Aenigma
Tags: suspenseful, cruelty, murder, paranormal, violence, horror, psychedelic, revenge, sadist, prank

Plot synopsis:
At St. Mary's College, a boarding school for girls located just outside Boston, Massachusetts, a lonely, gaunt, unattractive student, named Kathy (Milijana Zirojevic), becomes the center of a cruel practical joke perpetrated by a gang of students and the hunky, but sadistic gym teacher, Fred Vernon (Riccardo Acerbi). Kathy is tricked into going on a date with Mr. Vernon, but when she over eagerly makes her move onto him in his parked car in the woods, the students appear in their cars to taunt her. Running away from several carloads of her tormentors, Kathy runs onto a busy street where she immediately gets hit by an oncoming car and is admitted to the local hospital in a coma. Kathy's strange mother, Mary, continues to gloom around the school in her capacity as a cleaner.
Some time later, a new girl named Eva Gordon (Laura Naszinski), arrives at the school where she is shown around by the stern headmistress Miss Jones, and given Kathy's old room. Eva becomes acquainted with several of the perpetrators of the stunt. It is soon revealed (to the viewers only) that Eva is Kathy. Eva has somehow been possessed by the spirit of the comatose Kathy who begins using supernatural powers of telekinesis and magic to exact revenge against all those involved in the prank that put her in a coma. The first victim is Mr. Vernon, whom asks Eva on a date. That night while waiting for Eva to show up at the gym for their secret rendezvous, the narcissist Mr. Vernon is attacked and strangled by his own reflection when it jumps out of a mirror. The following morning, the police detective on the scene (director Lucio Fulci) concludes that Mr. Vernon died of a heart attack.
The following night, Virginia Williams (Kathi Wise), one of the students involved in the prank against Kathy, is attacked in her bed and suffocated to death by an onslaught of snails that appear and then disappear. Again the police do not have any explanation for the mysterious death.
Meanwhile, the neurologist in charge of Kathy's case, Dr. Robert Anderson (Jared Martin), notices that Kathy's vital signs increase in step with each of the mysterious deaths at the school. But he cannot make a connection to it. The next morning, Dr. Anderson is called to the school to examine Eva when she has a violent breathing fit during a class. During that same time, Kathy's respirator temporally breaks down which leads to Eva's respirtory attack, but nobody makes any connection to it. Afterwards, the strange Eva comes on strong to Dr. Anderson, leading him to ask her on a date where afterwards she seduces him.
During a field trip to a local art gallery, Grace, another one of Kathy's tormenters, returns to the gallery when it closes to search for a valuable piece of jewelry that she left behind on the day visit. A marble statue comes to life and falls down on her, crushing her to death.
Dr. Anderson starts to become more apprehensive about the intense Eva. One evening, he suffers a horrible nightmare where she kills him after sex. He's relieved when Eva's mother arrives at the school to take her home for some rest. Eva begins to write obsessive love notes to him, but he brushes them off. Soon, Anderson becomes involved with another girl, named Jenny Clark (Ulli Reinthaler), the only student who shows any remorse for the prank gone wrong against Kathy.
Eva runs away from home and returns to the school after dark. Eva sets her eyes on Kim (Sophie D'Aulan), one of Kathy's cruelest tormenters. As Kim is preparing to meet her boyfriend, Tim, for a date, Eva makes Kim see horrific visions of Tim being decapitated at every turn. Kim suffers an anxiety attack and in attempting to flee from the gory visions, plummets out of a third floor window to her death. Tim arrives seconds later, looks out an open window, and sees Kim lying dead on the pavement below. Tim is decapitated when Eva commands the window blind to fall down on his neck. Eva quietly leaves the building while Kathy's mother, Mary, watches from a distance.
