Antonella Fulci Interview

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Below are a few pics of Lucio Fulci's daughter Antonella. I did an extensive interview with her back in 2003. I learned a lot of things about Fulci that I didn't know. I learned of his love for erotic asphyxiation and implanting needles in his sack. He also liked bathing with his dog and eating cheese while reading Play girl. Of course, I'm kidding. He actually liked to rub chocolate on his face while reading Play Girl.

Seriously, below is the interview I conducted with Anto' back in 2003. I have an updated interview, but it's going to be placed on another website in the near future. I also threw in a few pics. It's nice to see the resemblance.
"Damn right! I'm Fulci's daughter."

Below is the INTERVIEW I conducted with her in early 2003. This should be a cool read for you Fulci fans.

LUNCHMEAT: Being the daughter of one of
the most beloved horror directors of all
time, I would imagine that at
a young age you were introduced to
the nightmarish world of your
Father's work. How did being the
daughter of such a controversial figure
in the Italian/American horror
industry play a part in your
younger years?




ANTONELLA: When my father shot Zombie,
I was already 19 y.o, and for us, it  was
just another film. If you
think that my father had already shot
about 40 films as a director and
had written about 90 as a
screenwriter, you can understand why.
My father had a job like any
other father, the only difference
was that his 'office' was a set. When
I was a kid, in the 60's, the
words 'let's go say hello to dad at
work' meant going somewhere where a
bunch of wonderful people were
playing a game and joked
with me and bought me ice creams. 

I loved it,
and thought that my dad
was the luckiest guy in this
world, cause his job was having fun
with his friends.
I don't think that, if he could decide,
he'd like to be remembered for
his horror movies even if, as
a professionist, he surely did the best
about the matter. After all, he
had 30 years of carrier on his
back. I must say I don't like it too,
cause I find it very limited.


LUNCHMEAT: To shed some light on
my horror background a little: One of the first
films that ever gave me
nightmares was 'The Gates of Hell'-
The scene where the lady vomits up
her intestines is pure art in
my book! I am curious to know, what
was the first horror related
experience you ever had?




ANTONELLA: Good scene indeed, and functional
for the mood of the film. The first
time I saw my father shooting
a 'horror' scene I was very young,
12 or 13 I think. I went to 'visit
dad at work' on the set of 'Don't
torture a Duckling'. We  were in a
small real cemetery in Abruzzo (a
region of central Italy) and my
first vision was miss Florinda Bolkan,
and I still remember how
beautiful she was, with the longest
black hair I'd ever seen, sitting on
a chair and happily chatting with
a guy that was fixing little tubes
full of a red substance on her skin
with some plaster. While I was
still staring at that awesome
'creature of the wood', the guy
started modeling a horrible scar on her
shoulder, and I became
curious to see what would happen next....
There were guys around there,
with plastic chains in their hands,
familiar faces that I had seen
'playing games' with my dad since
when I was a little kid, so nothing
frightened me until then...
But when it came to shoot

the scene of the brutal killing of the
'Maciara' everything changed. It was
so real! Their faces changed, those
harmless plastic things really
seemed deadly weapons, that
false scar kept bleeding tomato
in front of me, and I felt strange,
because I somehow understood
that I wasn't scared by the chains or
by the fake blood, but by what
was behind that scene. When
my father said 'cut!' the villains
and the victim started joking and
laughing as always, but lately,
when I saw the movie, I understood
that my fears were related to
something that my father always
repeated to me. He always said
that the most horrible things in this
world come from ignorance and
bigotry, and as they were both well
represented by that scene, my mind
had gone beyond the
false chains and the tomato.....


LUNCHMEAT: As is probably obvious to you,
many movie critics wrote Lucio's films
off as being barbaric and
lacking vision. I personally couldn't
disagree more and consider him a
master at delivering
'atmosphere'. How did it make you feel
to hear such things about your
Father's work?




ANTONELLA: I think that they probably have
seen the wrong movies. As I said it's
impossible to judge my
father's work only from his horror movies.
If it goes on like this, his
fate is to be misunderstood. If
you could see all the beautiful comedies
he's done and written, and all
the different kind of movies
he has made, you'd see that there are
many good horror directors and
only one Lucio Fulci!




