Although he worked in a wide array of genres through a career spanning nearly five decades, including comedies and spaghetti Westerns, he garnered an international cult following for his giallo and horror films.

His most notable films include the Gates of Hell trilogy — City of the Living Dead (1980), The Beyond (1981), and The House by the Cemetery (1981)—as well as Massacre Time (1966), One on Top of the Other (1969), Beatrice Cenci (1969), A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971), Don't Torture a Duckling (1972), White Fang (1973), Four of the Apocalypse (1975), Sette note in nero (1977), Zombi 2 (1979), Contraband (1980), The New York Ripper (1982), Murder Rock (1984), and A Cat in the Brain (1990).

[1] Owing to his brand of expressive visuals and unconventional storytelling, Lucio Fulci has been called "The Poet of the Macabre"[2][3] by genre critics and scholars, originally a reference to Edgar Allan Poe, whose work he freely adapted in The Black Cat (1981).

[4] The high level of graphic violence in many of his films, especially Zombi 2, The Beyond, Contraband and The New York Ripper, has also earned him the nickname "The Godfather of Gore",[5] which he shares with Herschell Gordon Lewis.

He attended the Naval College in Venice, and near the end of World War II, completed his studies back in Rome at the Giulio Cesare State Classical School.

The famed Italian director Steno took Fulci under his wing and allowed him to assist in the making of a number of comedies starring Totò.

[14] Fulci moved into directing giallo thrillers with Una sull'altra (1969), A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971) and Sette note in nero (The Psychic, 1977), as well as Spaghetti Westerns such as Four of the Apocalypse (1975) and Silver Saddle (1978), all of which were commercially successful and controversial in their depictions of graphic violence.

Some of the special effects in A Lizard in a Woman's Skin involving mutilated dogs in a vivisection room were so realistic that Fulci was charged with animal cruelty; the charges were dropped when he produced the artificial canine puppets that were utilized in the film (created by special effects maestro Carlo Rambaldi).

[8][9][10] His first film to gain significant notoriety in his native country, Don't Torture a Duckling (1972), combined scathing social commentary with the director's trademark graphic violence.

Others were released unrated in order to avoid an X rating (as with Zombi 2 and House by the Cemetery) which would have restricted the films' target audiences to adults.

Many of Fulci's horror films tend to contain "injury to the eye" sequences, in which a character's eyeball is either pierced or pulled out of its socket, usually in lingering, close-up detail.

[18] Claudio Fragasso stated that Fulci simplified his screenplay and shot a seventy-minute film which shocked producer Franco Gaudenzi.

He was already very ill, and I met him to talk to him about the project"[22] While Fulci's health did get better, Martucci stated that "at that time he couldn't even speak, devoured as he was by cirrhosis.

[21] Fulci was invited by cinematographer Silvano Tessicini to 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.

[27] The films in the I maestri del thriller series were later released on VHS and DVD as Lucio Fulci presenta by the Formula Home Video label.

[27] Fulci would also develop films for television as part of the series Le case maledette set up by producer Luciano Martino.

[31] 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.

"[36] In a 2023 interview with actors Giovanni Lombardo Radice and Silvia Collatina at the Romford Horror event, the two confirm that one of Fulci's daughters had an accident when she fell off a horse and was injured very badly and became paralyzed.

Walking on crutches with a bandaged foot, he told attendees that he had had no idea his films were so popular outside of his native Italy, as hordes of starstruck gore fans braved blizzard conditions that weekend to meet him.