December 2, 1989
I talked to Camilla about the span of shooting. Since I have two weeks which, by the posted schedule, are for me empty, will I be sent back or what? At present, she doesn’t know. The contract is already waste paper. I’m eager to have a go at it.
Lucio and Camilla Fulci worked together on the casting. Brett Halsey, a truly unique character as only the cinema industry can produce, would be part of the film. He’d been an actor most of his life, first in Hollywood, then on Italian soil. He dis- covered he had affinities with Lucio Fulci during the shootings of THE DEVIL’S HONEY and TOUCH OF DEATH. On one side, the short, bearded an- gry director; on the other, the funny, aging Don Juan. The duo surprises, but works.
December 4, 1989
Nothing much happened yesterday. We did have a meeting with the director at 4:30. All of the major actors gathered in a small room off the dining room and Lucio Fulci talked briefly about how Mr. Brett Halsey would be changing the script a bit. It was almost impossible to understand Fulci, but I’m getting better. After ten minutes, he was finished. He got up to go, but I asked him about accent (he’d talked none
about character). Yes, he wants an Irish accent from Pascal [Druant, the french actor who plays Kevin, alongside Grady Clarkson’s Sean] and me. The group disbanded.
Aside from Brett Halsey, the movie is built upon the sculptural Christina Engelhardt and the dark-sided Al Cliver. Behind this Anglo-Saxon pseudonym hides an Italian actor, a familiar face for Fulci’s fans. Al Cliver is in most of Fulci’s movies from ZOMBIE onwards, in which he was perfect as Brian Hull, the mysterious, bearded, hardly approachable eth- nologist. Fulci and Cliver, once again, are as close as they are different. As Cliver told a reporter from the eatmybrains website in 2009: “I think for Fulci, I was a kind of, you know, Stan Laurel, from Lau- rel and Hardy. He always would put a nickname on everyone during the shoots. He liked dissing me, you understand? But he was the only one who could get away with doing that. If some other people tried to diss me and he heard, he would send them off set! That’s how Fulci was.” As Catriona MacColl turned down the invita- tion to play the important role of the young vision- ary heroine, Meg Register was chosen. She’s a beautiful blonde lady, in the Hitchcockian style that Fulci loves, but had no real experience in acting. Everyone boarded a boat to Sciaccia, the small Sicilian town that would be the crew’s base camp.
Lucio Fulci confers with actor Brett Halsey, who stars in the film as Professor Paul Evans.
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