A Lizard in Woman's Skin

A Lizard In Woman's Skin

"They stabbed her three times... each one of the stabs fatal!"

Carol Hammond (Florina Bolkan) is a respectable wife and stepmother... who just happens to have frequent lesbian sex dreams about her nymphomaniac hippie neighbor, Julia (Anita Strinberg). One night, however, Carol dreams of stabbing Julia to death and later discovers that Julia was indeed murdered that very night, exactly like in the dream. Does Carol have a psychic link to the killer? Or is she schizophrenic? Is her cheating husband Frank (Jean Sorel) framing her for the murder? And are the two glassy-eyed hippies who witnessed the murder real or just part of the dream? With her senses betraying her, Carol must decide what's real and what's in her mind, before it's too late!

Lucio Fulci is best known for his visceral gore films, but his handful of gialli are some of his best work. This one is a fun, sleazy, acid-soaked psychedelic trip featuring naked orgies, lots of blood, and some fantastic surreal dream sequences. The use of forensic science in the investigation was probably inspired by Dario Argento's The Bird With the Crystal Plumage and the bat attack, when Carol hides out in a church attic, is an obvious shot-for-shot homage to Hitchcock's The Birds.

• Here's another great score by Ennio Moricone, in turns funky, wild, and haunting.
• The five animal deaths include one bat in the church attic scene and four dogs in the hospital.
• If you suffer from vertigo, be warned that there are a ton of camera zooms in this movie. You'll find a few in just about any giallo, but Fulci was never known for restraint.
• Let's hear it for giallo mainstay George Rigaud, who appears here as Dr. Kerr, Carol's psychiatrist.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

More about that dog scene: Running from an attacker in a hospital, Carol stumbles upon a room where four live dogs are strung up with their bellies slit open (we can see their beating hearts), and their blood is being drained through tubes. There's no indication what scientific benefit this serves, but it's still a very upsetting sight. In fact, Fulci was nearly charged with animal cruelty for that scene, until members of his crew testified that the dogs were all puppets and that no animals were harmed. This scene is omitted in some versions of the movie.

The dream sequences are absolutely crazy in this film. Naked limbs writhing around, a dinner party of bleeding corpses, and angry swans attacking from the clouds. Many of these images relate to artwork in the Hammond home... which is sort of ingenious in a Kaiser Soze way, if you're aware of the twist ending.

Fashion Moment

Miss Carol is working it in her wardrobe from the Carmen Sandiego collection. Check out those monochromatic wide-brimmed hats and cape coats in three different colors.

Puzzle

Puzzle

"This is Whiskey... and he's my best friend."

Eight months ago, Ted Walden (Luc Merenda) awoke from a car crash in London with amnesia and has been trying desperately to remember anything from his past. When Phillip (Manfred Freyberger) introduces himself as an old friend, Ted is hopeful – until Philip threatens him with a gun, starts making demands, and is taken down by a sniper. Seeking answers, Ted follows a lead to Portafino, Italy to find his wife, Sara (Senta Berger), who has understandably begun to move on with her life, believing that Ted abandoned her. They begin again, but red-headed thug George (Bruno Corazzari) emerges in Portafino and threatens to kill them both in seven days if they don't hand over the million dollars in merchandise that Ted stole when he double-crossed the gang. Now the pressure is on for Ted to remember his past, to save Sara's life and his own.

If you're going to brazenly call your movie Puzzle (not to be confused with Body Puzzle), it had better be a fantastic, engaging mystery story. Judging by the empty check boxes above, you may be tempted to think this is a weak film but, in fact, this movie totally delivers. It's pretty much a giallo version of The Bourne Identity, (or, rather, The Bourne Identity is a spy movie version of Puzzle) where we must piece the crime story together alongside the amnesiac hero. There's also an element of Regarding Henry, as Ted's amnesia reboots his strained relationship with his wife. There's no "giallo killer" in Puzzle, but the mystery is in slowly discovering Ted's identity and the details of the crime – who knows what, who was involved, and what it is they want.  Puzzle is engaging and surprising from the beginning to the gruesome end.

