PRIME EVIL: AENIGMA (1988) *** ½

Lucio Fulci is one of my favorite directors of all time.  I mean I have a Lucio Fulci T-shirt.  I can’t say the same for Alfred Hitchcock.

Because of that, I’ll watch anything Fulci directed, no matter how bad it is, and trust me, he made some pretty bad ones in his time.  For every Zombie, there’s a Manhattan Baby.  Luckily for me, Aenigma contains some of the most bonkers imagery Fulci ever put on film.  He made it just after The Devil’s Honey, and if you thought your jaw dropped on that one, wait till you check this out.

Aenigma plays like a cross between Carrie and Patrick.  A prank goes wrong at a girls’ college, leaving a student brain dead and in a coma.  Soon after, the perpetrators of the prank begin dying off in increasingly bizarre ways.  Every time someone dies, the girl’s brainwaves spike.  She also takes to possessing the new girl in school and using her as an instrument of revenge.

I’ll concede that some of the kills are stupid (like when a statue comes to life).  For the most part though, they’re flat-out amazing (like the cannibalism sex dream).  Fulci (who also has a cameo as a cop) goes for an over the top Argento vibe for these scenes and while some may argue that none of it makes sense, there is a sort of Elm Street-style logic to it all (like when a girl keeps running from room to room and finds the same decapitated body).  

Whatever faults the film may or may not have, you have to admit, it’s centerpiece sequence packs a wallop.  The snail attack scene has to be seen to be believed.  What makes it great was that the actress really was covered head to toe in slimy slithering snails to accomplish the scene, which to me is an impressive feat.  Seriously, fuck CGI.  For my money, this sequence (which begins with a single snail hanging ominously from a Rocky 3 poster) ranks right up there with the spider scene in The Beyond.  

Am I being a little to generous showering praise upon Aenigma?  Maybe.  Did I have a blast with it from start to finish?  You bet.  It may not be perfect, but it’s hard not to love any movie that contains a scene in which a poster of Tom Cruise portends the appearance of an evil spirit. 

AKA:  Enigma.