Review of Touch of Death (1988) by Robin W — 09 Sep 2010

You'd think it would be pretty hard to definitively pick out the most bizarre movie in Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci's filmography, but I'd say one of his lesser known efforts, "Touch of Death", would definitely be the hands-down winner; there's no way I could legitimately consider this a good movie, but it does have a lot of unique entertainment value.

The paper-thin plot involves a serial killer who murders rich women in gruesome ways and the narrative basically follows a "rinse, cycle, repeat" formula until it's been padded out to 80 minutes.

That's about all there is to the movie, but it does have an awful lot of gore and gruesome violence, which is mostly fake and unconvincing, but undeniably hilarious. The movie also works fairly well when it's functioning as a black comedy, with one standout sequence involving the protagonist trying to keep one of his victims propped up in the passenger's seat while being pulled over by a cop for a speeding.

While "Touch of Death" is a colossal mess, it does deliver a lot of things you've never seen before and is worth a look for fans of Fulci and gory Italian horror.