Manhattan Baby
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- Release Date: August 12, 1982
- Directed by: Lucio Fulci
- Written by: Elisa Briganti and Dardano Sacchetti
- Runtime: 1 hour 26 minutes
Oh, boy. I guess I should start this writeup by saying that I have an interesting relationship with Manhattan Baby. By "interesting", I mean that I've only finished this movie once, and that was during my current Fulci Marathon in 2025. I had previously tried to watch this movie three times before in the past two years, and each time I tried, I was so bored that I fell asleep about half an hour in. For a while, I wondered if my inability to stay awake was simply a result of me being too tired from work, or maybe getting too comfortable in my recliner. As a Fulci fan, part of me just didn't want to think that he had made a complete dud, and surely there had to be a little bit of Italian horror greatness deeper in the film. After finally watching the entire thing, I can sadly confirm that Manhattan Baby is simply a confounding snoozefest of a film.
Before I get into the negatives, I should mention that there are a couple of positive things about the movie. Its general premise is a nice change of pace compared to the over-the-top gore spectacles of Fulci's previous output in the 1980s. The movie is about a family who returns to the city after a trip to Egypt, bringing with them a cursed amulet. This amulet unleashes various evils in their apartment building, killing a few people and causing the family's children to drift in and out of reality. It features a few nice music pieces from regular composer Fabio Frizzi, and a couple of the horror scenes still feature Fulci's ever-satisfying gore and eyeball damage. The more metaphysical story relies a lot more on the distortion of reality itself instead of physical monsters hunting our characters. In fact, the story of an Egyptian artifact unleashing a curse in an urban setting reminded me a lot of Hammer's Blood from the Mummy's Tomb from 1971. That comparison is pretty unfortunate though, as not only is that my least favorite of Hammer's Mummy films, but I also think that one is boring as hell. These two movies together would make for one of the slowest double features I've ever seen.
The two biggest things that kill this movie for me are its characters and storyline. Every single character in this movie is about as interesting as drywall. The lead parents in the film have nothing compelling to do at all, and simply spend the movie being confused about the evil unfolding around them. Neither one of them take any initiative to try to investigate what is going on until it's too late for anybody. There is one side character who informs them of the source of the cursed amulet, but he barely gets a chance to do anything. He provides exposition dialogue, tries to use a ritual to fight the evil in a couple of scenes, and sacrifices himself at the end to a flock of stuffed birds that are pecking him to death. On paper, he could have been an interesting lead, but this movie spent too much of its runtime sleepwalking through its story instead of creating a character to make you care about. Because of this, there is nothing here to compel the viewer to get invested in anything going on here.
The pacing of this movie moves at an absolute snail's pace. Each time I've watched this, I'll think that the movie is about halfway over, only to find out that about 25 to 30 minutes or so have gone by. What this evil curse is, what it does, or how it works are barely explained. This makes the scenes of horror feel like a series of unconnected special effects shots instead of a slowly unfolding threat, and the lack of any compelling characters makes this disconnected story feel like even more of a slog. From what I've read, the movie suffered from massive budget cuts during its production, with about � of its budget being cut. I can only imagine that this left many scenes of character development or story connections completely unfilmed. This leads me to as the question: if you couldn't film the entirety of your script, then why bother even releasing the film to begin with? The production of this movie was supposedly so bad that it caused Fulci to end his partnership with Fabrizio De Angelis, who had previously produced Zombi 2 and the Gates of Hell trilogy for him. Ouch...
All of that being said, I don't think Lucio Fulci was entirely sleeping at the wheel with Manhattan Baby. He still delivered some good music and some well-shot horror scenes that still have that Italian horror feel that I love so much. He simply did not have the resources at hand to get this thing properly made. As it is, it's a confusing little dud in Italian horror history, and I really can't recommend it to anyone unless you're a die-hard Fulci completionist.