gavin6942 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.

Bezenby Dutch are Deaf is Fulci's attempt at combining black comedy, slapstick and extreme gore into a bundle of low budget headscratching late eighties nonsense that raises loads of questions but doesn't bother answering any, just like Fulci's Sweet House of Horrors and basically any other film he made after 1987.This time, Brett Halsey of naked harpoon wielding ghost nun film Demonia and Demons 6 plays Lester Parson, whom we first see cooking himself a nice steak and watching a video of a less-aesthetically pleasing woman prancing around. Turns out the steak was once part of this woman's thigh and we get to see Lester graphically chainsaw the rest of her corpse and feed it to his cat and pigs. All this is done rather humorously, if you're Lucio Fulci.Lester's constantly in debt to gangster type/book keeper Al Cliver (from Demonia, Zombie Flesh Eaters, New Gladiators, The Beyond and House of Clocks – basically, he's Fulci's go to guy for supporting actors), and in order to get cash, he constantly tracks down, seduces and murders rich widows, all of whom are disfigured for reasons that are beyond my six or seven functioning brain cells. Maybe Lucio's trying to say something there, but who knows? To make things worse for Lester, he's now apparently got a copycat killer on his tail, who keeps killing people and leaving evidence at the scene, including his genetic code. "That's my DNA!" He shouts at one point. Do you know your genetic code? Things get dafter and dafter as this film goes on, and less gory too, until you're hit with Lester's wooing of Zora Kerova (of Anthropophagus and Cannibal bloody Ferox) and Lester trying to track down the other killer. Looking for a logical conclusion? Then, tough sh*t.I forgot to mention that Lester often talks to himself via a tape recorder.At least the film does have some sort of ending though, unlike other Fulci films of this era. It moves fairly quickly and is mercifully short, but if you've seen Cat in the Brain, you've seen all the gory bits. All you're missing is the Al Cliver footage and the wooing of Zora. Plus, the ending makes no sense and yet again I get the feeling that Fulci might be trying to subtly say something about something or other, but it's lost under the low budget, his vision, and my brain damage. It was worth a watch.Speaking of Brain Damage, I've decided to review as many of these late era Italian horrors. I've done a few already, but I've still to review: The Church, Red Monks, Ghosthouse, House of Clocks, Sweet House of Horrors, Demonia, Cat in the Brain, Nightmare Beach, Stagefright, Aenigma, House of Witchcraft, House of Lost Souls, Creatures from the Abyss, Troll 2, Graveyard Disturbance, and Demons 3: The Ogre. I've already reviewed Zombie 3, After Death, Maya, Dial Help, Demons 5, Demons 6, Witchouse, Spectres, Spider Labyrinth, Shocking Dark, Body Count and Cut and Run. Am I having a mid life crisis?

HumanoidOfFlesh So I decided to rewatch Lucio Fulci's "Touch of Death" aka "When Alice Broke the Mirror".Unfortunately this gore/black comedy is one of his weakest films."The New York Ripper" was the last solid flick of the Godftaher of Gore.Anyway,Brett Halsey plays a maniac who kills rich women for their money,butchers their bodies with a chainsaw and fed their remains to his pigs.Sounds great,but the action drags and the characters are idiotic.There is also plenty of silly comedy that seems out of place.Fans of Italian cult cinema should recognize Zora Kerova and Al Cliver in small roles.There are only four brutal gore scenes in "Touch of Death" including chainsaw dismemberment,running over with a car and finally there is a pretty nasty sequence,which has a woman bludgeoned with a wooden pole and then shoved into an oven.6 out of 10 and that's being kind.

adriangr 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.