Review of Manhattan Baby (1982) by Thomas D — 14 Oct 2010

For being one of Italian horror master Lucio Fulci's directed works, you might think that this would be a milestone of darker 80's gore, nope...think again. I have seen many of Fulci's gore-monging bloodfests (Zombie, The New York Ripper, The House By The Cemetary etc.) All of which excel in the gore departments. Sadly 'Manhattan Baby' is not amongst these blood-gems. Fulci tries his best to bring us a story that is more solely based on the supernatural side of horror, which makes for a terribly boring, slow, non-bloody crap-fest.

-When an archaeologists discovers an ancient tomb in egypt, he awakens a spirit that has long been dead. This spirit basically possesses the archaeologists daughter who he brings back to the united states with him. The spirit can see through a strange talisman that is given to the young girl by a strange woman with pure white eyes. People start strangely dying once they are back in Manhattan because of the evil entity.

-The only death scene is at the beginning when the archaeologists partner falls down a trap door and lands face first into a bed of spikes. It wasn't even that gory for Fulci. About an hour and twenty minutes goes by before another death even happens! A real snoozer in my opinion. About the only really interesting part is the last death where a doctor is viciously attacked by stuffed, taxidermy birds and pecked to death. Other than that the movie in its entirety is kind of a rip off of the exorcist as we watch the young daughter (who is not a baby, not sure why they even called it Manhattan Baby) get taken over by feverish spells from the ancient entity. The medallion that she has looks like something you would find at the Goodwill or a flee-market! It is so retro and corny looking! It certainly doesn't look as cool as the Hellraiser box. Anyhow, I wouldn't really recommend Manhattan Baby, even around Halloween time. There are much better, much bloodier and much less boring horror movies to watch. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of the old style direction and the cheesy 80's home-made score, but this movie just did not cut it! Even the lame score was just awful. Definitely a sleeper movie overall.