At the hospital, Jenny arrives for a late-night date with Dr. Anderson, when she gets lost in the gloomily lit building, thanks to Eva using Kathy's magic skills of mind bending. Jenny ends up in the morgue where she encounters Eva. The possessed girl grabs a scalpel and threatens to kill Jenny for taking away her man, but Anderson arrives in time to intercept the slash of the scalpel, but gets badly slashed on his forearm. As Eva rises the scalpel to stab them both, she suddenly freezes, gasps for a few seconds, and falls to the floor dead.
Upstairs in Kathy's hospital room, her mother has pulled out all her intravenous drips, removed the respirator and turned off the life support systems. Appalled at the supernatural malice of her comatose daughter, Mary has somehow figured out of Kathy's connection to Eva and has decided to put her daughter to rest. Kathy's soul rises out of her body as a bright blue light, floats out a nearby window, and disappears into the night sky.

Review: What Cathy doesn't know is that everyone else at the school, and their boyfriends, are all listening in and shortly chase her around in their cars, causing her to be run over.Now in a coma and because this is a Fulci film, we get to see Cathy's spirit float above a model town (with some leftover model buildings from The New Gladiators – I wonder if Fulci kept them in the same cupboard as Jared Martin, who stars in both films).
So Eva sets up a date with him but doesn't quite get there as his reflection comes to life and strangles him, as they tend to do.Basically, Fulci at some point has watched both Carrie and Patrick and thought "Me too!" Cathy is now possessing Eva, and causing the deaths of all involved in her accident.
At one point Eva throws a hissy fit which brings her to the attention of Doctor Jared Martin, who of course is also Cathy's doctor, and they hit it off.So the rest of the film plays out like you'd expect, with those girls all meeting their demises in various surreal ways (death by snail, death by a statue coming to life in an art gallery after a picture comes to life and stabs itself, raining blood on one of the girls, a run of the mill falling out the window gag), until Eva's family show up suddenly and take her home, causing Jared to go out with yet another one of the girls.
Sure, it's your run of the mill late era Italian horror, but the snails, art gallery bit and completely original storyline if you haven't seen Patrick make it worth a watch.
Judging by the amount of other user-comments and their content around here, this "Aenigma" (love the alternate spelling!) is a lesser known and thoroughly hated Lucio Fulci film.
Black sheep of Catholic girl's dorm Kathy is involved in a near-fatal car accident after a prank with the school's gym teacher.
The girls' acting is extremely hammy and it's a good thing they all all look so cute, otherwise it would have been a lot more difficult to struggle yourself through the movie.
This movie is an example of Lucio Fulci remarkable capability generated from his very own vision of reality to create the  unique mood and atmosphere..
A young girl called Cathy has a prank played on her by the other students at the college she attends.In fleeing from her tormentors she is knocked down by a car and in hospital subsequently falls into a deep coma.Deep in her comatose state she finds that she is able to transcend her physical body and possesses at will a new student at the school Eva.It's time for supernatural revenge on people who tormented Cathy."Aenigma" is one of the lesser-known horror flicks made by Italian Godfather of Gore Lucio Fulci.It has some creative and bizarre kill scenes including death by snails and gruesome decapitation via window.The plot of "Aenigma" rips-off "Suspiria","Carrie" and "Patrick" but the film is stylish and enjoyable.Still if you are into gore and over-the-top violence you may be a little disappointed with "Aenigma".7 pranks out of 10..
From the moment the opening credits come on you know it can't be good: very bad 80's pop music and a girl that's putting make-up which makes her look even more ugly.
Anyway, the story isn't exactly original: Ugly girl gets to be the victim of a prank by fellow-students and ends up in a coma.
But her soul roams free, occasionally possessing the new girl in school and killing all the ones involved in the accident.Welcome to the 80's world of college-cuties: smoking in dorm-rooms with Sylvester Stallone & Tom Cruise-posters on the wall.
a bizarre sex-scene in a dream with our leading-girl biting chunks out of the love-doctor.But there isn't much gore actually, considering Lucio Fulci made this.
