Pages from the Diary of a Ghost Lucio Fulci's DEMONIA By Adrien Clerc I


If nowadays Lucio Fulci is principally remembered for his early ’80s splatter movies, we shouldn’t forget about the rest of this filmmaker’s career, which lasted for 40 years and brought us a few—dare I say it?—masterpieces.


I can see a few of you raising an eyebrow already... and perhaps you’re not wrong. DEMONIA is not truly a masterpiece: it is a small Gothic horror movie about nuns, a curse and demonic possession, spiced with a goodly amount of gore. It’s a rough diamond that can help us to understand what happened to the Ital- ian popular cinema during a decade which saw Cinecittà change profoundly. The following pages will plunge you into the shooting of what could have been the comeback of an aging mae- stro, and became just another Italian B-movie.


November 24, 1989


Last week sometime—the exact day is lost to memory—I went for an audition at Via Adige, 27. There I met Camilla Fulci, who interviewed me. Two days later, I had a callback. I knew I had a part, but I didn’t know which one. I understood that whatever part it was (for a film, the name of which I didn’t know)—would shoot the first week in December, with a pick-up date later in the month. That was the last I heard.


 


This is not an authentic poster! Jeremy Mincer (www.silverferox.blogspot.com) created this imaginary poster art for DEMONIA, a rare instance of an Italian horror film deprived of poster art at the time of its original release.


“Masterpiece? DEMONIA?” ;


Diarist/actor Grady Clarkson, who plays an archaeologist in DEMONIA.


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