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. A few moments later, he descends to his cellar and dismembers the corpse with a chainsaw. Not enough yet, he passes the remainders through a meat grinder and feeds them to the pigs. Sick, isn't it?
Lester Parsons is probably the most unappealing character Fulci has ever created. He is addicted to gambling and horse betting and, in order to finance his costly hobby, he slaughters women.
In the first half, Fulci inserts a lot of extreme gore. 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. Such a premise is simply repulsive and makes the whole movie extremely ugly. Fulci doesn't possess the necessary black humor to treat such material with taste.
Most surprisingly, this gory movie was shot for TV - and shown, though only "late at night" as Fulci once declared. These Italians!
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. A few moments later, he descends to his cellar and dismembers the corpse with a chainsaw. Not enough yet, he passes the remainders through a meat grinder and feeds them to the pigs. Sick, isn't it?
Lester Parsons is probably the most unappealing character Fulci has ever created. He is addicted to gambling and horse betting and, in order to finance his costly hobby, he slaughters women.
In the first half, Fulci inserts a lot of extreme gore. 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. Such a premise is simply repulsive and makes the whole movie extremely ugly. Fulci doesn't possess the necessary black humor to treat such material with taste.
Most surprisingly, this gory movie was shot for TV - and shown, though only "late at night" as Fulci once declared. These Italians!