LUNCHMEAT: I understand that you were

a special guest at 'Cult Con 2002' of
November of last

 year in Tarrytown, New York. Could
you maybe give
us some background on who was there and
maybe share a mini
experience you had while attending?




ANTONELLA: I was in Sleepy Hollow-Tarrytown
2 years ago for the 2000 edition of
the Cult Con. It's been mostly
a great experience for me, I met a lot of
very nice people, and a
couple of them have become my
dear friends. Plus I feel that New York
is my second hometown. Me and
Valentina, Mr. Deodato's
girlfriend, were the only girls of the
gang (I'm 42 now but please let
me call myself a girl once
more), and I had a lot of fun with all
the Italian bunch.
There I had the chance to meet many
American hardcore horror fans, all
great guys, and even if I
think that some of them make a little
confusion between fiction and
reality they've been truly
exquisite.
The touching side of the story is that
sometimes I felt 'watched'. You
know when you feel
someone's eyes right on you? Well,
most of the times I turned back and
saw a guy staring at 'the
daughter of the Godfather of Gore'.
Every time that it happened, I would
have liked to go there,
introduce myself and say: 'Hi guy,
I'm Antonella, nice to meet you',
just to show I was nothing
special.....




LUNCHMEAT: As is obvious to any Fulci fan,
your Father didn't start off his
directing career with the horror genre. I
understand that he has a few spaghetti
westerns and comedies under his
belt. Do you have any
idea why Lucio transgressed from the
direction of light-hearted
material, to the the macabre world
of gore and death?




ANTONELLA: The producers offered him to
shoot those kinds of movies, and probably
he showed up so good in
making them that the producers, or better
let's say The Producer a.k.a.
Fabrizio de Angelis, a
genius in my humble opinion, understood
that he had a winning horse by
the hands. They became
collaborators and good friends, and
together made great stuff. Behind
the scenes, the making of
those movies was a fun and a pleasure.
With a wizard of the lights like
Sergio Salvati, cameramen
like Franco Bruni and Maurizio Lucchini,
make up artists like De Rossi
and Maurizio Trani and all the
other wonderful people there, you can
imagine that it was heaven, for
my dad. Unfortunately, even
when Fabrizio de Angelis stopped
producing his movies, his name has
been type-casted into horror
genre, and Italian genre cinema
started to fall down the hill.
I hate the fact that some people
may start to know Lucio Fulci from
film like the ones he just did for
money, like Demonia or Zombie 3, that
he only directed partly. I can't
really disagree when
someone says that my father has made
crappy movies, cause they've just
seen those ones, but it
hurts....



LUNCHMEAT: It was brought to my attention

that you are a very big 'American'
horror film enthusiast as well.
What is your favorite 'American' horror film and why?




ANTONELLA: Actually, I'm a big fan of
'unusual movies' and a John Waters and
Divine's true worshipper. Horror is
a genre like the others, for me. There's
good and (terribly) bad in it.
Anyway, there's a recent
enough American movie that terrified me,
and made me fall in love with
it. It's 'Requiem for a
Dream' by Darren Aronofsky. I consider
it a horror film with a touch of
genius. There's fear, there's
gore, there's hallucination, and the
sensation that you are somehow
part of the story. At the end of
the movie, I was petrified on my chair,
feeling that I was Sara, and
Harold, and Marion, and that
other guy (wonderful actor by the way),
all at once. What I'd just seen
was the nightmarish side of
everyone's everyday life. My father
would have loved it so much!
Ironically the title of one of his
best short stories, that's been published
on one of his books is 'The
Killer of the Dreams'. I've also
had a crush for 'The Blair Witch Project',
so hard that I wrote a book
about it that went very well, but
that's another story....





LUNCHMEAT: I understand that a hardcore
Lucio fan named Mike Baronas is in the
process of publishing a
biography on your Father. I would imagine
you played a part in the
making of the book. Can you
maybe give us a little information on
the book and when it will be
released?




ANTONELLA: As you've probably understood,
I don't think that a horror fan could be
the right person to write my
father's biography. I really appreciate
the passion that one may put in
such a thing, and am
grateful to every single Lucio's fan, but to
speak about my dad so that
people may really know him,
one should dig deeper, so as always I
put a big distance between me and
these projects. I had
problems, in the past, with people who
wrote for horror magazines, and
with some 'wish I was a
writer' people who put out bad books
and articles about my father that
only helped to typecast him.

