and simply watch "Cat in the Brain" instead, because that one title gathers and repeats the best and absolute goriest footage of no less than SEVEN other Fulci-flicks, including the sickest murders sequences featuring in "When Alice Broke the Mirror". As a whole, this movie definitely ranks among our director's weakest and most pointless achievements. The script is incoherent as hell, the basic premise is totally implausible and somewhat stupid and there's absolutely no suspense to enjoy. I love the title, but it's actually quite meaningless. There is a character named Alice in the story, but it's only a supportive role and she certainly doesn't break any mirrors. I suppose she could break stuff simply using her voice, as she's an opera singer, but she doesn't. The plot revolves on a middle-aged and gambling-addicted playboy who spends his days seducing wealthy widows and killing them for their money. Lester Parson butchers the ladies (as well as unwelcome witnesses) in gruesome ways, makes steaks out of their juiciest body parts and feeds the remainders to his cat. There's also a silly psychological sub plot in which he thinks his own shadow is responsible for the murders instead of him. The difference between "When Alice Broke the Mirror" and some of Fulci's greatest horror films ("The Beyond", "City of the Living Dead", …") lies in the fact that he totally doesn't bother to create a horrific atmosphere. The characters, Lester included, are colorless and boring and the murders are ordinarily depicted; like it's the most common thing in the world to put a woman's head in a microwave or repeatedly run back and forth over a human body with a car. The lighting is poor, the cinematography super-ugly, the editing clumsy and amateurish and the acting performances are downright miserable. If I didn't know any better, I would think Lucio deliberately made a lousy film in order to protest against all the harsh critics that dislike his repertoire no matter how much spirit and effort he put into it. The obvious element to enjoy here is simply the outrageous gore & bloodshed, because even the attempt to blend in black comedy doesn't work properly. As long as Lester swings around his chainsaw and cuts off women's feet, "When Alice Broke the Mirror" is an undemanding piece of horror entertainment, but other than that, there's isn't a whole lot to recommend.
  • I truly loved this film. It's super gory, and has a very strange misogynistic black comedy thing going on. I thought it was pretty funny, I feel like I got what Fulci was trying to do here. I see alot of people saying that this one doesn't make any sense. I think it does, it's just something you have to draw your own conclusions with, just like the beyond, or house by the cemetery.
  • If Touch of Death was simply the poster filmed for 70 minutes, it'd be such a better movie than what I just watched.

    Lester (Brett Halsey, Demonia) is a cannibal serial killer who meets, dates and eats various women, sometimes giving parts of them to his pigs. He also talks to a tape recording of his own voice and has plenty of gambling debts that Randy (Al Cliver, Zombi 2, The Beyond) is ready to collect.

    There's a long scene that involved Maggie, a woman he marries. She's an oversexed, overweight, overmustached woman that is such a caricature, it reduces the film to pure comedy. He tries to kill her several times with poison, which she thinks is just a love game. Then, Lester bashes her brains in — literally — with a stick, leading to her eyeball popping out and rolling down the hallway. If you thought New York Ripper was too restrained, Fulci is ready for you. Because she isn't dead, which means Lester has to repeatedly punch her and then cook her head in the microwave, where we watch the flesh melt off her face. Then, in a moment of absurdity, her body can't fit into his trunk, so he has to saw her legs off.

    I don't want to see Fulci be a second-rate Herschell Gordon Lewis.

    Lester is caught by a homeless man (who has the mark of Eibon on his forehead), who he runs over and leaves for dead. He doesn't have any follow-through, because the man shares his description, which means he has to shave and get contacts.

    His next wife is a woman who likes to sing opera during sex, who he strangles to death with some stockings. Even after getting pulled over by a cop — with the body in the front seat — Lester gets away. He tries to sell her jewelry, but it's all fake. And now, the cops know what he looks like — again — so he dyes his hair and puts on glasses.

    Depressed at home — and with even more gambling debts — Lester gets a phone call from Virgina (Zora Ulla Kesler, Anthropophagus, The New York Ripper), who is like all of his victims, except much younger. She's DTF for Lester, but he is grossed out by her facial scar and decides to kill her and steal everything she has.

    Meeting her for dinner, she pulls a gun before he can kill her. She recognized him from he news and Lester barely makes it out of her apartment. As he has a conversation with his other self, now a shadow on the wall, he merges with this second voice. Then, he dies.

    Also known as When Alice Broke the Looking Glass, this film is everything Fulci detractors accuse him of being — misogynist, leering, obsessed with gore and slapdash. It was an effort to even finish it — as I love his movies. Up until now, even with Ripper, it felt as if there was a balance of art and bloody organs being severed and smashed. Touch of Death's 81 minutes of screen time feels like 81 hours.

    Postscript: I did not care for the scene where the killer kicks a cat, at all. Yes, I was not upset by a woman's head smashed with a stick and more peeved at an orange cat being booted.
  • I am 25 years old so this movie was released when I was two years old. I'm upset that it took me this many years to find it! Touch of Death runs about 1:20 which is a few minutes short of a "complete" film experience in my opinion but Touch of Death plays more like a strange dark horror-comedy of its own variety.

    Extremely creative gore and special effects implemented throughout much of the film. At least one scene is guaranteed to make you cringe and then just when you think things can't get anymore extreme Lucio kicks things up a notch and takes it about 10 steps farther! Very awesome use of blunt weaponary against a victim.
  • This begins in so flat and ordinary way with the camera entering the grounds, house and then room of the Lester Parson character, seen to be cooking himself a, admittedly rather odd looking, steak and humming away to himself as if most self satisfied. Stephen Thrower, in his wonderful volume Beyond Terror, describes this as one of the director's worst films and certainly his most inept horror. I'm not so sure. Low budget certainly, distasteful even more certainly with a king of gleeful element of nastiness. All the women/victims seem to have some element of ugliness that is somehow seen as justification for the most terrible of physical attacks. It is not a comfortable watch but then should such a film be so anyway, perhaps we should ask. This particular jaw dropping late outing from Fulci is made further intriguing/annoying by what I glean (though Thrower ignores it) as some suggestion of things not even being as they seem to be. On the telephone at one point he is clarifying his name for someone who has misheard, 'No it is 'Parson', not quite a 'person' and later apropos seemingly of nothing, he notices he has no shadow. Very odd, horrible and hardly seamless but somewhat surreal and never uninteresting.
  • dy3849318 September 2021
    Good movie to watch for especially if you want gore and blood then this movie is of your type one of best of Italian movies.
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