Quando Alice ruppe lo specchio

Plot synopsis:
Lester Parson (Brett Halsey) is a cannibal psychopath who regularly abducts and mutilates young women, eating certain cuts and disposing the rest in his back yard to his horde of pigs. He converces schizophrenically with himself via tape recordings of his own voice. He is also being hounded by Randy (Pier Luigi Conti), a shady loan shark whom he owes money to after accruing bad gambling debts.Lester picks up a certain Maggie MacDonald (Sasha Darwin), an obnoxious, hysterical, mustached, sexually frustrated alcoholic, whom he invites over at his house for dinner. His attempt to poison her is thwarted because she is already so drunk when she arrives at his place that she spills her glass of wine onto the floor. On the next attempt, she giddily mixed up his glass of wine with hers. He finally loses patience on the third try when she swallows the poisoned glassful, only to vomit before it can take effect. As Maggie excuses herself to the bathroom to clean up, he attacks her with a wooden stick. Her scalp splits apart and she runs screaming from the bathroom with blood streaming down her face. He chases her down the corridor bashing her head repeatedly, causing skin to rip away from her face, and a single bloodshot eyeball to roll out of her right eye socket onto the floor.Playing dead for a few seconds, Maggie rises when Parson's back is turned and makes another mad dash for the front door, but is rounded up and punched unconscious. Furious and exhausted, the killer shoves her head into a over and switches it on, leaving her slumped with her flesh slowly melting off her face. Dead at last, Parson shoves Maggie's body into the trunk of his Mercedes. But he has to chop off the corpse's feet to get the body to fit right.When Parson ditches the body at a construction site, he is observed by a local tramp (Marco Di Stefano), who proceeds to attempt to blackmail Parson. Not to be deterred, he follows the derelict as he leaves. Catching up with him on a long stretch of country road, Parson puts his foot on the gas peddle and pursues the terrified man, eventually crunching the vehicle under him. The cars wheels roll backwards over the mangled body. The next day, when Parson sees on the TV that the tramp survived long enough to give the police a description of his attacker. Parson decides to change his image by shaving off his beard and wearing contact lenses in place of his eyeglasses.Parsons next victim is Alice Shogun (Ria De Simone), another crazed middle-aged woman who sings opera during sex. The weary killer strangles her to death with one of her stockings. Placing the body in the front seat of his car, Parson drives away, only to get pulled over by a motorcycle policeman and gets a speeding ticket. But the policeman does not notice that the woman with Parson is dead.Taking Alice's jewelry with him, he tries pawning it only to discover that is all fake. He tries to meet a horse fixer at a local racing stables for a tip about putting a bet on a horse, but the person never shows up. When more TV announcements give further descriptions of the mysterious killer, Parson is forced to chance his image again by dying the color of his black hair into brown, and wearing horn-rimmed, tinted eyeglasses.Sitting morosely at home, Parson responds to an unlikely invitation to "come on over" from Virginia (Zora Ulla Kesler), a similarly bored, lonely, wealthy, but far younger woman, than his previous victims, when she dials his phone number by accident. However, the otherwise desirable Virginia is revealed to have a large and attractive blemish on her upper lip. Even though she seems eager for intimacy, he is repulsed by her ugly scar. After Parson rings up another bad gambling debt to Randy, he decides to kill Virginia to steal whatever money and jewelry she has on her and flee the country.The following evening, Parson meets Virginia in her apartment suite for dinner. When he is about to kill her, she shoots him the chest after discovering the truth about him after seeing another TV broadcast of the latest description of the mysterious lady killer. Mortally wounded, Parson crawls away and ends up in the building garage where he converses with his other self, a shadow on the wall, and eventually dies as it converges with him.

Tags: violence, revenge, comedy, murder, romantic

Review:
"Touch of Death" is the story of Lester Pearson, a down on his luck gambler whom starts seducing wealthy women with various deformities, then killing them off for a prie fixe lunch of human flesh and cash for his horse racing betting debts.Fulci has an oft tenuous grasp on his plots, but this has to be the most ridiculously over the top entry in the canon.
Though the gore is the usual splatter spectacle (the best of which effects wise is probably the scene where the blackmailing vagrant is run over with Lester's car), it's housed in too goofy of a context to be scary.After several of the least politically correct murder scenes in film (a bearded lady meets death in a microwave, an inexplicably opera singing widow who solos in her sleep is interrupted by being strangled)and some darkly comic body disposal (complete with silly cartoonish theme music), Lester realizes he has a larger problem than lady killing.
The final twist makes no logical sense and shoestring budget shows, but "Touch Of Death" is a mindless guilty pleasure of Fulci poking fun at himself that will entertain his devoted fans..