The movie itself never gets really boring due to the deaths and frequently intercut freaky shots of the creepy girl in a coma, but the ending seemed like they just (literally) pulled the plug on this movie.
Can't bring myself to give AENIGMA less than 4 stars though, because it still feels like a Fulci-movie.
Set in a school, it involves a misunderstood loner called Kathy who is cruelly taunted by her classmates, but takes revenge by means of psychic powers.
She somehow manages to possess another student, who goes through the school leaving a trail of destruction and death on Kathy's behalf.Sounds great for Fulci fans, but don't hold your breath.
This, along with the film's title, makes me think that Fulci is actually trying to emulate Argento's far superior "Phenomeona".The film is generally pretty confusing, as Kathy's power, and her hold over the possessed girl are never properly explained.
***************Kathy is a poor Carrie-like who gets humiliated by her "friends" and had a car accident.
Her spirit possessed a new schoolgirl and gets his revenge of the bad guys !The first 10 minutes are hilarious (especially the song "Head over Meels"...with that "Dream come true...")...
Anyway, it's a great film to watch with friends, beer, pizzas...The french dubbing sounds to be made very quickly, Kathy's voice sounds like a man !!!
(bearing in mind that some of the greatest horror films of all time have been American, of course!) I liked Cat in the Brain, Murder Rock Dancing death- both lesser movies in his cannon...
watch it by all means as part of the Fulci course; but I found it a profound disappointment.The only thing in this films defence is the style of direction- that unmistakable Italian va va voom is present even in this shoddy affair...
What you have to understand is that the stuff he did doesn't really have a big budget behind it, and in a way I think it's better, because the death scenes look much more real (which is strange, you'd think with the amount of money that they have these days backing horror films, that the effects would be much more realistic, but I find that they're not)If your a fan of cheesy horror, that at the same time has gore galore plus plenty more (heh, nice word play)then Lucio Fulci's stuff is definitely worth checking out.
Director, Lucio Fulci was an interesting guy w/ a varied film canon.
While certainly not a classic, at least this movie is fun to watch, and still superior to much of Fulci's later output...
The late Lucio Fulci, director of numerous Italian gore classics, obviously deemed gastropods so terrifying that he gave them starring roles as slimy killers in Ænigma, a 1987 clunker that clumsily blended elements of Carrie and Patrick to tell the tale of a comatose girl out to seek revenge on those responsible for her condition.In the snails' unforgettably daft scene, a girl awakens to find herself smothered by the slow-moving molluscs, who ultimately suffocate the poor lass, covering her from head to foot in slime.
It's just one bad moment out of many bad moments in a very bad film.Ænigma opens with a young woman named Kathy (Milijana Zirojevic) excitedly preparing for a date (with the help of her friends) by selecting a nasty red dress and plastering on her make-up like a clown.
Yes, Kathy is the subject of a mean school prank: the guy she is getting all gooey over doesn't really go for the minging clown look; he's only with the poor lass in order to humiliate her in front of his pals.Realising the truth, Kathy runs away in tears, only to be hit by a car, ultimately ending up in intensive care.Meanwhile, at the exclusive boarding school where Kathy lived with her mother, new student Eva Gordon (Lara Naszinsky) is getting used to her new environment.
However, fitting in with the other girls might not prove to be easy, since Eva is being telepathically controlled by Kathy, who is looking to even the score with her bullies...I get the distinct feeling that, with this particular film, Fulci was attempting a more stylish approach than usual:Ænigma is rather restrained in the gore department, and the boarding school setting and general ambiance is very reminiscent of the work of giallo genius Dario Argento.
Unfortunately, Fulci is not quite in the same league as Argento when it comes to creating stunning visuals and a dreamlike atmosphere, and the result is a rather bland and unmemorable effort that leaves one longing for some yucky eyeball trauma or a bit of messy brain scrunching to spice things up.The story, a weak mix of elements stolen from several much better films, doesn't make much sense (no explanation is given for how Kathy can conjure up snails and, in one equally silly scene, animate a marble statue), and the majority of the cast is pretty lousy.
