Aenigma

When a girl is rendered comatose following a cruel prank played by her school friends, she takes revenge from her hospital bed by possessing a new pupil at the exclusive boarding school she once attended. Soon the haunted newbie is setting about extracting a horrible revenge for the cruelty meted out to her possessor...

Director Lucio Fulci had two golden periods of filmmaking inspiration, one in the late 60s/early 70s when the Giallo thriller ruled Italian exploitation movies and he churned out a few real classics, like the bizarrely titled 'Don't Torture A Duckling'. His other great run of movies happened in the Late 70s/early 80s as he directed horror classics like The Beyond and New York Ripper. Aenigma falls outside these periods and limped out at a time when the Italian horror film was fading and budgets where being cut. Despite being no classic compared to other earlier work, it still retains Fulci's unique flair for surreal atmosphere and chilling mood while the camera work and music are as good as anything in his better regarded movies.

Fulci's skill with a memorably chilling image hadn't eluded him during this late period production, despite it's more modest appeal to film fans who aren't completely obsessed with the short Italian Auteur. Images of snails crawling around inside someone's mouth still send a shiver through me.

This isn't the best place for the uninitiated. Newcomers may wish to start with some of the better budgeted films him produced with script writer Dardano Sacchetti, such as 'City of the Living Dead', 'Zombie Flesh Eaters' and the aforementioned 'The Beyond'.