A killer who sleeps with and then kills women (presumably for their money) is being shadowed by someone who is either copying his murders or placing clues as to his identity at the scenes of his crimes.
You don't get a Fulci film to watch plot but gore, so here goes.....The first scene consists of our hero chopping up a dead body with a chainsaw, but the body is quite obviously a mannequin loaded with red paint.
Other notable gore scenes include a head being microwaved (Fulci was obviously not a physics major nor one who had ever used a microwave before) which again is quite obviously a mannequin and a homeless witness to a murder being run over and over again by a car.
In truth, they are no worse than many early 90's American horror films, but the dubbing is so bad that it's hard to take Fulci's later work seriously at all, really.
Hailing from 1988, Touch Of Death is probably the most frustrating Fulci film I've seen to date, prompting me to join the chorus of horror fans who generalise that his films get worse as you get later into his career.
Considering the plot synopsis, I was expecting some bloody bad-natured fun with this one, but for all its bizarre flourishes, it feels tedious even at a running time of just 80 minutes, and suffers from nauseatingly shabby production values and film-making craft (or lack thereof).El Story: A gambling addict widower wines and dines rich (and strange) women he finds via lonely hearts columns before offing them in gruesome fashion - sometimes eating them or feeding them to animals - and stealing their money to keep his debtors at bay.
Sure, it's unlikely that just one man would be the host for so much screwed-up pathology all at once (addict, psycho/sociopath, cannibal), but this is Fulci!Touch is actually the cheapest and sparsest looking Fulci film I've seen.
With the amount of gore involved, it seems unlikely), and it does reek of crappy old telemovie production values.This is also Fulci's first foray into outright black humour, but he's just too graceless a director to make it work.
The effect isn't really chilling or funny or ironic anything that you'd like it to be - it's mostly just hamfisted and crappy.There are of course some redeeming moments of gore (that you'll be waiting for while trying to stay awake), including the eventual murder by oven(!) of a woman who just won't quit life, even after her face has been totally bashed apart with a bloody great club, and a homeless guy who gets a car run back and forth over him about five times.
Lucio Fulci is one of the leading names in gore-soaked horror cinema, and Touch of Death certainly does that reputation proud!
Fulci's films started to get worse as his career progressed (with the exception of the hilarious Cat in the Brain in 1990), and as this film was released in 1988; you can count on it not being as good as his previous output.
In fact, with films like Don't Torture a Duckling and The Beyond in mind; Touch of Death is one of Fulci's weaker efforts, but even so - there's plenty here to delight the man's fans.
Fulci's use of music helps to instill the absurdity of the film, which sees lonely widower/gigolo Lester Parson taking women home and putting them to use.
Fulci also installs a subplot about the investigation into the murders, and the murderer's descent into madness.This film is something a prelude to Cat in the Brain, and it's obvious that Fulci had Touch of Death in mind when he made his self-starring vehicle, as many of the gore scenes from that film are taken from this one.
The first scene of gore sees our 'hero' going to work with a chainsaw (surely horror cinema's finest weapon), and then putting the remains of his victim into a meat grinder.
Lucio Fulci was famous for his Italian splatter movies, mostly his undead films like Zombie or The Beyond.
At any rate this film stinks, its not funny, and Fulci should have stayed with giallo and supernatural zombie movies.
A moody, middle-aged gigolo (Brett Halsey) kills off women after he gets bored with dating them and uses their body parts for trophies and for consumption.Though many fans are divided, generally "Touch of Death" is regarded as a better latter era Fulci film.
The overdone black humor touches, "unconvincing" gore effects and baffling ending does turn off some fans.
In the end, I can't say I'm surprised that this film shows no sign of the sophistication of Mario Bava's HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON (1970) which it resembles in several ways and that it is content to merely pile up the disgustingly gory (but none-too-convincing) effects of dismembered limbs and squashed or melting faces with which, alas, Fulci had by then become completely associated..
Another ropey effort from Italian 'godfather of gore', Lucio Fulci..
Lucio Fulci, a director not exactly renowned for his subtlety, ill-advisedly tries his hand at black humour in Touch of Death, a made for TV movie about Lester Parsons (Brett Halsey), a psycho who seduces and murders rich widows in order to pay his gambling debts.Starting off with a wonderfully gory scene in which the lethal lothario disposes of his latest victim via chainsaw, mincing machine and hungry hogs, Touch of Death starts promisingly enough, but Fulci soon loses control of proceedings, introducing a weird sub-plot involving a mysterious copycat killer and some heavy handed 'comedic' scenes.
