CFF review: FULCI FOR FAKE examines the complicated life of horror director Lucio Fulci

25 years after his death, Italian director Lucio Fulci remains an enigma. Best known for his ultra-violent and at times nearly psychedelic horror films including 1979’s Zombie and 1981’s The Beyond, Fulci’s work has become highly-influential over the decades, yet little is known about the man himself. Italian filmmaker Simone Scafidi attempts to get to the core of the cult director with Fulci for Fake, a documentary/biopic hybrid that paints a complicated portrait of Fulci’s life and legacy.

The conceit of Fulci for Fake (a takeoff on Orson Welles’ F for Fake, the notorious “documentary” about fakery in the art world that straddles the line between fact and fiction) revolves around an Italian actor (Nicola Nocella) who is “hired” to play Fulci in an upcoming biopic that may or may not really exist. To fully immersive himself in his role, he sets out to interview Fulci’s family, contemporaries, and film scholars, the interviews of which make up the bulk of Scafidi’s film.

The addition of a meta-narrative doesn’t necessarily add much — you could easily create an interesting documentary about Fulci without scenes of Nocella lying around an apartment drinking from a bottle of Jack Daniels in an effort to “channel” Fulci’s various excesses. Yet there is something to be said for breaking up the monotony of talking-head interviews and short film clips — some of these scenes may be a bit silly, but the overall film creates a disorienting mixture of fact and fiction that speaks to what the film is really getting at — there is more to Lucio Fulci than we think we know.

Born in 1927, Fulci had a long filmmaking career before he became widely known for his Giallo films (Italian thrillers) in the ’70s. A highly-prolific writer and director throughout the ’60s, Fulci was essentially a gun for hire, making Italian comedies and westerns that no one seems to regard as essential viewing today (somewhat pointedly, a critic in the film puts forward that you can eliminate the first twenty years of Fulci’s career and not miss anything). Fulci finally became a household name in Italy beginning with his run of Giallo films in the ’70s, which increasingly became more violent (and some might argue misogynistic in their focus on violence towards women), before his incredible three-year run of dreamlike gory horror films including Zombie, House by the Cemetery, City of the Living Dead, and The Beyond, all certifiable genre classics.

Fulci for Fake examines the tragedies that affected Fulci’s personal life, and while the film doesn’t apologize for his temper or his harsh treatment of women, it posits that these tragedies influenced his psyche and films in a myriad of ways. Fulci’s wife Marina committed suicide in 1969, and his daughter Camilla was paralyzed in a horse-riding accident; the subsequent extreme violence towards women and children in Fulci’s films after these incidents could fill a psychoanalyst’s plate for days, but it’s clear that the horror in his films came from a true and dark place.

Between the biopic-style reenactments and the interview clips (the footage with Fulci’s daughter Camilla is quite moving), Fulci for Fake leaves audiences with a nuanced look at Fulci’s complicated life and cinematic legacy. He may never have reached the acclaim and success of contemporaries like Dario Argento, but the unnerving violence and nightmarish visual style of Fulci’s later films have influenced countless filmmakers over the decades. Fulci for Fake might not be enough to convince newcomers, but Fulci devotes will eat up this strange and emotional take on his life and work.

Fulci for Fake screened as part of the virtual 2020 Chattanooga Film Festival. Follow the film’s official Facebook page for future screening dates. Fulci’s Zombie has just been released in a new 4K Blu-ray via Blue Underground.