Sodoma's Ghost (Lucio Fulci, 1988)

I remember when I got Sodoma's Ghost. It was on VHS (can't remember the country or release) and with enthusiasm I put the tape in the player and expected something so good it would blow my mind away - a logical thought when you're young and had been watching all of Fulci's big classics the weeks before. 

Disappointment, to say the least. 

Sodoma's Ghost is sleaze, it's good old nazisploitation with a horror twist. And it's not really a good one either. It's sloppily made and have flat directing. The actors are bad (something I usually blame on the script, but these guys can't act) - except maybe Robert Egon as Willy the Nazi, who have a lot of charisma. The theme - sex orgies at a remote Italian villa and the title references Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom - but the similarities ends there. It's basically one of those TV-movies (Ghosthouse, House of Lost Souls, House of Clocks etc) but with a lot more nudity.

Not much happens. The kids come there, meets ghosts, some people die, there's boobs and then everything is over in the crappiest ending since... I don't know when. It's one of those endings that should be forbidden. A slap in the face of the audience. But then... I can't help but feeling entertained. Maybe because I KNOW it's a genius behind the camera, someone who once had great visions, a true storyteller, a visual master. I want to find something good.

It's hard in this movie. Really. I admit that. But you know, I think I found it...

There's something interesting going on during the opening minutes of Sodoma's Ghost. We see everything from the point of view of a simple super 8 camera, gradually we understand it's a wild party and we jump out from the camera and Fulci intercuts his film with the footage filmed by the nazi. After a while the black and white footage shot in the beginning of the movie is screened during the party, making the nazis watch themselves. But soon real stock footage, black & white - just like the super 8 camera - is edited into the scene, airplanes leaving the ground, getting closer and closer. The party, filled with drugs and sex, gets more and more absurd - and Fulci's movie speeds up, just like it's an old movie - but still stays in the movie we're watching (Francis Ford Coppola did a similar thing in Bram Stoker's Dracula). This scene gets crazier crazier until the stock footage airplanes drops a bomb on the party...

This IS a very complex sequence. I'm fully aware that Sodoma's Ghost is the most loathed of Fulci's latter day production - and even I think it's his worst. But here we have something, Fulci is still trying. He have a plan with the scene, he knows what he's doing with the material. It's so damn complicated that I'll fully understand if it goes right over the head of those who hates the film without remorse.

Then you can add to this that he revisits the Sodoma's Ghost set in Nightmare Concert, where he's suddenly drawn in to it all - a TV-photographer who transforms himself into Willy the Nazi, and once again the space and time is bent, but this time from Fulci's own view. Did this meta-experiment bring the idea of Nightmare Concert to Fulci? When a film-in-a-film transforms into the film we're watching, then it's something going on. Someone have been thinking. Someone got tired of making crap and decided to make a movie to end it all, to show the world how he felt about it. 

This movie might be trash, but it's trash with a thought. At least during some moments. Sodoma's Ghost have one important moment, a moment that defines the whole movie. This is the genius of Fulci, he never - NEVER - gives up. 

Comments

[Megatron]

"Sodoma's Ghost is sleaze, it's good old nazisploitation with a horror twist. And it's not really a good one either."

Your description sounded so cool though.....

"This IS a very complex sequence."

But didn´t you feel a little pleased when you saw this?

In all of that crappy stuff, ONE good scene?

I love when that happens, you watch some, so-so film, debut feature or a legendary directors least appreciated works.......and then suddenly.....ONE GREAT SCENE!

Out of the blue....

"This movie might be trash, but it's trash with a thought. At least during some moments. Sodoma's Ghost have one important moment, a moment that defines the whole movie. This is the genius of Fulci, he never - NEVER - gives up."

I haven´t seen it yet, but I might......good review and thanks.

[Fred Anderson]

Yeah, that scene is fantastic. It's the best thing with the film and it will make it watch it again sooner or later :)

[Jesper]

Thanks to you I wanna see it again. I didn't like it at all when I saw it a long time ago but I saw it right after Voices From Beyond and compared to that one I liked Sodoma's Ghost better. Who knows, I might like them both today!