(AENIGMA is part of Severin's Gala Mid Year Sale)
They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but it also has no fury like a woman who suffers the humiliation of a cruel college prank and then, while fleeing from her jeering tormenters, gets hit by a truck and ends up in a coma from which she uses her psychic powers to possess the body of a newly-enrolled student and exact bloody revenge upon everyone who put her there.
Which, incidentally, is the plot of Italian horror maestro Lucio Fulci's murderous melodrama AENIGMA (1987, Severin Films). Inspired by such films as CARRIE, PATRICK, and Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA, this lively entry gets all of that plot set-up out of the way in the first ten minutes and then gets right down to the good stuff.
Milijana Zirojevic as the put-upon "Kathy" spends the rest of the film in a hospital bed hooked up to a jumble of wires and looking the worse for wear, while her pretty surrogate, Eva (Lara Naszinski), moves into the girls' dorm (a nice SUSPIRIA-like interior location) and wastes no time linking up with her erstwhile tormentors for one juicy episode of bloody payback after another.
These include some pretty imaginative touches, such as a museum statue coming to life and giving one of the girls a cold reception. There's also what may be the only known instance of what can only be described as "death by snails" in horror film history.
The "headless Tom" sequence is another highlight, in which one of the girls pulls back her bed covers to find her boyfriend sans noggin, then runs screaming from room to room just to encounter the same sight over and over again.
Needless to say, the comatose Kathy--no longer flatlining now that her brain waves have something fun to do--has all the power of the supernatural at her disposal in exacting these imaginative revenge scenarios.
This gives director Fulci a free hand to indulge in whatever way-out visuals (including some pleasantly outlandish gore) that strike his artistic fancy.
The story starts to get even more interesting when neurologist Dr. Robert Anderson (Jared Martin, a prolific actor whose face you'll probably recognize) is called in to deal with poor Eva's sudden fits of violent hysteria brought on by Kathy's mental control.
A sudden romance forms between the two, one whose inevitable complications (including a jealousy-fueled love triangle) form the basis for the film's lively finale.
Performances are good--well, good enough, anyway--and Fulci (who does a cameo as a police inspector) gets the job done with his usual workmanlike skill, infectious enthusiasm for the genre, and occasional displays of style.
The 2-disc Blu-ray from Severin Films (with slipcover) contains a CD of the robust soundtrack music by Carlo Maria Cordio. The film itself was scanned in 4K from the original negative for the first time in America. Dialogue is in both Italian and English 2.0 mono, with English subtitles.
Bonus features include an audio commentary with Troy Howarth, author of "Splintered Visions--Lucio Fulci and His Films", and Mondo Digital's Nathaniel Thompson; an interview with screenwriter Giorgio Mariuzzo; the featurette "Italian Aenigma--Appraising Late Day Fulci"; trailers; and the film's Italian main titles.
While it could be described as derivative, I found AENIGMA's deftly-handled blend of familiar elements from earlier films to be quite enjoyable for that very reason. It's your standard "bloody revenge in a girls' school" tale, Italian-horror style, and with Lucio Fulci at the helm it just can't help being a lot of fun to watch.
2-Disc Blu-ray Featuring CD Soundtrack and Limited Edition Slipcover
Limited to 1500 copies
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