Johnny (Madia) is an up-and-coming saxophone player (this was the 80's, after all) who lets his sax do the talking. And if the scene in the recording studio is any indication, if I may paraphrase Color Me Badd, he really wants to "sax you up". Johnny is in an intense, stormy, and tumultuous relationship with Jessica (Marsillach). Meanwhile, Dr. Wendell Simpson (Halsey) is in a downright failing relationship with his wife Carol (Clery), primarily due to his frequenting of prostitutes and neglecting the needs of his wife. He's a surgeon, and he uses the hospital as his excuse to be away from Carol. When Johnny suffers a motorbike accident - again because he's the ultimate 80's coolguy - while proclaiming his undying love for Jessica, he ends up on the operating table of Dr. Simpson. But Simpson is so distracted by his wife's carping, he fumbles the operation. So Jessica reacts in the way anybody else would - she kidnaps the doctor and subjects him to endless psychological/physical/sexual torture. What will happen to Jessica and the doctor? Find out today? Did you know AIP released a Lucio Fulci film? Neither did we, until we came across Dangerous Obsession during our, well, obsessive AIP research. No one's a bigger Fulci fan than me, so I was delighted to stumble on to a movie of his I'd never seen before. Because of his famous horror movies, most people that know his name simply associate it with gore. But the truth is, the man has worked in just about every film genre there is. As we all know, the Italian film industry is known for, let's say, jumping on the bandwagon of prevailing cinematic trends, and at this point in time, erotic dramas were, no pun intended, hot. And while many people have drawn parallels between this movie and 9 1/2 Weeks, it's really like a "Last Tango In Rome" meets Emanuelle's Revenge (1975), which was directed by Joe D'Amato, himself no stranger to the erotic drama, namely Eleven Days, Eleven Nights (1987). Of course, the whole thing has a very European flavor to it that I personally found appealing.The aforementioned Emanuelle's Revenge is probably the closest parallel you'll find to Dangerous Obsession, because both are Italian psychological-erotic hostage dramas with a structure of flashbacks. But only Dangerous Obsession opens with live smooth sax. In fact, the music by Claudio Natili is not only enjoyable and noteworthy, but actually important to the plot and it drives it along. Probably the best place to turn at this point would be to quote Stephen Thrower, from his must-have monograph on Fulci, Beyond Terror: "Fulci turned in a trashy, often hilarious S&M fantasy with a few dark undertows of melancholia for good measure." So Fulci fans who haven't seen it should check it out, especially those only familiar with his horror output. For everyone else, those with a taste for this kind of thing most likely won't be disappointed, because Fulci and his team bring quality and interest to something that could have been a lot worse in the hands of a lesser director.

Lucio Fulci's films are not known for their great scripts, and indeed the storytelling in "Devil's Honey" is often sloppy and the ending is weak. They are known for their gore (almost completely absent here), and their directorial flair (some of which is present here). Of course this is a rather atypical outing for Fulci (his answer to "9 ½ Weeks", perhaps?), and it works mostly thanks to Blanca Marsillach's surprisingly good performance: she's a beautiful young woman with a perfect body who walks around in the nude a lot, but beyond her looks she gives more depth than you'd expect to her character, making her innocent and curious (and easily aroused!) at first, sadistic and vengeful in the second half (I loved those little smirks that showed how much pleasure she got from her power over her male captive), but always very human underneath. Although she is 3rd-billed, make no mistake: she is the star of this film (2nd-billed Corinne Clery has a relatively small part, but she DOES get fully nude as well!). This is why this erotic thriller is so much more "erotic" than "thriller": who wouldn't want to be captured by a woman like Blanca and become her plaything? **1/2 out of 4.

Devil's Honey, The (1986)** 1/2 (out of 4) Bizarre film for Fulci sees him in more of a Jess Franco type of territory. In the film, a woman (Blanca Marsillach) loses her mind after the death of her boyfriend. Even though it was his fault, she blames the doctor (Brett Halsey) who was operating on him when he died. Soon the woman kidnaps the doctor and plans to torture him both physically and sexually. This certainly isn't the type of film you'd expect someone like Fulci to make especially during this period in his career. Throughout this decade we were getting non-stop violence and gore but that's all cut out here and in its place is non-stop nudity and bizarre sex scenes. The first twenty-minutes of this film features one sex scene after another and it appears they each get more and more bizarre. Fulci's THE NEW YORK RIPPER was pretty perverse but so is this film and that includes a scene where the boyfriend "satisfies" the woman by putting his trumpet up to her private parts and playing. The sex scenes never reach the hardcore stage but Fulci handles them pretty well, although he never quite reaches a full erotic mode. The biggest problem for me was the actual screenplay and the entire revenge aspect. One could compare this film to Franco's SHE KILLED IN ECSTASY but that movie worked a lot better because we understood the woman's need for revenge. That's not the case here for a couple of reasons. The first being that the man is a complete jerk to her so we really don't care when he dies. The second reason is because the woman is simply blaming the wrong person for his death. There's no way around that and it's hard to buy into anything she's doing because you simply don't agree with her. Halsey, a soon to be Fulci regular, does a pretty good job in his role but there's no question that the film belongs to Marsillach who really digs deep into her character. The two work quite well together and certainly make the film a lot better than it really has the right to be. The brisk 78-minute running time moves pretty well and the jazz score is quite nice as well. Fans of Fulci will certainly want to check this one out but others probably won't find too much entertainment here.

This is an atypical Lucio Fulci film in that it focuses on themes which are usually examined by Jess Franco. Nevertheless, this is still one of my top three favorite Fulci films (behind Lizard in a Woman's Skin and New York Ripper). It is an interesting examination of an increasingly dangerous sadomasochistic relationship, a relationship tinged with unbridled lust, obsession, torture, and love.Although the first thirty minutes of the film (with the exception of the great saxophone sex scene) are quite silly and cheaply done, the second half of the film completely surprised me with its serious and dark tone. As the film progresses, we are increasingly drawn into a truly screwed up relationship, until we realize that the only resolution to this relationship is absolute nihilism and destruction.An atypical, yet ultimately satisfying film by the maestro Fulci. Would make a great double feature with Adrian Lynne's "9 1/2 Weeks"!