The only recognisable name in the film (recognisable to fans of low-budget trash, I mean) is B-movie star Jared Martin who is totally wasted in his role as a neurologist (although he does get to roll around naked with a lightly-oiled Naszinsky, which would be a fair enough reason for taking the gig!).Ænigma is one for Fulci fans who, like me, have seen all of his better known films already and are now just ticking off the other titles from his filmography for the sake of completion..
Aenigma appears to be Lucio Fulci's attempt at 'Suspiria', as the plotting, atmosphere, locations and characters are all similar, and while this isn't essentially a 'bad' film, it certainly has nothing on Dario Argento's masterpiece.
The influence from American cinema seems to have affected the great Italian maestro Lucio Fulci on this film, as he uses cheesy eighties songs a lot, and the way the plot plays out feels a lot like an American slasher, with the focus being kept on the kill scenes and bedtime activities of most of the school girls.
The central theme of a young, injured, girl possessing several members of her school and taking revenge on those that wronged her springs to mind immediately, as this isn't explained at all and that makes it hard to buy into the film.
These scenes range from featuring severed limbs to gratuitous stabbings, but strangely enough; these scenes feel rushed and Fulci doesn't deliver a great deal of gore, which is probably the main reason why this film doesn't often get a very good write-up.
Lucio Fulci has a bigger filmography than you would think, and many of his lesser known films - such as The Devil's Honey and Don't Torture a Duckling turn out to be his best.
I don't think Fulci really cared too much about the supernatural angle of the story, and so the film has ended up being disjointed and illogical.
I recently tracked down a lot of Dario Argento- and Lucio Fulci movies.
I thought "Aenigma" (I once saw it about 20 years ago)was considered a well- known and classic Lucio Fulci movie.
It could be worse (a year later Fulci directed the god awful "Sodoma's Ghost") but this is not really worth a look.
The movie is pretty bad....thus far the worst of Lucio's films (that I've seen).
Aenigma (1987) * 1/2 (out of 4) Italian horror from Fulci is his spin on the CARRIE-type tale.
The film takes place at a female boarding school where one of the unpopular girls has a prank played on her, which leaves her in a coma.
Soon after that a new girl enters the school and becomes possessed with the coma girl's spirit, which leaves to revenge.
If that wasn't strange enough we get perhaps the dumbest death sequence in Fulci career and that's the scene where a girl just lays in bed while snails kill her.
The other death scenes are pretty generic, although Fulci does wrap them up in a nice atmosphere and one sequence inside a museum works pretty well.
While in her coma, she some-how manages to possess a new girl in the school, who in turn commits murder against the "bad" students that hurt the girl.
In the tradition of Carrie, this psychic shocker from legendary Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci, the man behind such outrageous cult favorites as The Beyond and Zombie, is filled with the visual style and gruesome madness his fans have come to expect.
OK, so Lucio Fulci's "Aenigma" - sometimes stylized "Ænigma" - is basically a retread of "Carrie", but it is one enjoyable movie.
Another movie with a similar plot was Dario Argento's "Phenomena" (aka "Creepers"), starring a young Jennifer Connelly as a girl at a Swiss boarding school who develops the ability to communicate with insects amid a series of murders.Yeah, I wish that English had retained the Æ.
Good Lucio Fulci horror....
I really enjoyed Lucio Fulci's film Aenigma it is set inside a College,just outside Boston, Massachusettes which is a boarding school for girls.
A bit later on a new girl called Eva Gordon (Laura Naszinski) arrives at the school where she is shown around by the headmistress Miss Jones, and she is given Kathy's old room.
Eva ends up getting processed by the spirit of the Kathy who is in a coma whom begins using supernatural powers of to get revenge against all of the students who were involved in the prank that put her in a coma.
