Just perfect...

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

First off, "Manhattan Baby" is not a very good title for this movie. There is no baby, though the film does take place in said city. Which is not very surprising, Fulci loved New York often filming scenes and such there even when the city itself was not prevalent in the plot. He also did not get permission to film there for the most part, hence the strange zombie scene on the bridge where the zombies are in a area not really known for having all that many people and traffic below was normal. Here the film starts in Egypt as a archaeologist proceed into a tomb that is cursed with one brave soul. Is this brave soul to become a lifelong friend of our hero? No, but he got the point of the film. While dad is exploring his daughter is handing money over to a woman who apparently went to "The Beyond", another of Fulci's films, perhaps his best. This woman had the creepy eyes and they played recycled music from that film throughout this one which either indicated the two films were somehow related, or they skimped on the music budget. They return to their home in New York where the dad is blind then better in a flash and the daughter and son are both acting strange. Part of the problem with this film, they indicate only the girl is being taken over, yet the boy too seems kind of strange. So we have the dad who refuses to believe anything strange is happening when one of the mom's coworkers simply vanishes and sand is left behind and we have a pointless scene of a security guard being killed in boring fashion. Where is the gore? Not much in it with the exception of the bird attack at the end, which at least the best kill was saved for last. Having very little plot worked for "The Beyond" as it had better pacing, kills were never all that far apart. Here the film drags, one to many shots of eyes, I realize it is his trademark, but here it just seems silly at times. This one just did not do it, it needed an explanation, all I know is that the medallion the girl had was somehow doing rather pointless things. Why? Who knows. The babysitter disappears and the boy seems partly responsible and seems to be just as possessed as the girl, but this is not explained either. Still, it had a nice flair and set up some interesting things, it just fails to deliver a really good payoff other than the bird attack. Then it ends in a generic fashion. I enjoyed some of the other supernatural horror films of Fulci's, but this one kind of ends up being pointless as while leaving things unexplained in "The Beyond" worked, it hinders this film.

So, what's the worst Fulci film you've sat through? Is it Sweet House of Horrors? Well, that had some gore in it at least. Or it Aenigma? That one had some women in the scud, and a picture stabbing itself. Or is it Conquest? Well, I reckon that one is a classic myself, because it's got drug snorting werewolf men in it.Nope, for me it's Manhattan Baby. I've sat through 14 of his films now, and even his later period films like the deranged Cat in the Brain are more entertaining than this. It's taken me three viewings to get a handle on what story there is, and it does have some positive aspects, but Fulci completely fumbles the ball on this film.It starts off really well, in Egypt, where Christopher Connelly is doing some sort of dig into an ancient tomb. His wife and daughter, meanwhile, almost immediately fall into Fulci's nightmare world, when a blind (like the Beyond) woman hands the kid an amulet. Connelly, on the other hand, breaks into the tomb only to get his guide killed and himself blinded by purple laser beams (eh?).This is all atmospherically done, but the moment the family return to New York, the film slips its moorings. Strange things begin to happen, like Tommy, Connelly's son, walking into a cupboard filled with light. But it's okay, because a few scenes later he's back, and nobody really cares anyway.That's the main problem with this film. Fulci goes for the same disjointed series of scares that worked so well in The Beyond, but here manages to completely arse up just about every scene but making it either too inexplicable, too tame, or just too stupid. Sometimes the kids are terrified by what's happening, and yet other times they think it's some sort of game. Plus, there's almost no linking between the scenes whatsoever, no attempt to let the audience in on what's happening, until that last twenty minutes, and by that time I swear you'll be beyond caring. The final insult is that the ending is as lame as a one-legged donkey.There are some positive aspects to this film that raise the rating slightly. The cinematography is uniformly excellent, the Egyptian scene is a great way to start the film, and there's a couple of scenes that do genuinely work, like the Psychic rolling about on the floor, screaming in Connelly's daughter's voice.I'd love to know if this was the film that Fulci intended, because I don't reckon it is. There's too many hints that something went badly wrong in production, like the disjointed story or the recycled soundtrack (from the Beyond).Only to be viewed as a person familiar with Fulci's work. I'd hate to see some unsuspecting horror fan's reaction to this mess.

Lucio Fulci made some real stinkers in his career and Manhattan Baby comes close to being the worst. The problem is the incoherent plot that I'm not even going to attempt to explain. The plot centers around an Egyptian amulet with evil powers. The evil powers manifest themselves in a series of totally unrelated events. In fact, almost every event in Manhattan Baby is completely unrelated to what came before or what is yet to come. Fulci and screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti had some wonderful ideas, but there is nothing holding these ideas together. As a series of standalone set-pieces, Manhattan Baby isn't that bad. But trying to make sense out of a plot that's all over the place can give you quite a headache.It's too bad. The movie gets off to a good start with some nice looking and mysterious Egyptian scenes. But don't let that fool you. Once the movie gets back to New York, things fall apart.As I wrote previously, there are some good set-pieces in Manhattan Baby. Among the highlights – the tomb exploration, the opening of the children's door by a friend of the mother, and the final bird attack. As I've said before though, a few good set-pieces cannot save a movie.

Susie Hacker, the daughter of an archaeologist, gets possessed by an malicious evil spirit after her dad accidentally unleashes it from it's Egyptian tomb, that also leaves him temporarily blind. Being a big fan of Lucio Fulci, I didn't mind, let's just say the looseness of the plot, quite the opposite I expected the plot not to make much sense and be full of holes. What I didn't expect was the film's disconcerting lack of the gooey red stuff. When one watches a Fulci film, one expects certain things to happen and the gore to flow. But aside from a few VERY few instances, they never happen in this movie. We're left with an overly long badly dubbed film, which while still interesting to watch for huge fans of the director, is still pretty boring at times. It seems to me that Fulci's films can be separated by this film. Look at the films before this one "Don't Torture a Duckling", "The House by the Cemetery", "The Beyond". "Lizard in a Woman's Skin", "New York Ripper", and other classics. Now look at this film and the ones that came after such as "Conquest", "The New Gladiators", "Cat In the Brain", and others. Fulci entered his third period of films with this one and it wasn't for the better.My Grade: D- DVD Extras: An 8 minute interview with Writer Dardano Saccheti; Talent bios; and Theatrical trailer