Manhattan Baby

American Egyptologist George Hacker (Christopher Connelly) opens a hitherto sealed tomb rumoured to be cursed. After his guide falls into a spiked pit – a moment reminiscent of Raiders of the Lost Ark more than anything – Hacker is blinded by laser-like beams of blue light.

Outside, Hacker's ten-year-old daughter Susan (Brigitta Boccoli) encounters an old woman with cataract occluded eyes in an otherwise deserted plaza, who hands her a medallion with an Eye of Horus type design and warns ominously that "tombs are for the dead"

The Hackers return to New York, where the doctor tells George that it could take a year for his sight to return. As the months pass strange things start to happen to the family and those around them, like au pair Jamie Lee (Cinzia de Ponti) and Emily Hacker's practical joke playing editor at Time and Life magazine, Luke (Carlo de Mejo). People dieappear and – sometimes – reappear without explanation, while poisonous snakes and other desert creatures inexplicably materialise in Manhattan apartments…

Eventually, through the assistance of occult scholar Adrian Marcato – note the nod to Rosemary's Baby – the Hackers come to understand that Susan's medallion has allowed the ancient evil of Hapnubador a gateway back into the world through the medium of Susan…

Released at the tail end of the golden period (c. 1979-82) that saw director Lucio Fulci assemble a solid team of collaborators and seemingly find his metier as a purveyor of absurdist splatter, Manhattan Baby emerges as a flawed yet fascinating entry.

Fulci and screenwriter Dardano Saccheti had hoped to achieve some distance from the visceral approach of their previous collaborations, building on the metaphysical aspects of 1981's The Beyond, but found their desires thwarted by producer Fabrizio de Angelis's cost-cutting. Yet oddly the opening Egyptian sequences, which Saccheti has identified as being tacked on, emerge as one of the film's strongest points.

Elsewhere, Fulci's helming is a combination of nice camera set-ups, movements and lighting effects, combined with some poorly executed, almost half-hearted gore scenes – including a de-oculation by stuffed bird – and less than impressive effects work. Rack focus shots, intense close ups of eyes and a general obsession with physical and metaphoric blindness are also present and correct. (One wonders whether this interest was in any way related to the director's diabetes.)

Fulci's regular composer Fabio Frizzi contributes an effective score, with some Egyptian tinged motifs and a recycling of themes from The Beyond in what seems like a combination of cost-saving device and intertextual reference to the other film – an interpretation gaining credence from the presence of an character named Emily in each film and a confusion of diegetic and non-diegetic sound, with Tommy Hacker (Giovanni Frezza) singing a theme we heard on the soundtrack.

Fulci can be seen in one of his customary cameos as a doctor.

Manhattan Baby will appeal more to the committed Fulci enthusiast than the zombie fixated fellow-traveller. A respectable salvage job, it provides tantalising hints of what might have been.

Released as part of Anchor Bay's Lucio Fulci collection as a single disc entry and then compiled with The Beyond, this Region 1 DVD has a clean, sharp, anamorphic 2.35:1 transfer and decent 2.0 sound.

The centrepiece extra is a nine-minute interview with Saccheti, "Beyond the Living Dead". He explains Manhattan Baby's troubled production history, his memories of Fulci – a misanthropic misogynist, it seems – and De Angelis – good in the sense of giving creative freedom but constraining in terms of time and money – and reflects on the nature of horror. With speculations that horror is only the truly universal genre – it is grounded in our mortality, whereas comedy is culturally specific – and reflections on the significance of differences in Catholic and Protestant eschatology, it's a worthwhile listen and one only wishes there was more of it.

Other extras comprise the obligatory trailer and biographies of the director and writer.