Lucio Fulci was once known as the Godfather of Gore. The maestro behind Zombie, The Beyond, City of the Living Dead— films that drenched Italian cinema in enough blood and entrails to float a gondola. But somewhere along the way, maybe after too many exploding heads and maggot storms, Fulci had a crisis of faith. The solution? Chuck the guts, dial up the sleaze, and direct The Devil’s Honey, a softcore psychodrama that feels like it was written by a horny teenager with a head injury.
This movie is like finding out your favorite metal band ditched guitars for a keytar and started writing love songs about their therapist. There’s still blood, sure, but it’s drowned in saxophones, sweaty close-ups, and some of the most baffling erotic logic ever put to screen. It’s like Fulci fell down a staircase into an Emmanuelle film and decided, “Ah, screw it. Roll camera.”
Let’s begin.
Plot? Sort of. Logic? Abandoned.
The Devil’s Honey is about a psychotic saxophonist named Johnny (played by Stefano Madia), who loves three things: his saxophone, his motorcycle, and shoving his girlfriend’s fingers down his pants in public. He’s the kind of guy who wears leather jackets indoors, smirks during funerals, and probably thinks deodorant is for the weak.
His girlfriend, Jessica (played by Blanca Marsillach), is a wide-eyed masochist in a perpetual state of sexual hypnosis. Her job, personality, and basic decision-making skills are all secondary to her role as Johnny’s submissive fantasy sponge. This woman will drop to her knees in a phone booth, get naked on command, or orgasm to the sound of Johnny’s sax solos like Pavlov’s dog in lingerie.
Johnny dies early on — thank God — in a motorcycle accident that Fulci shoots like a perfume commercial gone wrong. Enter Dr. Wendell Simpson (Brett Halsey), a middle-aged surgeon who couldn’t be more bored with life if he were already dead. He’s got a bad marriage, a worse attitude, and soon finds himself kidnapped by Jessica, who blames him for botching Johnny’s surgery.
Wait, what?
Yes. That’s the plot. Girl loses perverted sax boyfriend, kidnaps the surgeon who tried to save him, ties him up, and performs psychological (and sexual) terrorism on him for the rest of the movie. And Fulci, bless his Italian heart, directs it all with the same seriousness he once reserved for zombies ripping out throats.
It’s Erotic…ish?
Look, The Devil’s Honey thinks it’s erotic. It wants to be erotic. But watching it is like being stuck on a Greyhound bus next to a couple making out loudly, then arguing, then making out again, while you desperately try not to vomit.
There’s a scene early on where Jessica gives Johnny a handjob during a saxophone recording session — and he moans like a wounded walrus while still hitting every note. This is followed by a dinner date where he shoves her face into his lap at the table while they’re surrounded by candlelight and spaghetti. It’s like 9 1/2 Weeks if it were written by a guy who’s only ever had sex in the back of a Fiat.
Later, Jessica pours candle wax on the tied-up doctor while ranting about Johnny’s love, intercut with flashbacks of Johnny fingerbanging her in public parks and treating her like his private concubine with a mullet. It’s hard to tell what Fulci’s aiming for — art-house erotica or deranged trauma therapy — but he hits neither. Instead, it lands somewhere between Red Shoe Diaries and a fever dream about an ex who definitely burned your clothes once.
Fulci, What Happened?
This isn’t just a bad movie. It’s a weirdly personal one — like Fulci was working through some real issues. Gone are the undead priests, bleeding eyes, or tarantula attacks. Instead, we get a psychological power play involving a woman with no sense of boundaries and a man who seems mildly annoyed to be kidnapped.
What Fulci does keep is his love for awkward close-ups. And I mean awkward. We get intimate, uncomfortable shots of faces, feet, armpits, and lots of saxophone-playing mouth action. Every flashback is slathered in soft-focus and synth music like it’s a soap opera’s drug-induced dream sequence.
And let’s not forget the saxophone. My God, the saxophone. It moans, squeals, whines — and never stops. Fulci uses it like a Greek chorus. Every time something sexual, violent, or vaguely dramatic happens, here comes the sax, honking like a goose in heat.
The Acting (or Lack Thereof)
Brett Halsey walks through this movie like a man who made a terrible bet. He’s tied to a bed, emotionally manipulated, and forced to react to a woman who seems to think grief is best expressed with nipple clamps. You can see the regret in his eyes. This is a man who once worked with Antonioni. Now he’s being licked by a woman who just sobbed over her dead sex-goblin boyfriend’s photo.
Blanca Marsillach gives it her all, bless her. She commits to every deranged monologue and breathy seduction like she’s gunning for an Oscar no one will ever give out. But the material betrays her at every turn. One minute she’s mourning Johnny, the next she’s dry-humping the doctor’s thigh while flashing back to anal foreplay on a motorcycle.
It’s less “character arc” and more “emotional whiplash.”
The Ending: Stockholm Syndrome and Sax Solos
Without spoiling too much — not that it matters — the movie ends in a swirl of pseudo-redemption, implied healing, and a final saxophone number that feels like it’s meant to evoke catharsis, but just sounds like a goose being strangled outside a strip club.
The message, if you can call it that, seems to be: “Love hurts, sex is control, and if your boyfriend plays saxophone, run.” It’s a Freudian tangle of emotional manipulation, erotic punishment, and completely baffling narrative turns that lead nowhere but deeper into the void.
Final Thoughts: A Cinematic Midlife Crisis
The Devil’s Honey is what happens when a horror director takes a long look in the mirror and says, “What if I stopped decapitating people and started decapitating emotional stability instead?”
It’s not scary, not sexy, and barely coherent. It’s Fulci in the wilderness — horny, bitter, and armed with a saxophone soundtrack that could wake the dead (and annoy them). As a curiosity, it has its place. As a film? It’s a disaster.
But if you want to see Fulci’s brain unravel while a woman snorts bathwater off a broken heart, well… this might be your thing.
1.5 out of 5 saxophones.
Half a star for Blanca Marsillach’s commitment. One full star for sheer, greasy audacity.