There are several more graphic murders which, in true Fulci fashion, are extremely violent and gruesome, but even the high level of bloodletting doesn't stop this from being one of Fulci's poorer efforts.As I have found with many of his other movies, a comprehensible storyline is not exactly high on the agenda when Lucio is behind the camera.
What the hell is that ending all about?Fulci is considered by many to be one of the 'greats' of horror cinema; I don't understand his popularity, finding the majority of the films of his that I have seen so far to be generally lacking both decent narratives and technical proficiency.
You can easily afford yourself to skip most of the films Fulci directed or produced during the late 80's and simply watch "Cat in the Brain" instead, because that one title gathers and repeats the best and absolute goriest footage of no less than SEVEN other Fulci-flicks, including the sickest murders sequences featuring in "When Alice Broke the Mirror".
Lester Parson butchers the ladies (as well as unwelcome witnesses) in gruesome ways, makes steaks out of their juiciest body parts and feeds the remainders to his cat.
The difference between "When Alice Broke the Mirror" and some of Fulci's greatest horror films ("The Beyond", "City of the Living Dead", ") lies in the fact that he totally doesn't bother to create a horrific atmosphere.
The characters, Lester included, are colorless and boring and the murders are ordinarily depicted; like it's the most common thing in the world to put a woman's head in a microwave or repeatedly run back and forth over a human body with a car.
As long as Lester swings around his chainsaw and cuts off women's feet, "When Alice Broke the Mirror" is an undemanding piece of horror entertainment, but other than that, there's isn't a whole lot to recommend..
This film was less surreal than most and mainly focused on dark comedy and a simple crime tale, not much in the way of sets or cinematography, but it did what it set out to do, and with less stumbling than I've come to expect from the 'godfather of gore'.
If Touch of Death was simply the poster filmed for 70 minutes, it'd be such a better movie than what I just watched.Lester (Brett Halsey, Demonia) is a cannibal serial killer who meets, dates and eats various women, sometimes giving parts of them to his pigs.
He also talks to a tape recording of his own voice and has plenty of gambling debts that Randy (Al Cliver, Zombi 2, The Beyond) is ready to collect.There's a long scene that involved Maggie, a woman he marries.
Then, in a moment of absurdity, her body can't fit into his trunk, so he has to saw her legs off.I don't want to see Fulci be a second-rate Herschell Gordon Lewis.Lester is caught by a homeless man (who has the mark of Eibon on his forehead), who he runs over and leaves for dead.
And now, the cops know what he looks like — again — so he dyes his hair and puts on glasses.Depressed at home — and with even more gambling debts — Lester gets a phone call from Virgina (Zora Ulla Kesler, Anthropophagus, The New York Ripper), who is like all of his victims, except much younger.
Then, he dies.Also known as When Alice Broke the Looking Glass, this film is everything Fulci detractors accuse him of being — misogynist, leering, obsessed with gore and slapdash.
Touch of Death's 81 minutes of screen time feels like 81 hours.Postscript: I did not care for the scene where the killer kicks a cat, at all.
Dutch are Deaf is Fulci's attempt at combining black comedy, slapstick and extreme gore into a bundle of low budget headscratching late eighties nonsense that raises loads of questions but doesn't bother answering any, just like Fulci's Sweet House of Horrors and basically any other film he made after 1987.This time, Brett Halsey of naked harpoon wielding ghost nun film Demonia and Demons 6 plays Lester Parson, whom we first see cooking himself a nice steak and watching a video of a less-aesthetically pleasing woman prancing around.
All this is done rather humorously, if you're Lucio Fulci.Lester's constantly in debt to gangster type/book keeper Al Cliver (from Demonia, Zombie Flesh Eaters, New Gladiators, The Beyond and House of Clocks – basically, he's Fulci's go to guy for supporting actors), and in order to get cash, he constantly tracks down, seduces and murders rich widows, all of whom are disfigured for reasons that are beyond my six or seven functioning brain cells.
To make things worse for Lester, he's now apparently got a copycat killer on his tail, who keeps killing people and leaving evidence at the scene, including his genetic code.
Then, tough sh*t.I forgot to mention that Lester often talks to himself via a tape recorder.At least the film does have some sort of ending though, unlike other Fulci films of this era.
Plus, the ending makes no sense and yet again I get the feeling that Fulci might be trying to subtly say something about something or other, but it's lost under the low budget, his vision, and my brain damage.
This films shows all the characteristics that have made Fulci a clearly-recognizable filmmaker: no logic, no plot, very bad actors on one hand ; but on the other, lots of fun and an incredible sense for splatter which has turned him into a world-wide acclaimed king of the genre.
