Surprisingly, Manhattan Baby is not a ripoff of Rosemary's Baby. Even though Fulci demonstrated his fanboyishness for Rosemary by having a character actually be called "Mary Woodhouse" in City of the Living Dead, he resists lifting wholesale from the Polanski classic. Well, except for a character named Adrian Marcato, like the father of the Satanist from Rosemary. No, Manhattan Baby is simply a good ol' Exorcist ripoff. There's an archaeologist dad in Egypt who excavates a temple dedicated to Alzubador, an obscure god of evil. Slowly, his children seem to fall into the clutches of an evil power, with his daughter ending up like Regan and his son like Damien. In fact, I think they visit the park from The Omen where Patrick Troughton dies. All of this is told slowly, but tastefully. And then, there is a great ending.
Manhattan Baby's charm lies in its trivia. Fulci takes an Argento-like turn with this one, playing with space and cities. He fills the movie with groovy color, and all throughout, there are weird tangents that create a dreamy atmosphere that makes the audience question the reality of the film, much in the same way the characters do. The kids in this one are significantly less annoying than Bob from House by the Cemetery, even though Tommy, the archaeologist's son, is played by the kid who played Bob. Their odd, inexperienced performances suppress the realism, and the Godzilla vs. King Kong-level dubs add to this. It is a fantasy movie presented at least semi-soberly. I can dig that.
I get the impression this movie isn't edited in order. There's a scene that threw me the first time I watched this--the family mom is a reporter for TIME-LIFE, and she asks her irritating prankster friend to come over to their apartment to try to open a locked door for her. He succeeds but is consumed by blue light. When the mom goes to the room, the floor is covered with sand. That character is basically never mentioned again. But I noticed on my second watch, I saw that ten minutes later, we cut to the foot of the Sphinx, and the friend is dead at its feet of exposure. That is the last time we see him. Why did Fulci wait that long to add him back in? I honestly forgot that he disappeared, because more vignettes got in the way.
Similarly, when they introduce Marcato, the father asks, "Are you Mr. Marcato?" Marcato looks up and says, "You didn't come here to discuss names." Then, it cuts to something else. That's basically the entirety of their conversation. It returns to the scene quickly, but at the same time, there wasn't any reason to abandon the scene to begin with.
The only real big-leaguers I've seen of Fulci's are Zombi 2 and House by the Cemetery. I have not seen The Beyond or City of the Living Dead, but in my mind the two movies I have seen do still grant some good insight into his work. And I like it when the man goes crazy--he's good at putting on a show. The ending of this has a showman's touch, and that includes a little comedy. (Someone dies and there's kind of a "wah-wah-wahhhhh" sax cue. I don't know if that was intentional or not.) I'm not going to reveal the ending. It is available on YouTube. I really do recommend the entire movie, though. It can be hard on people unaccustomed to '80s Eurotrash, but honestly, to me, it's more entertaining than The Exorcist (I think most Exorcist ripoffs are better than The Exorcist).
I think it'd be best to watch a better known Fulci movie before going for this one. This was my first experience with the Godfather of Gore, and it was good, albeit perplexing. It was enough, though, to worm into my head, and ever since, it's been a match made in Heaven.
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