SodomasGhost

Sodoma’s Ghost (1988)

I’m a Fulci fan and because of that I’m going out of my way to watch all of his movies. But damn does the man make that hard sometimes. Sodoma’s Ghost is one of those times. The story here has a group of College Students (I think so anyways) traveling. They get lost and end up at an abandoned house. Well sort of abandoned. There is food, wine, and all the lights work, but no one is home. So they do what anyone would do and break in, choose bedrooms and eat all they want. Now of course we the audience know that this was a bad idea since we were treated to a flashback that showed a bunch of Nazis partying it up with naked ladies. That is before the big explosion. Sure enough this is a haunted house and there are all kinds of ghostly Germans and ladies running about. Some very bad things happen and then the survivors figure out how to escape, which somehow presses the reset “button”, the end.

As I’ve already stated this is a hard movie to sit thru. It starts off nice and twisted with the party scene full of nudity, but after 5 minutes we are watching the “kids” stumbling along their way. From that point on the movie is just boring. We get to watch dumb characters do really dumb things (Russian Roulette with a ghost for a crack at a hooker?). This of course doesn’t end well and one by one they are killed. They try and leave the house only to discover all roads lead back to the where they started. Do they freak out? Nope they just hit the wine cellar again. Oh and for the love of God if you movie is called Sodoma’s Ghost can you please identify Sodoma as one of the ghosts? Plot is definitely not the strong point of this one. But then that can be said of many of Fulci’s movies. The difference here is that in addition to a plot that is weak there isn’t much going on. You can pick on the plot and narrative of many of Fulci’s other movies, but they always where throwing some crazy visuals or situations at the audience to keep you interested. Not so much here. And not to beat a dead horse, but the ending here is really annoying with the whole “never mind” ending that the movie throws at us.

If nothing else you can almost always count on a Fulci movie to have some good gore, at least in his movies after Zombie that is. I watched this movie last night and I have to say I can’t think of a really memorable kill at all. There is a bit of blood here and there, but overall this movie fails to deliver much gore or interesting kills at all. I found this to be very disappointing.

What happens when you get a Fulci movie without the gore or crazy scenes? As much as the Fulci fan in me hates to say it you get a mess. This is only for the diehard fans that have to see them all. To everyone else I say grab that copy of Zombie and give it another watch.

1 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer