AENIGMA (1987)
Label: Severin Films
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 89 Minutes
Audio: Italian & English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Lucio Fulci
Cast: Jared Martin, Lara Lamberti, Ulli Reinthaler, Sophie d'Aulan, Jennifer Naud, Riccardo Acerbi
Lucio Fulci's Aenigma (1987) opens with a shy college girl named Kathy (Mijlijana Zirojevic) preparing for a date, laying on a thick layer of gold eye shadow and sporting a red dress, all set to the cheeseball AM radio tune "Head Over Heels". Her date Fred (Riccardo Acerbi, Frankenstein 2000) drives her to a secluded wooded area and they begin to make-out in his car when suddenly several sets of headlights snap-on, illuminating the car. She is horrified to discover that it has all been an elaborate and mean-spirited prank by her bullying classmates to humiliate her. She flees the car she and perused by the taunts of the classmates following behind her in their vehicles, chasing her right into traffic where she gets walloped by a passing vehicle, which sends her to the hospital with a seemingly irreversible coma, kept alive by life support machines.
A short time later a new girl arrives at the school, the very attractive Eva Gordon (Lara Lamberti, A Blade In The Dark), who is given Kathy's old room and is welcomed by the same social click that taunted and injured her. Eva makes fast friends with her new roommate, announcing that her idea of a good semester is making out with as many gorgeous boys as she can! She makes good on that goal my agreeing to meet Fred at his gym after it closes, but when she arrives the door is locked and the stud is nowhere to be found. The next day Fred's body is found and the the last person to see him alive was a housekeeper named Mary (Dusica Zegarac), who also happens to be the mother of comatose Kathy, but the police detective investigating the crime, played by Lucio Fulci, declares that he died of a heart attack. We know better though, the vain stud-muffin was admiring himself in the mirror when his refection leapt out of the mirror and strangled him!
It turns out that while Kathryn is laying comatose at the hospital she's pulling a bit of a Patrick, somehow able to force-project herself into the body of new girl Eva, using the new co-ed to carry-out her revenge against the vicious pranksters, which means that all those pranksters are absolutely fucked. A series of strange deaths occur around Eva, with one girl smothered to death in bed by a legion of slimy escargot, while another girl is attached by a marble statue at the museum, and yet another falls to her death after having been beset my horrific visions. Meanwhile, Eva has begun to date Eva's attending physician Dr. Robert Anderson (Jared Martin, from the 90's War of the Worlds TV series), who himself begins to have horrific visions of death after sleeping with the foxy young woman!
Aenigma is not a top-tier Fulci film but it is not without it's Fulci charms, it's got some okay atmosphere and some creative murder set-pieces, but the acting is only passable and it is riddled with gaps in logic and basic storytelling, but that's the magic of journeyman director like Lucio Fulci, he could take a film that is threadbare and desperately
underfunded and strong-arm it to bend to his mighty Italian will. It certainly comes off as a mash-up of borrowed ideas that have been culled from better films, with distinctive notes of Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976), the Ozploitation coma-classic Patrick (1978), and Dario Argento's supernatural girl school thriller Phenomena (1985), but let me tell you, star Lara Lamberti is so damn foxy and the death by snail is so dang icky that I will just about forgive any shortcomings, that's plenty entertaining enough for me, but even so the sight of Lamberti awkwardly puffing away on a cigarette will have you in stitches, I don't think that she had ever smoked a cigarette before in her life, funny stuff.
Audio/Video: Aenigma (1987) arrives on Blu-ray from Severin Films framed in 1.66:1 widescreen in 1080p HD, sourced from a 4K scan of the original camera negative. Grain is well-managed for the most part, looking a bit heavy in the opening scene, but then evening out nicely. Color saturation looks great and the colors are strong, with healthy looking black levels and solid shadow detail. The source is in very good shape, there's a bit of white speckling along with an occasional scratch here and there, but overall a fine looking HD presentation.
Audio on the disc come by way of both Italian and English DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono with optional English subtitles. I thought both tracks were on equal footing with good fidelity throughout, though I preferred the English track. The dubbing is pretty decent and the score from Carlo Maria Cordio (Shocking Dark) sounds good.
Extras kick-off with a thoroughly enjoyable audio commentary from author Troy Howarth and Mondo Digital’s Nathaniel Thompson. It's a great tag-team track that is informative and quite funny, they are very candid in their assessment of the film and putting into context with Fulci's other films of this era in correlation to Fulci's declining health and how that played into the themes he was getting into in this later period.
The 14-min 'Writing Nightmares' with Screenwriter Giorgio Mariuzzo (House By The Cemetery, The Beyond) talks about how he got his start in screenwriting, how he ended up collaborating with Fulci and offering some fun anecdotes about the director's on-set demeanor and his way with women.
My favorite extras on this release is the 38-min 'An Italian Aenigma: Appraising Late Day Fulci' featuring academic/authors/talking heads Mikel J. Koven, Kim Newman, Calum Waddell, John Martin and Allan Bryce in addition to actors Brett Halsey, Ottaviano Dell'Acqua and screenwriter Antonio Tentori, all of whom offer up their views on the declining budgets and resources afforded to Fulci, and how that contributed to a sometimes more than slight decline in quality, it's a nicely candid appreciation of his latter day output. The disc is buttoned up with both the Italian and English trailers for the film and a seven-minute alternate Italian title sequence,
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary with Troy Howarth, Author of “Splintered Visions – Lucio Fulci & His Films” and Mondo-Digital.com’s Nathaniel Thompson
- Writing Nightmares: Interview with Screenwriter Giorgio Mariuzzo (14 min)
- Italian Aenigma: Appraising Late Day Fulci (38 min)
- English Trailer (3 min)
- Italian Trailer (3 min)
- Italian Credits (7 min)
Aenigma (1987) won't be topping my list of top five Fulci films ever but I would safely put it just slightly below Manhattan Baby (1986) and Murder Rock (1984), but above late-era stuff like Touch of Death (1988) and Demonia (1990), making it one of the last really solid Fulci flicks. The Blu-ray from Severin Films looks and sounds terrific and has some great bonus content, making this a desirable release for any self respecting Fulci fanatic out there.
More screenshots from the Blu-ray:
