The film serves as one of Fulci's weakest in my book, and certainly a far cry from his masterpiece, and a personal favourite of mine; "The House by the Cemetery".
We follow young Susie (Brigitta Boccoli) who, whilst in Egypt with her parents, Professor George Hacker (Christopher Connelly) and Emily Hacker (Laura Lenzi), is given a mysterious amulet by a strange, blind woman. Upon Susie receiving this unusual treasure, her father is struck blind whilst in an unexplored tomb and the family have to return immediately home to New York city.
While her parents fret over George's temporary blindness, Susie shows her new shiny thing to her younger brother, Tommy (Giovanni Frezza), and both siblings begin to fall under the amulet's power. This includes the ability to pop off on adventures to Egypt whenever they like, bring back poisonous creatures, ship off people who annoy them to the desert and summon the shambling undead.... Kids stuff, really.
As well as suffering from being very slow and somewhat dull, the plot jumps randomly from scene to scene making everything hard to follow and becoming a chore to watch. The characters also don't behave quite human enough: no one seems to notice all the missing people for starters!
One thing I did enjoy was watching George walk around with his glasses on over his massive eye bandages. Truly weird.
The film just lacks atmosphere and coherence and not even a zombie bird attack scene can save it from that!
I do love the DVD cover art, though
[Image: Fulvia Film]
Hani
