Verdict
Summary
Marsillach gives a brave and fearless physical performance and is subjected to Fulci’s leery camera gaze, which might appeal to a core male demographic, but she’s obviously playing an unhinged, deranged nutcase, so this is a really strange movie to watch and process. Severin’s upgrade to this title is really strong and stellar with an outstanding transfer and excellent bonus features.
Plot:
A musician dies, leaving his girlfriend reeling with rage, and she sets her sights on kidnapping and torturing the doctor who operated on him and failed to keep him alive.
Review:
Jazz musician and recording artist Johnny (Stefano Madia) has an intense sexual relationship with a woman named Jessica (Blanca Marsillach), and their entire time together seems to be engaged in kinky sex and him pushing her boundaries as far as he can. When she threatens to leave him after he degrades her yet again, he has a motorcycle accident right in front of her, but he laughs it off, not realizing that he has given himself a life threatening injury to his brain. The next day at the recording studio he drops unconscious, and he’s rushed to the hospital where his surgeon, a Dr. Wendell Simpson (Brett Halsey), fails to save his life. Wendell, a sex addict himself with a beautiful wife (played by the gorgeous Corinne Clery) who has thus far accepted his dalliances with hookers and various indiscretions, but she reaches her breaking point and simply wants him to show her the attention she believes she deserves for putting up with him for so long. Their lives are interrupted when Jessica, who has become unhinged with rage and anger at losing her abusive boyfriend, kidnaps Wendell and sequesters him in a shack and punishes him with kinky torture (she strips him and drips hot wax on him, forces him to eat dog food, and flaunts her naked body at him, teasing him to no end, etc.) to the edge of his very sanity. She threatens to murder him, but the fact is that she might not be capable of murder itself … but she might just fall into a bizarre and twisted love/ lust with this sex addicted man who is driven crazy by this lusty and crazy wench.
A real change of pace for notorious horror director Lucio Fulci, who ventures into erotic thriller / sexy melodrama with The Devil’s Honey, and it’s a pretty potent piece of cinema, especially as it pushes the envelope and teeters on the edge of hardcore with its very graphic sex scenes and constant nudity. It’s sexy, to be sure, but it’s also very uncomfortably whacked out with a lead character who is a psycho bitch, and really none of the lead characters are “likable” or relatable in any real sense. The Johnny character is a cruel, self-centered asshole, the doctor is a lecherous creep, and the peripheral characters are weird and creepy, and the only character we can actually care about is the neglected wife, played by Clery, but her role is miniscule. Marsillach gives a brave and fearless physical performance and is subjected to Fulci’s leery camera gaze, which might appeal to a core male demographic, but she’s obviously playing an unhinged, deranged nutcase, so this is a really strange movie to watch and process.
Severin will be reissuing The Devil’s Honey onto a 4K UHD / Blu-ray combo pack that comes with a slick looking slipcover, plus a host of bonus features. The quality of the transfer is stellar and well worth upgrading for if this title is one you’ve collected previously.
Bonus Materials
- Sax, Lies and Videotape – Interview With Actress Blanca Marsillach
- Archival Audio Interview With Director Lucio Fulci By Michele Romagnoli
- The Devil’s Halsey – Interview With Actor Brett Halsey
- Wild Flower – Interview With Actress Corinne Cléry
- Producing Honey – Interview With Producer Vincenzo Salviani
- The Devil’s Sax – Interview With Composer Claudio Natili
- Stephen Thrower, Author Of Beyond Terror: The Films Of Lucio Fulci, On THE DEVIL’S HONEY
- Fulci’s Honey – Audio Essay By Troy Howarth, Author Of Splintered Visions: Lucio Fulci And His Films
- Alternate Opening
- Trailer