This film in particular offers gruesome and spectacular representations of deaths and murders , very well expressed by incredibly-low-budget but proper special effects : Fulci here is disgusting probably as never before, but if you like the kind it's an experience to be made....
Of Fulci's later movies, Touch of Death is definitely one of his best.
Most of the clips from Fulci's Cat in the Brain film were taken from Touch of Death.This movie is only for Fulci fans.
Touch of Death (1988) ** (out of 4) Lester Parson (Brett Halsey) is about as evil as you can get.
He spends his time looking for rich old women to fall into bed with and then takes pleasure when it comes time to brutally murder them.This later day Lucio Fulci picture is certainly a mixed bag.
The other side, and the positive one, this does contain some outrageous gore scenes and graphic violence that you can only find in a Fulci film.
In fact, the majority of these gore scenes were later used in the director's A CAT IN THE BRAIN.There are some rather surprisingly good elements that can be found here including the black humor that the director brings to the picture.
Another funny bit deals with a woman whose legs keep popping out of the trunk that he's trying to stuff her in.The main reason to watch this movie is for the gore.
The special effects aren't nearly as good as what we saw in earlier Fulci movies but there's no doubt that the majority of the budget went to them.
There's also a chainsaw scene, which is just pure Fulci in the campiest way.TOUCH OF DEATH has some major problems as well.
Touch of Death runs about 1:20 which is a few minutes short of a "complete" film experience in my opinion but Touch of Death plays more like a strange dark horror-comedy of its own variety.Extremely creative gore and special effects implemented throughout much of the film.
Mediocre Fulci's gore/black comedy..
So I decided to rewatch Lucio Fulci's "Touch of Death" aka "When Alice Broke the Mirror".Unfortunately this gore/black comedy is one of his weakest films."The New York Ripper" was the last solid flick of the Godftaher of Gore.Anyway,Brett Halsey plays a maniac who kills rich women for their money,butchers their bodies with a chainsaw and fed their remains to his pigs.Sounds great,but the action drags and the characters are idiotic.There is also plenty of silly comedy that seems out of place.Fans of Italian cult cinema should recognize Zora Kerova and Al Cliver in small roles.There are only four brutal gore scenes in "Touch of Death" including chainsaw dismemberment,running over with a car and finally there is a pretty nasty sequence,which has a woman bludgeoned with a wooden pole and then shoved into an oven.6 out of 10 and that's being kind..
I think it's supposed to be a comedy, but I don't remember laughing much, except at a few blatant inconsistencies and downright glaring errors.An unattractive middle-aged man called Lester meets up with rich unattractive middle-aged women via lonely hearts ads, and then murders them for the money he needs to feed his gambling addiction.
The sequences in which Lester murders the rich widows are all quite brutal but also seemingly dressed up as comedies.
Fulci seems unable to think up any visual representation of this phenomena on screen, so from this point on he just films the actor as normal, shadow and all!!
When seeing a Fulci movie, you really don't expect much of an intentional comedy, but this time it's exactly what you get.
With a healthy dose of gore and disturbing images.Lester Parson is a cannibalistic psychopath and a degenerate gambler who kills ugly, rich women and steals their cash and personal property to fund his lifestyle.
Pretty soon Lester finds out that there's also the other killer around, who imitates his killings and leaves out evidence that all points to Lester.This film is like a low-budget version of American Psycho.
(And even with it's problems way better than the said drivel of Hollywoodism that so poorly tries to turn Bret Easton Ellis' text into film.) Lester's "adventures" are projected in a grotesque and hilarious light, and Fulci has succeeded in creating a very twisted humorous mood, which abruptly changes into horrific carnage.
:) I must say that Fulci has always had some extraordinary nihilistic vigor in the depiction of violence.Too bad that the film doesn't follow this line to the end, and the last 30 minutes is plunged into senseless drivel with some obscure doppelganger plot.
Caution: Spoilers!With "When Alice broke the mirror", Fulci tried to deliver a black comedy for Italian TV.
The result is an extremely mean-spirited and - in the first half - gory movie, even for a Fulci product.The story itself about a serial killer copied and betrayed by his own shadow is not without potential, but what Fulci makes out of it is a rather over-cynical and disgusting film - and it starts right away: The movie opens with Brett Halsey as Lester Parsons eating a steak which he has cut out of his latest victim while watching a video recording of her.
Sick, isn't it?Lester Parsons is probably the most unappealing character Fulci has ever created.
The effects vary from bad to acceptable.Fulci devised the movie as a black comedy, probably a) to make up for the cheap special effects and b) to disarm it a little bit (recall that it was intended for TV).The result remains problematic because Parsons' victims are mostly women with physical defects and Parsons explicitly mocks about them.