The Curator of Schlock #423: Aenigma

thedrunkenodyssey

Jun 30

There I was, tied to an office chair in a smelly bathroom in the Museum of Schlock, my once proud establishment now overrun by hooligans. The door to the bathroom swung open and in walked a trio of goons. Two were identical twins with curly blond hair poking out through their bandanas, one red and one blue. The twin in the blue bandana held a chain leash in his hand. Attached to that leash was a man crawling in stitched leather.

— To be continued.

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I haven't done a Lucio Fulci movie in awhile. Maybe I don't want to see too much Fulci too soon. Tonight's movie is 1988's Aenigma from said director. Aenigma is an Italian word meaning puzzle. And this is indeed a puzzling movie. Well, not really. It's kind of straightforward.

This is a psychic girl revenge deal.

I think this was Fulci's answer to Dario Argento's Phenomena, but it misses the mark.

The movie begins at St. Mary's, a Catholic college in Boston. A student named Kathy preps for a date with the school's gym teacher, a good looking man named Fred. I guess she's supposed to be a plain Jane, but her roommates doll her up. Kathy thinks she's going dancing with Fred, but he parks his car in the woods so they can have some alone time. Kathy is excited and makes out with him, but gets distracted when high beams from a half a dozen cars start shining on them. Turns out the whole hot date was a prank set up to humiliate Kathy. She flees the scene, but runs into a speeding car.

Kathy ends up comatose in the hospital. Her face is scarred. Unbeknownst to the doctors and nurses is that Kathy's latent psychic powers have surfaced.

And she wants revenge!

Kathy's abilities allow her to get inside her victim's heads, make them see things. Kathy can also possess other people's bodies like that belonging to a new student at St. Mary's, the very attractive Eva.

So possessed Eva asks gym teacher Fred out on a date. They're supposed to meet at the gym, but there's no Eva to be seen. Fred goes up to one of the mirrors and gets attacked by his own reflection. When his body is discovered, his death is ruled as a heart attack. The other students get suspicious of Eva as she says she was born in Boston one day, but then says she comes from New Orleans the next. Other tormenters of Kathy/Eva get punished and killed. One student dies by getting covered in disgusting snails, which sure is ænigmatic.

Possessed Eva seduces Kathy's handsome doctor, but he becomes trepidatious, perhaps due to erotic dreams he's having where Eva bites chunks out of his body.

This is a weird one, folks. And yeah, I was getting Phenomena vibes from this with the psychic girl in the boarding school, but the difference is I liked the character of Jennifer in that movie. Kathy is just a creeper and deserved to get pranked on!

Wait a minute! Is that a snail I see crawling on my desk?

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