Aenigma

Lucio Fulci's output has been very much varied even within the horror genre throughout his lengthy genre career, and with 'Aenigma' he diverts from his usual staple of fantastic gothic splatter to make an attempt at a strange hybrid of Stephen King's 'Carrie' by way of Dario Argento stylings.

The film opens at St Mary's school for girls with the films very own Italian Spacek going on a date with her school's hunky gym teacher. She can't believe here luck and as she swoons with delight in his arms she realises that her classmates are all watching laughing at her expense as she's been the victim of a tasteless school prank. Running away in distress she flees into the path of a passing car and ends up in a deep coma hovering between life and death.

Cut to some time later and we discover that St Mary's waste no time whatsoever filling vacant beds with the arrival mid term of sassy young Eva, an instantly popular lass with the rest of the superficial teen femmes. Wasting no time, Eva makes plans for an evening of passion with the equally interested gym teacher from the intro sequence but before she can get her wicked way with him he is strangled to death by his own reflection (in the same style that Bruce Campbell successfully managed to avoid in Evil Dead's sequel). The police (sans a cameo appearance by Fulci himself) though believe that he has been victim of nothing more than a simple heart attack but as they will in time find when the body count rises there's a lot more than meets the eye.

The concerning thing with the growing number of deaths is that each of the victims believe they are suffering some sort of wildly bizarre violent scenario (including the now infamous snail assault) but when their bodies are found with no signs of untoward violence we realise that there's more than the simple revenge scenario going down here. Surely it can't be the work of the intro's prank victim, well she's now fully comatose? Could it be the sallow skinned housemaid that scorns the wealthy student girls? Or could it be the work of newcomer Eva or something far more mysterious and supernatural?

While by no means the best of his work, 'Aenigma' is an interesting attempt by Fulci to dabble in another successful style of genre horror movie. Taking the simple ugly duckling revenge scenario that was massively successful for De Palma in 'Carrie' and trying to imitate (albeit not so successfully) it in the style of Argento he has delivered a curiosity that will inevitably be of great interest mainly to fans of his work. But it is also this simplistic plagiarism that will put off some viewers less tolerant and the fact that with 'Aenigma' he has chosen to shift away from the usual gory overdose mayhem and replace this with mainly fantastic less bloody scenarios. That said, knowing Fulci's loyal legion of fans (myself included) they'll simply 'need' to have this in their collection.

The print on show here on this UK Hard gore release has been licensed from the Italian 'Horror Club' label (aka Minerva Pictures) and hence like it's Italian counterpart release is simply gorgeous. The 1:1.85 widescreen image is sharp, colourful and flawless from beginning to end, lovely stuff indeed. The audio is a nice clear 2 channel stereo track in English (omitting the Italian audio and English subtitles from the Italian release but no great loss when the presentation here is just so damn good).

Now onto the extra features - first up is the usual expected text filmography section covering Fulci's work compiled by Jason Slater which is pretty run of the mill but informative nonetheless. Also on show is a all too brief stills gallery section which showcases some cover images for the films release across the globe (that said it's still an improvement on the lackluster screen grabs that appeared on the Italian release) Finally (and perhaps best of all) is the excellent three minute Italian trailer for the film itself which makes it look like a true horror classic by utilising some of the key death scenes, Argentoesque shots and thumping gothic keyboard theme.

Rounding things off on the extras front is the usual collection of Hard Gore DVD release trailers. I've noted of late some folk knocking Hard Gore for their inclusion but I for one welcome them as any genre trailers are surely better than none (companies like Vipco rarely even bother with a trailer for their main feature and simply slap on the same old rot (Nostril Picker anyone?) This time round we get trailers for 'I Spit On Your Grave', 'Demonium', 'Nutbag', 'Red Monks', 'Reign in Darkness', 'Bangkok Hell' and the ever underrated 'Don't Mess With My Sister'.

As I mentioned earlier' 'Aenigma' is by no means one of Fulci's greatest movies but at the same time it's by no means his worst either. Hard-core Fulci fans will be very happy with this very impressive uncut presentation by the folk at Hard Gore. Nice one - check it out!

Review by Alan Simpson