Hansel e Gretel (1990)
* (out of 4)
The plot has very little to zero to do with the fairy tale. The story is pretty simple as a couple kids are taking a shortcut when they are kidnapped by a gang of thugs who sell children to a doctor who takes their organs. After the children are murdered their ghosts come back to seek revenge.
That seems like a cool little movie, doesn't it? Sadly, the end result is rather bad and it's really too bad because this could have made for a good movie but it's just another example of the Italian horror market having no budget and not much going for it. Lucio Fulci "presented" this movie as well as four others. I think it's pretty clear that they didn't have too much here so they wanted to use Fulci's name to try and bring people to the film. I'm sure this worked but that doesn't make the movie any better.
Most people will only know this film from one sequence where an eyeball is severely damaged. This scene would make an appearance in Fulci's A CAT IN THE BRAIN. The death scenes are what most people come to these movies for but the budget here was so small that they really couldn't do much. In fact, the majority of the death scenes are incredibly lame including one woman who simply falls into a pool and drowns within seconds. Another woman slips in a bathtub and there's one guy who gets sucked into the ground. Whenever gore is involved it seems like pieces of steak are used as flesh.
The biggest problem here is that there's just no budget to do special effects so we're given a lot of silly dialogue scenes. This thing clocks in at 87 minutes, which is about twenty too long. The cast are mostly forgettable, although Paul Muller appears briefly but even he can't save this turkey.
