(160) HANSEL AND GRETEL (1990) Lucio Fulci / Giovanni Simonelli
6107DVD
original
Italian title HANSEL E GRETEL [Hansel and Gretel]
also known as DON'T HURT CHILDREN
director: Lucio Fulci and Giovanni Simonelli
starring Silvia Cipollone · Massimiliano Cipollone
· Paul
Muller · Maurice Poli · Gaetano Russo
A wicked
stepfather sells brother and sister, Hansel and Gretel [played by real
life siblings Silvia and Massimiliano Cipollone] to a disreputable private
hospital in rural Europe. Their organs are removed and boxed up for the
thriving black market. The bodies of Hansel and Gretel get unceremonishly
dumped in the garden at a remote farmhouse. Evidence strongly indicates
they are not the first children to be sliced-and-diced for profit in this
community. In fact it's painfully obvious that they are simply the current
victims in this lucrative organ trafficking business run by a family of
farmers. Next, without any explanation, these two kids return from their
graves [are they ghosts, zombies, spirits? who knows], but they are obsessed
with only one driving goal: Kill everybody even remotely responsible for
the butchery. Their eyes glow red and they stare silently. The victims
of Hansel and Gretel die miserably [mostly from freak-but-gory accidents
including a familiar Fulci eye-gouging maneuver] which causes an investigation
by a young, determined female police detective.
Here is one of numerous
movies supervised/co-directed by Lucio Fulci in 1988-89 (also see BROKEN
MIRROR, BLOOD
MOON, MASSACRE
and BLOODY
PSYCHO (Snake House). This one was helmed by Giovanni Simonelli [his
only time in the director's chair]; he is better known for decades of
scriptwriting, from 1958 through his death at age 81 in November 2007.
The aforementioned eyeball-skewering-scene was lifted and reused in Fulci's
CAT
IN THE BRAIN later the same year.
An
Italian film with optional ON/OFF English subtitles; widescreen format,
uncut 87 minutes, DVD Package encoded for ALL REGION NTSC FORMAT.
Extras include
Lucio Fulci trailers.
Nudity/Graphic
Violence/Gore/Drugs
Recommended for Mature Audiences