Fulci’s Inferno

Italian director Lucio Fulci garnered an international cult following for his horror and giallo films. He is perhaps most well-known for his zombie horror cycle of the late 1970s-early 1980s, films that were censored and censured by moral guardians around the world and were prosecuted in the UK as part of the 'Video Nasties' controversy. There is, however, much more to Fulci, his filmography, and his legacy on the horror genre. In his home country, Fulci worked across a number of genres (including comedy and satire, western, historical drama and family adventure) and regularly criticized the Church and State through his films. The director weaved a faith-based narrative across his career, from his earliest credits as a screenwriter and assistant director in the 1950s to his very final films as director in the 1990s. This book analyzes the tenets and iconography of Fulci's Roman Catholic faith across key films in his filmography, plotting an apostate's journey through his art in the vein of many celebrated Italian artists that went before him. The volume also considers how exploring his faith and apostasy through his films led Fulci to develop an entirely new storytelling mechanism which has influenced genre directors ever since.