Lucio Fulci was born in Trastavere, Rome on 17 June 1927. His mother Lucia was from a very poor but reputable Sicilian, politically anti-fascist family, from Messina, Sicily. She had earlier eloped to Rome with a lover who later left her to raise their child (Lucio) alone. Lucio was raised by his mother and a female housekeeper. He attended the Naval College in Venice, and near the end of WW2, completed his studies back in Rome at the Giulio Cesare State Classical School. He was interested in art, music, film, soccer and always had a love for sailing.

In the last decade of his life, Fulci suffered from emotional and physical health problems, reflected by a marked decline in the quality of his work. Fulci also continued to suffer during the late 1980s from recurring problems with diabetes and his liver. He hid the severity of his illness from his friends and associates, so that he would not be deemed unemployable. His wife’s suicide in 1969 had always weighed heavily on him (his wife Marina had killed herself with a gas oven after learning she had inoperable cancer). People who knew Fulci well spoke of a third daughter he once had who he said was killed in a car accident in the 1970s, but this story was never confirmed, and the daughter’s name (if in fact she existed) was never revealed by any of his biographers. Fulci biographer Stephen Thrower wrote “….the suicide of his wife in 1969 was followed not long after by the death of a daughter in a road accident.” Dario Argento is quoted in one book as saying of Fulci “His life was terrible. His wife committed suicide, and his daughter was paralyzed because of an accident.”

In 1979, he achieved his international breakthrough with Zombi 2, a violent zombie film that was marketed in European territories as a sequel to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead/ Zombi (1978).

A series was developed titled I maestri del thriller was developed with the aim of television and home video markets, which was originally going to be a set of ten films but only eight were made. Fulci was invited by cinematographer Silvano Tessicini in the series as the director had just moved from Rome to Castelnuovo di Porto and was experiencing health problems after returning from the production of Zombi 3. Tessicini lived in the nearby Morlupo and on visiting him stated that Fulci “was not well, and had a huge belly”, a consequence of the liver disease that effected Fulci during the filming of Zombi 3. Fulci was initially hired on the film as a supervisor but submitted the idea to director his own film, Touch of Death. When one of the directors walked away from the series, Fulci was invited to begin filming Sodoma’s Ghost. It was filmed under the title Ghost Light and began shooting on May 30, 1988 with filming taking four weeks. Mario Bianchi was recruited by production supervisor Silvano Zignani to film some second unit scenes. According to Bianchi, “Fulci didn’t leave the set he finished the film” while also stating “I wouldn’t say I shot half the film, but almost” while Michele De Angelis stated that Bianchi was only on set for a couple of days. Three days after filming Sodoma’s Ghost, Fulci began work on Touch of Death which began filming on June 22, 1988. Another film in the series was Hansel e Gretel, which was originally set for Giovanni Simonelli to direct but after three weeks of filming only about 50 minutes of the film had been completed and large parts of the story were not filmed. Several weeks later Fulci was asked to supervise an additional week’s shooting. According to the assistant director of the film Michele de Angelis,”Lucio shot everything. Simonelli stayed by his side, just watching….” Along with Fulci, Andrea Bianchi was reportedly recruited to work on the film as well. Fulci was credited in another film in the series: as a supervisor in the film Bloody Psycho by Leandro Lucchetti. Fulci did not discuss the film with the director and did not show up at the set of the film. Fulci would later use the gory footage of the titles in the series use in his film A Cat in the Brain. Fulci added new scenes where he played himself, a horror director who visits a psychiatrist who he doesn’t realize is a serial killer. The films in the I maestri del thriller series were later released on VHS and DVD as Lucio Fulci presenta by the Forumla Home Video label.

Fulci and Argento met in 1994 at the Rome Fanta Festival and surprisingly agreed to collaborate on a horror film called The Wax Mask, a loose remake of the 1953 Vincent Price horror classic House of Wax. Argento claimed he had heard about Fulci’s miserable circumstances at the time and wanted to offer him a chance at a comeback. It is said that Argento was shocked at how thin and sickly Fulci appeared at their 1994 meeting, and said he felt very sorry for him.

Lucio Fulci died alone, in his sleep, in his apartment in Rome at around 2pm on 13 March 1996, from diabetes-related complications at the age of 68. Toward the end of his life, Fulci had lost his house and was forced to move into a cramped apartment. Since Fulci had been so despondent in his later years, some believed that he may have intentionally allowed himself to die by not taking his diabetes medication, but this is controversial. Dario Argento paid for Fulci’s funeral arrangements.

Fulci’s films had remained generally ignored or dismissed for many years by the mainstream critics, who regarded his work as exploitation. However, genre fans appreciated his films as being stylish exercises in extreme gore. At least one of his films, The Beyond, has “amassed a large and dedicated following”. In 1998, The Beyond was re-released to theaters by Quentin Tarantino, who has often cited the film, and Fulci himself, as a major source of inspiration. Fulci’s earlier, lesser-known giallo Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972) received some critical acclaim as well. Fulci regarded two of his films, Don’t Torture a Duckling and Beatrice Cenci, as his best all-around work, and considered both Zombi 2 and The Beyond as the two films that forever catapulted him to cult film stardom. His daughter Camilla served as an assistant director on his last five films (from 1989-1991) and has gone on to become an assistant director in the Italian film industry.

Fulci would also develop films for television as part of the series Le case maledette set up by producer Luciano Martino. The films were shot outside Rome with a schedule of four weeks each, with The House of Clocks filmed between January 31 and February 25, 1989. Immediately after finishing work on the film, Fulci started work on The Sweet House of Horrors which finished filming in March. The series was not shown in Italy and was released on VHS in 2000 and later shown on Italian satellite TV in 2006.