This month on Film Utopia, Sean drags a deeply reluctant Steven kicking and screaming into the blood-soaked world of cult Italian filmmaker Lucio Fulci. Sean, naturally, argues that Fulci was far more than just “the gore guy,” championing the dreamlike atmosphere, bleak surrealism, and nightmarish logic that made his films unlike anything else in horror cinema. Steven, meanwhile, stubbornly refuses to budge from his position that Fulci’s work is riddled with ropey dubbing, shonky production values, and unapologetic trashiness.

Thankfully, things remain surprisingly amicable as we work through a curated selection of Fulci’s horror, murder mystery, and Giallo work, including One on Top of the Other, A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Don’t Torture a Duckling, The Psychic, Zombie Flesh Eaters, City of the Living Dead, The Black Cat, The Beyond, The House by the Cemetery, The New York Ripper, Manhattan Baby, Conquest, Murder Rock, The Devil’s Honey, Aenigma, and A Cat in the Brain.

Along the way, we discuss Fulci’s evolution from stylish thriller director to the undisputed godfather of eyeball trauma, his fascination with surrealism and decay, his uneasy relationship with narrative coherence, and why his films continue to inspire horror fans decades later.

Dreamlike, gruesome, atmospheric, ridiculous, mesmerising. Lucio Fulci cinema is many things, but Steven would just prefer if at least one actor sounded like they were in the same room as each other.