When Italian gore-man Lucio Fulci directed his infamous quartet of zombie movies (ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS, THE BEYOND, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD, and HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY), he got something right.
AENIGMA begins predictably, with a school prank going wrong (bringing to mind Cropsy's accidental burning in, er, THE BURNING), leaving a strange, bug-eyed girl in a coma.
From the hospital bed she directs violence (think PATRICK) to those all around her, possessing a 'beautiful' girl and then murdering off the perpetrators of the prank one by one in a string of absurd death scenes.
The plot also manages to drag in the setting of SUSPIRIA too, although the girl's school here lacks the atmospheric terror that filled Argento's movie.
While Argento filled his school with frightening claustrophobia and nightmarish suspense, Fulci fills his with bad hairdos and horrendous dialogue.Bookended by bad pop songs (although there is a small bit of nice organ music), full of incredibly cheesy clichéd dialogue of the "what a hunk" kind (all delivered straight-faced, and all the more funny for it) and a prime example of bad film-making - in one instance the screen goes black for more than five seconds in between different scenes, which gives you some idea of the general incompetence all round.
One ageing bloke is apparently irresistible to the girls, once again distancing this film from reality as far as possible.As usual with these kind of bad pictures, the variety of death scenes is the only reason worth watching this film for.
Well, that is if you have to watch it, as it's an experience I wouldn't recommend unless you're a really big fan of horror films and you know what to expect with this one.
A girl falls a short distance and apparently breaks her body, while a doctor has a dream about having sex with a young girl, and then being bitten and scratched to death by her in probably the most hard to stomach moment of the film (literally encapsulating the mix of sex and violence prevalent in the modern horror movie).In another dream sequence, a girl finds her dorm full of decapitated corpses, while in the most artistic moment of the entire thing, a lost girl in a museum is strangled by a statue which comes to life.
If you want a good Fulci film then go for a zombie one - after all, at least he was liberal with those guys.
She then leaves her body and possesses Eva (Lara Naszinsky), a new student with daddy issues who helps (?) get revenge on the people who scorned Kathy.Though Fulci has his patented visual flair, the film screams turkey and seems rife for a MST3K treatment.
The unfortunate victim of a college prank gone terribly wrong when those who humiliated her caused poor Kathy(Mijlijana Zirojevic)to walk out in front of a moving car, she lies brain-dead in Intensive care on life-support.
Hilarious dated foot-note..you'll notice lots of posters featuring popular heroes and movies at that time(Tom Cruise/Top Gun poster, Sly Stallone/Rocky III poster, etc)in the 80's, I'm guessing Fulci added to give his Italian flick a more "American feel." Kathy's mother, the maid of St. Mary's, seems to have a red glow in her eyes and she plays a heavy role in either stopping the carnage or letting it continue.
Having been hit by a car after fleeing the humiliating scene, in which the gym teacher pretended to seduce her, she possesses a new classmate named Eva (played by Lara Lamberti) and begins to pick off her tormentors in increasingly bizarre ways.
A prank at a girls' private school in Boston goes horribly wrong, and the socially awkward Kathy (Milijana Zirojevic) is struck by a car and ends up in a coma.
Shortly after, her revenge minded spirit comes to rest inside a newcomer to the school named Eva (Lara Lamberti).
Kathy / Eva fall in love with nice guy doctor Robert Anderson (Jared Martin) while administering a particularly amusing and nasty brand of vengeance."Aenigma" is not one of the late, great Lucio Fulcis' best (it's sad to see him looking ill in his obligatory cameo appearance as a police inspector).
Mostly, it's good for laughs, although it's nice to see that Fulci hadn't lost his flair for lots of gore in his murder sequences.
The pounding rock music calls to mind the work of Fulcis' peer Dario Argento, while the amount of atmosphere is certainly respectable.The cast is all good looking, but they're all just a little too bland.
Not the most graphic of Fulci's movies, this is more psychological (if you can believe such a thing from the master of splatter) though there is a very strange sequence with snails.