Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
Manhattan Baby
Collapse
X
Collapse
-
Manhattan Baby
Released by: Blue Underground
Released on: October 25th 2016.
Director: Lucio Fulci
Cast: Christopher Connelly, Martha Taylor, Brigitta Boccoli, Giovanni Frezza, Cinzia de Ponti
Year: 1982
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
An archeologist named George Hacker (Christopher Connelly) is on vacation in Egypt with his daughter Susie (Brigitta Boccoli) and the rest of his family when a strange blind woman Susie encounters in a bazaar gives the young girl an ancient amulet. From there, George goes digging around in a tomb only to have a jewel he uncovers blast him in the eyes with a blue laser, leaving him blind and his guide dead.
They return to their home in New York City where George's doctor diagnoses his blindness as temporary. While he recovers, Susie's life takes some strange turns when all manner of bizarre activity surrounds her, seeming to stem back to that amulet she got in Egypt. Susie and her younger brother Tommy (Giovanni Frezza of House By The Cemetery infamy!) are involved in something, but what exactly that is remains to be seen - is there an occult force at work here? Is there something trying to break through from another dimension? Or has poor Susie somehow become possessed? As the bodies pile up, George and an antiquities expert named Adrian Marcato (Cosmimo Cinieri) try their damnedest to figure out what's going on and save Susie from whatever it is that's causing all of this in the first place.
Also known as Eye Of The Evil Dead (which is a much more fitting title than Manhattan Baby), this one takes elements from Rosemary's Baby, The Omen and The Exorcist and throws it all into one crazy blender. The result is… a mess, to be sure, but it's a pretty entertaining mess in its own screwy way. Made on a pretty low budget, the film starts off pretty strongly. The scenes that open the movie and that take place in Egypt are actually quite well done. They have atmosphere and they're nicely shot and they set up an interesting premise. From there, once we head back to American soil, things go in a lot of different directions at once. Tommy walks into a closet filled with light and then just sort of comes back later on his own, no one seems to mind too much. Susie bounces back between terrified of what she's experiencing and seemingly quite amused by it. The parents don't get nearly as involved as you'd think they would and they whole narrative feels like it was strung together to showcase a few effects set pieces rather than to tell a proper story.
However, there are some amusing effects set pieces and the cinematography is typically really good. Despite its low budget the film has some technical polish to it that is easy to appreciate. The cast is interesting. Christopher Connelly is sufficient enough in the lead, if unremarkable, while Cosmimo Cinieri is amusing in the way that strange character actors like Cosmimo Cinieri tend to be. Brigitta Boccoli and Giovanni Frezza get a lot of screen time here. Boccoli is decent enough but Frezze is almost as annoying here as he was in House By The Cemetery, the film he'll always be remembered for where he starred as 'Bob' (possibly the most annoying child in any Italian horror film ever made). If you don't mind the fact that the plot is dopey and illogical, however, there's enough 'stuff' going on throughout the movie that, if nothing else, it isn't boring.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The AVC encoded 2.35.1 widescreen high definition transfer on the disc was sourced from the original camera negative according to the box copy and it looks very good. Detail is typically very strong save for a few scenes that use some softer focus, while colors look excellent from start to finish. We also get nice looking skin tones and good black levels as well as solid texture. There are no noticeable issues with noise reduction or any of that obvious and sometimes distracting noise that has popped up on transfers of various Italian genre pictures over the last few years. Picture quality here is really strong.
Audio options are handled by your choice of an English DTS-HD 5.1 Surround Sound or DTS-HD 2.0 Mono mix with optional subtitles provided in English SDH, French and Spanish. The mono track sounds a little more 'pure' in that it would seem to more accurately reflect the film's original sound design, but the 5.1 track is there for those who want it and it does spread out the effects and score a fair bit. Both tracks feature properly balanced levels and are free of any hiss or distortion.
You want extras? You've got'em! The supplements kick off with a thirteen minute piece entitled Stephen Thrower On Manhattan Baby in which the man who wrote Beyond Terror: The Films Of Lucio Fulci offers up his thoughts and opinions on this particular entry in the late director's filmography. Thrower makes some interesting observations as to the merits of the picture and its effects work while speaking quite highly of the score. Moving right along, check out the nine minute piece entitled For The Birds, which is an interview with actor Cosimo Cinieri. Here he shares some thoughts on what it was like to work on a Fulci set, his opinions on his character and his interesting death scene and some of his thoughts on the movie itself. In 25 Years With Fulci we get an eleven minute interview with special makeup effects artist Maurizio Trani that, as you'd guess, covers what was involved in creating the makeup effects scene in the feature. He shares some amusing stories about working with the director not just on this film but on a few of his other features as well. Screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti gets eight minutes in front of the camera in a segment called Beyond The Living Dead where he gets pretty open about Fulci's dark side, the quality of the film that Manhattan Baby became after budgetary restraints came into play and how they were trying to do something new and different wit this project.