• George threatens Sara by throwing lit matches at her and says he "saw it in a film once."  He's referring to Charade, a movie where Audrey Hepburn must piece together the details of her dead secret agent husband's final mission.
• The amnesia angle comes from Hitchcock's Spellbound and I'm surprised that more gialli didn't make use of it as a plot device. 
• The fancy gold mantle clock is established as an important clue, but I have no idea what it has to do with anything in the story. 
• Ted is a nice, easy-going guy who slowly discovers that he has a brutal, calculating dark side. This, I think, makes him one of the most three-dimensional characters in the entire genre.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

Luca, the bratty 12-year-old neighbor kid with the Pete Rose haircut, isn't related to anyone but just insinuates himself into every situation. For example, why was he at lunch at a fancy restaurant with the grown-ups?

About 12 minutes into the movie,  we see Sara cleaning up after dinner... washing plates... throwing away leftovers... putting the chiansaw back in the pantry... wait, what?! Why does she have a chainsaw just sitting out on her dining room table? And why does she store it in the kitchen pantry? It makes no sense, but you just know there's going to be a great payoff at the end of the movie.

Amnesiac Ted really needs to stop greeting people with "Who the hell are you?"

Fashion Moment:

Englishman Ted may have moved to Italy, but he's not giving up those impeccable Saville Row suits and preppy-casual sweater vests.

Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

"What did Irina tell you? That she shares her bed with a crazy alcoholic murderer?"

Irina Rouvigny (Anita Strinberg) has a rough life. Her unloving husband Olivero (Luigi Pistilli) is a failed writer with an Oedipal complex who drinks too much, sleeps around, and parties every night with the hippies from the local campgrounds. She lives in a crumbling mansion and even the cat, Satan, seems to have it in for her. When Olivero's young mistress and then the maid turn up dead, Irina suspects her husband, but still helps him cover up the crimes, hiding bodies in the cellar. Things get more complicated when Olivero's hot-blooded niece, Floriana (Edwige Fenech) shows up for an extended visit. Floriana proceeds to seduce Irina and her own uncle (plus a young motorcycle racer), taking both sides and plotting with each to kill the other. But who is playing who in this game of cat and mouse?

The story is based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat," (though very loosely) and he even gets a screenwriting credit.  Anita Strinberg gets all my respect for heavily downplaying her beauty for this role. For most of the movie she looks like a strung-out Ann-Margaret. Also, let's address the dozens of flash-cuts of the cat's eyes (or "eye" after Irina gouges one out).  

• Edwige Fenech made this movie the same year as The Case of the Bloody Iris and her range between the two movies is amazing. Here, she's a young, self-assured schemer in complete control of everything while in Iris, she plays a shy, nervous, more mature woman lost in victimhood.
• In the film, Olivero shuts himself in his study writing and Irina later sees that he has been typing the same psychotic phrase over and over for page after page: "Kill her and hide her in the cellar wall." Sound familiar? Note that this movie came out five years before Stephen King published The Shining and eight years before Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation.
• As one YouTube commenter writes, one could easily turn the flash-cuts of the cat's eyes into a drinking game. You'd be drunk before you know it.
• The title has nothing to do with this film, but it does come from an earlier Martino-Fenech collaboration. The phrase "Your vice is a locked room and only I have the key" appears in a note from the killer in The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (a.k.a. Blade of the Ripper).

What the Hell Am I Watching?
The craziest scene in the movie is right at the beginning. Drunk, angry Olivero gets his party guests to dump their drinks into a bowl and humiliates his wife by forcing her to drink it.  Then he sexually harasses the maid as the party guests sing a creepy, taunting song and one young woman strips naked and dances on the table. This scene effectively sets up the creepy atmosphere of the film.

Fashion Moment
There's not much glamor to report here, since the characters are a bunch of downward-spiraling depressives.  All the women try on Olivero's mother's 18th Century costume at some point and that's the nicest article of clothing in the film.