Ænigma (1988)

**I didn't log this on my Letterboxd review, but Fulci looked incredibly gaunt by only 1986 (when it was shot). The ill health wasn't exaggerated.**

 I had read a review from a critic of the time taking aim at the camerawork of the film, but I considered that, personally, as one of this film's greatest strengths. Especially when Fulci gives us an idea of Kathy's disembodied spirit leaving the barely-alive car-crash victim due to a nasty prank (of course) from the girls of St Mary's in Boston (and some guys, including the gym instructor known to flirt and such with the girls).

Poor Eva (Lara Lamberti; I just watched her recently as the love interest for Bruno, the musician in Lamberto Bava's "Blade in the Dark") gets possessed by Kathy (Fulci does quick cuts of Eva and Kathy walking to the front door of the college, to hammer home the spirit will be occupying Lamberti) upon introduction. I don't think we ever truly watch Eva as a person; pretty much Kathy (the awkward outcast role whose mute maid mother often is subjected to cruelty, too), takes her body throughout the film. I know Jared Martin from "War of the Worlds: The Series" (preferably the first season) and lots of 70s and 80s television; he's the doctor/neurologist in charge of Kathy's care who has love interests in both Eva and Jenny (Ulli Reinthaler) at the school.

So the powers of Kathy, while her body is hooked to wires and oxygen in the "Boston hospital" (I read reports this was filmed in Sarajevo / Serbia / Italy), runs rampant as revenge (of course) is the sole purpose (besides kissy-kissy with the good doctor) driving her takeover of Eva, inside the school. Snail suffocation, the gym instructor strangled by his "mirror self", a statue applying a chokehold on a victim inside a museum, hallucinations of bodies with severed heads causing the main prankster to fall out a window, and a guy getting decapitated by a window shutter are Fulci's wild choices of murder. I'll be honest: the first thing I think about when someone brings up this movie is the snails. That is why my daughter was anxious to watch this. But I love the hospital scenes inside the morgue room with the marble walls and Kathy's room where a mother decides to "pull the plug" and stop her daughter's reign of terror. Most will notice a number of funny posters on the wall, sort of added by Fulci (I guess) to make the girl's private school look more American. I especially appreciated the "READ" posters with Snoopy and Yoda.

I totally see why Fulci chose Lamberti for the lead: the is stunningly beautiful. And the camera loves her...the more closeups the better as far as I was concerned.