By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Forty years after the production of his best-known film, ZOMBIE, famed Italian horror director Lucio Fulci is the subject of the first feature inspired by his life.
Shooting has just been completed on FULCI FOR FAKE (a title evidently inspired by Orson Welles’ classic F FOR FAKE), written and directed by Simone Scafidi. The movie centers on an actor (played by Nicola Nocella) who is cast as Fulci in a film about the director’s life, and sets out to research the role by meeting up with people who have known and studied him. It will include appearances by Fulci collaborators who have never been interviewed before, and feature never-before-seen photos, video and audio material. Among those seen and heard in the movie are Fabio Frizzi, Michele Romagnoli, Sandro Bitetto, Enrico Vanzina, Sergio Salvati, Michele Soavi, Paolo Malco, Berenice Sparano and Davide Pulici, with actress Martina Troni (pictured above) giving “a face to the women, muses and victims in Fulci’s films,” according to the PR.
“It is a film made of Fulci’s blood,” Scafidi says, “with the presence, for the first time, of both the director’s daughters: Antonella, the firstborn, endowed with a culture and a humanity worthy of her father, who generously made available the family’s video material, and Camilla, her father’s assistant on the set of his latest productions, who provided her first and only long video interview and unfortunately passed away after the shoot. Antonella and Camilla are the only people, perhaps, to know in depth the mystery of their own father.”
FULCI FOR FAKE is scheduled for release this fall; Scafidi and producer Giada Mazzoleni will host a panel at Livorno, Italy’s Fipili Horror Festival on Sunday, April 28.