I'm not saying it could happen again,
but sincerely I prefer not to be
involved with these things.
The only book that gave me a big satisfaction
was Stephen Thrower's
'Beyond Terror'.
Actually there's a book that I'm supporting,
soon to be published by an
Italian author, Paolo
Albiero, that's the most complete Lucio's
biography you can imagine.
The author, a professor in
psychology at the University of Padova,
spent 5 years  collecting
material and interviewing all the
people (some of them are not with us anymore,
unfortunately) that had
an impact on my father's
personal life and carrier. The result is
so awesome that reading it I,
myself, sort of reconstructed
parts of my family life that I had missed.
I'm glad that now the
readers will have a choice. Not only
books about Lucio's carrier in the horror
scene, but also books about
Lucio, that was a more
interesting human being than
most of his horror films.





LUNCHMEAT:I would have loved to have visited

the set of any of Lucio's films
(preferably New York Ripper) so I
could have experienced the magic of film
making first hand. Did you ever
get to visit the set of any
of his films? And if so, could you maybe
share an experience with us?




ANTONELLA: You're lucky cause I've been in
NY during all the making of The Ripper.
A nice anecdote regards
Howard Ross, the guy with the amputated

fingers in the film, and the
nicest and gentlest person
you could ever meet. They had to shoot the
scene where the guy is found
dead with his head
wrapped up in plastic. The make up artist had
done a great work on his
face, so Renato (Howard)
had the idea of making a joke to the hotel
clerks. He went down the
hall in full makeup, with all the
false rotting skin hanging around his face.
But the clerks said
nothing, looked him normally in the

face, took the room key and politely greeted
him. He got very
disappointed by that at first, but
then we looked each other in the face and
started laughing so hard that
the make up almost fell
down.......That was more or less a typical
situation, in the making of
a Lucio's movie....




LUNCHMEAT: When it came to the films of
your Father, some of his ideas were
marvelous. I would imagine that
being around your Father after a long
day of shooting, he would
sometimes 'bring his work' home
with him. Do you have any ideas where
Lucio came up with some of his
nightmarish visions? And if
so, can you elaborate just a little bit?




ANTONELLA: Questions like this make me more
motivated in realizing a project that
I have in mind, a
documentary about my father. The title will be 'Gimme Some Truth', and
it will be a 'Lucio in his own
words' thing. It will include some family
movies shot by him in the
50's and 60's and other amazing
stuff. Anyway, about your question: 'No,
the 'nightmares' stopped when
he said 'cut!' then we all
went back to our lives, that were very happy
at those times. A film maker
is mostly an illusionist, he
can make you believe he's having nightmares
while he's making wonderful
dreams.



LUNCHMEAT: I don't think many people realize
this, but Lucio authored a few books
in his time. Can you give us
a little information on this?
I have to say, that being a
Fulci fan, I tend to enjoy all of his
horror films. I'm sure you have a
favorite of his as well. Just curious,
out of all his films, which do
you enjoy most and why?




ANTONELLA: Don't Torture a Duckling, cause
every character of the movie is a good
fellow and a monster at the
same time, and for the reasons I've
explained before. And all the
wonderful comedies he co-wrote
in the fifties with 'Maestro' Steno
(Stefano Vanzina), a person that he
idolized and that taught hi
almost all he knew about film making, when
my father was his assistant
director.





LUNCHMEAT: Before we close, I would like to say
that to most of Lucio's fans, he
is remembered as being the
'Godfather of Gore', but to his beloved

daughter, what words would you
use as a rememberence to
describe your famous Father?




ANTONELLA: He was a natural born entertainer
and the funniest person I've ever
known. Every day with him was
a 'happening', and you could never imagine
what he could invent next.
He was a cinephile and a
jazz music big fan. He taught me that
if you have a passion, an
interest, nothing can be stronger
than you, because in every situation,
even in the worst ones, you'll
have a film to watch or a song
to listen to, that will help you
overcome the bad times.


LUNCHMEAT: Antonella, I want to express my
deepest thanks for your sharing some
time with us. You have
made me and every other Fulci fanatic
very happy. It is always good to
know that there are still
some very nice and cooperative people
left in the world. I bid you the
best of luck in life and wish
upon you nothing but happiness and good times.
Thank you very much.