However, the biggest and best of the extras on this release is an interview with composer Fabio Frizzi entitled Fulci & I that runs almost an entire hour in length. More than just a look at the work he did with Fulci, this actually covers pretty much his entire career. Here he speaks about how he got into music and from there, into composing for films. Of course he does cover the Fulci movies he made, they're too iconic to leave out, but he also talks about other work he's done over the years. Alongside the interview footage there's also some interesting studio footage and live footage edited into the piece. Great stuff.
Rounding out the extras on the disc are an eight minute live performance of Manhattan Baby Suite by Fabio Frizzi and his band, a still gallery and the film's original theatrical trailer. Menus and chapter selection are also provided.
Also included inside the clear Blu-ray case is a DVD version of the movie and a third disc containing the film's complete soundtrack on CD. Blue Underground has also included an insert booklet of liner notes that contains an essay from Troy Howarth, author of the Lucio Fulci tome Splintered Visions that offers up a pretty fair assessment of this particular entry in Fulci's filmography as well as some interesting facts and opinions on the picture.
The Final Word:
Manhattan Baby isn't Fulci's best film, not by a long shot, but it has occasional atmosphere and some fun moments that do work. Blue Underground have given the film a seriously impressive special edition, however, presenting it in fantastic shape and with a staggering amount of extra features.
Posting comments is disabled.
Categories
Collapse
article_tags
Collapse
- album review (218)
- album reviews (274)
- arrow video (272)
- blu-ray (3225)
- blu-ray review (4162)
- comic books (1392)
- comic reviews (872)
- comics (988)
- dark horse comics (484)
- dvd and blu-ray reviews a-f (1969)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews G-M (1711)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews N-S (1757)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews T-Z (878)
- dvd review (2513)
- idw publishing (216)
- image comics (207)
- kino lorber (391)
- movie news (260)
- review (318)
- scream factory (279)
- severin films (300)
- shout! factory (537)
- twilight time (269)
- twilight time releasing (231)
- vinegar syndrome (497)
Latest Articles
Collapse
-
Released by: Kino Lorber
Released on: February 22nd, 2022.
Director: Gianfranco Parolini
Cast: Lee Van Cleef, Jack Palance
Year: 1976
Purchase From Amazon
God’s Gun – Movie Review:
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini in 1976, quite late in the spaghetti western boom years, God's Gun (Diamante Lobo in Italy) introduces us to a bad, bad man named Sam Clayton (Jack Palance) who, along with his gang of equally bad, bad men, start wreaking...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 12:10 PM -
-
Released by: Kino Lorber
Released on: October 8th, 2019.
Director: Mario Bava
Cast: Christopher Lee, Reg Park, Leonora Ruffo, Gaia Germani
Year: 1968
Purchase From Amazon
Hercules In The Haunted World – Movie Review:
Directed by Mario Bava in 1961 and featuring a screenplay by Bava (and Sandro Continenza, Francesco Prosperi and Duccio Tessari), Hercules In The Haunted World (also known as Hercules At The Center Of The Earth and...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 12:08 PM -
-
Released by: Cinématographe
Released on: March 26th, 2024.
Director: Jack Nicholson
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Mary Steenburgen, Christopher Lloyd, John Belushi
Year: 1978
Purchase From Amazon
Goin’ South – Movie Review:
Made at the height of his career as an actor, 1978’s ‘Goin’ South’ sees Jack Nicholson once again in the director’s chair, seven years after his directorial debut, ‘Drive, He Said,’ failed to set the...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:29 AM -
-
Released by: Radiance Films
Released on: April 20th, 2024.
Director: Noburo Nakamura
Cast: Miyuki Kuwano, Mikijiro Hira
Year: 1964
Purchase From Amazon
The Shape Of Night – Movie Review:
Directed by Noburo Nakamura for Shochiko in 1964, ‘The Shape Of Night’ follows a young woman named Yoshie Nomoto (Miyuki Kuwano). In the opening scene, she’s working as a streetwalker on the outskirts of town and soon enough, she’s picked...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:26 AM -
-
Released by: Film Masters
Released on: April 23rd, 2024.
Director: Bert I. Gordon
Cast: Richard Carlson, Juli Reding, Lugene Sanders, Susan Gordon
Year: 1963
Purchase From Amazon
Tormented – Movie Review:
The late Bert I. Gordon’s 1963 horror film, ‘Tormented,’ is an effectively spooky ghost story made with an obviously low budget but no less effective for it.
The story revolves around a professional piano player...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:19 AM -
-
Released by: Grindhouse Releasing
Released on: March 12th, 2024.
Director: William Grefé
Cast: William Shatner, Jennifer Bishop, Ruth Roman, Harold Sakata
Year: 1974
Purchase From Amazon
Impulse – Movie Review:
Directed by the one and only William Grefé, 1974’s Impulse is one of those rare films that allows you to witness what it would be like if a really sweaty William Shatner got mad at a lady carrying balloons. Before that...-
Channel: Movies
04-15-2024, 01:20 PM -