CULT CLASSIC CUTIES: FULCI FOX DANIELA DORIA

Cult Classic Cuties are characters from some of our favorite cult classics and midnight movies who captured our hearts and/or actresses who got our attention, but sadly never returned to these type of flicks. They’re femme fatales and final girls whose sexy stars shined only briefly, not quite achieving scream queen status. And this installment’s cutie is…

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FULCI FEMME FATALE DANIELA DORIA

This installment of Cult Classic Cuties is going to be a little different as it won’t profile an actress in a particular role, but in a series of roles for the same director over a short period of time. Italian actress Daniela Doria made only a handful of films between 1976 and 1982, but interestingly enough, a number of those films were with Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci. In fact, she appears in four films in a row, between 1980 and 1982, for the gore master. While none of the roles were major ones, Daniela caught one’s eye with her beautiful features, not being afraid to bare her natural charms and the fact that she seemed to always meet a grim fate. Daniela’s four Fulci films are City Of The Living Dead (aka The Gates of Hell), The New York Ripper, House By The Cemetery and The Black Cat! Since a lot of her scenes are NSFW and she left acting over 30 years ago, it was not easy finding photos…

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Wandering around The House By The Cemetery is not a good idea.

Seconds before her classic gore soaked demise in City of the Living Dead.

“Oh, hello Mr. Fulci!…you have another unpleasant death scene for me? OK!”

Doria in one of her rare clothes on and sans gore moments for Lucio Fulci!

Daniela as prostitute Kitty in another grim predicament in The New York Ripper!

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Not much is known about the actress before or since her Fulci days. She wasn’t afraid to be photographed or filmed “au natural” and certainly was brave enough to perform in some unpleasant death scenes for Fulci, including a few in the vulnerable state of being nude and/or bound. She played her last film role in an Italian comedy in 1982 and then disappeared from acting, or at least in films, after that. She was a beautiful young woman who apparently caught Fulci’s eye and was, from appearances, a good sport about disrobing in spooky settings and being splattered with plenty of trademarked Fulci gore. Either that or she simply found the legendary Lucio Fulci…a director to die for!

The beautiful Daniela Doria!

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Be sure to check out our Cult Classic Cuties (click right here on the link) section to see more crush worthy ladies from cult films and midnight movies!

-MonsterZero NJ

source/ IMDB

MONSTERZERO NJ’S 25 ZOMBIE FLICKS TO WATCH DURING THE HALLOWEEN SEASON!

Can’t have Halloween without zombies, so, whether they are fast or slow moving, eat brains or …well, all of you…here are 25 zombie flicks that you might want to sink your teeth into…or will sink their teeth into you…during the Halloween season! (Also, remember some of these are part of a series and a few have decent remakes which can be part of a theme film-fest along with your favorite beverages!)

(Click on the titles below the movie poster gallery to get to our reviews of the titles covered here at the Movie Madhouse!)

 

Click on the highlighted titles here to go to the review page for the corresponding movie!

1. Night Of The Living Dead (The 1990 remake directed by Tom Savini isn’t bad either!)

2. Dawn Of The Dead (Zack Snyder’s 2004 remake is pretty good, too!)

3. Day Of The Dead

4. Zombie

5. The Gates Of Hell

6. The Beyond

7. The Return Of The Living Dead

8. Return Of The Living Dead 3

9. [REC] (Also parts 2, 3 and 4 are good in varying degrees!)

10. The Dead

11. White Zombie

12. Shock Waves

13. Dead Alive

14. 28 Days Later (Sequel, 28 Months Later is actually very good!)

15. Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (aka The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue)

16. Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things

17. Tombs Of The Blind Dead (also part of a creepy four film series)

18. The Horde

19. Wyrmwood

20. Dead Snow

21. The Outpost

22. Junk

23. Open Grave

24. Pontypool

25. Maggie

-MonsterZero NJ

TOMB OF NOSTALGIA: THE BIRTHDAY BEST OF LUCIO FULCI!

LUCIO FULCI

JUNE 17, 1927 – MARCH 13, 1996

The late, great Italian horror maestro was born on this day in 1927 and left a legacy of classic Italian horror/ gore films to remember him by. Check out my favorites right here…

ZOMBIE (1979)

George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead was called Zombi in Italy and was a hit, so when Italian Horror master Lucio Fulci created his own zombie gore classic, it was released in Italian theaters as Zombi 2 to cash in on Dawn’s popularity, but Zombie, as it’s known in the USA, is it’s own movie. The action and eating take place, after a bloody opening sequence of a zombie occupied boat entering a New York City harbor, on the remote Caribbean island of Matool and is the product of voodoo being used to raise the flesh eating dead from their graves. The boat entering NYC waters belonged to a doctor, and the story centers on a reporter (Ian McCulloch) and the missing doctor’s daughter (Tisa Farrow), traveling to the fictional island to find the doctor’s whereabouts. Once there, they and a couple whose boat they rented, soon discover a living nightmare and that a horrible fate may be in store for all of them.

The gore is shocking and the zombies are far grosser looking than even Romero’s and while it is smaller in scope, it is very creepy and atmospheric when not splattering blood and guts all over the screen. Much like all of Fulci’s horror films, Zombie has a surreal nightmarish quality to it to go along with all the gore. The film’s nightmarish visuals are courtesy of cinematographer Sergio Salvati and has a haunting score by frequent Fulci collaborator Fabio Frizzi. The film has many shocking moments, but is most famous for the ‘eyeball’ scene and the underwater shark v.s. zombie scene witnessed by a shapely topless diver (Auretta Gay). I personally prefer the work of Fulci over the more popular, but in my opinion overrated, Dario Argento. One of my all time favorite horrors. Recently remastered on a beautiful blu-ray from Blue Underground!

4 Fulci zombies!

WARNING: TRAILER IS VERY GRAPHIC!

CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (also known as THE GATES OF HELL) (1980)

A priest hangs himself, a seance goes tragically wrong and the dead rise…all in the first 5 minutes of another gory and disturbing horror from Italian maestro of terror, Luci Fulci. Fulci’s trademark spooky visuals, as photographed by frequent cinematographer Sergio Salvati, and trademark gore fills this story of a small town priest’s suicide that opens the gates of Hell. Now a reporter (Christopher George) and a psychic (Catriona MacColl) must travel to a remote New England town to close Hell’s gates before the evil ripping the town apart spreads to the rest of the world.

As usual this Fulci flick is loaded with atmosphere, gruesome gore, (such as a drill through the head and a woman vomiting up her own entrails) and zombies. Fabio Frizzi once again provides the haunting score. Not quite up to the standards of his Zombie or his next film, The Beyond, but a gory, creepy Italian horror none the less! Also, the only film I know of that contains a blizzard of maggots! Originally released in the US as The Gates Of Hell.

3 and 1/2 Fulci zombies

WARNING: TRAILER IS VERY GRAPHIC!

THE BEYOND (1981)

A young woman (Catriona MacColl) inherits an old Louisiana hotel not knowing that 54 years earlier, a group of frightened townspeople tortured and murdered a man staying in room 36, who was suspected of being a warlock. Before his death, the warlock warned that the hotel sat on one of the 7 gates of Hell and he had found the key. Needless to say, efforts to reopen the hotel meet with tragic and gruesome results and there is definitely something unnatural going on in room 36.

Italian horror master Lucio Fulci creates one his most nightmarish and surreal films in this story of a house haunted by a very powerful and ancient evil. As the young woman and a doctor friend (David Warbeck) try to unravel the mystery of the hotel’s sinister past, the evil force continues to provide gruesome fates to those that come into contact with it, or try to warn our heroine. Fulci’s film is a disturbing supernatural tale with some very atmospheric and spooky visuals combined with some very shocking and inventive gore. Once more the cinematography is by Sergio Salvati and music by Fabio Frizzi. From carnivorous swarms of spiders, to acid in faces, to reanimated corpses, this film is a chilling and very unsettling horror from the first frames till the nightmarish last. Surreal at times, but always haunting. A first rate Italian horror from one of it’s masters and one of Fulci’s best. The spider scene still freaks me out!

-MonsterZero NJ

4 Fulci zombies

WARNING: TRAILER IS VERY GRAPHIC

Source: MonsterZero NJ