Movies
Cat in the Brain (limited edition)
“In time, I think Cat in the Brain will become a more beloved entry in Fulci’s filmography and be regarded as his swan-song. Some aspects of the film are questionable, such as the acting and production values, but they satisfyingly convey the film’s ideas at play, whether it was intentional or not.”
“A woman hacked to death by an ax. Her face cleaved in half. Another strangled. Yet another hanged. Someone chopped to bits by a chainsaw. Or drowned in boiling water. A throat torn out by a maddened cat. Burned alive. Buried alive. Tortured. Scalded. Stabbed. Sawn in two. Crucified. Decapitated.” With his opening dialogue, Fulci announces what sort of gruesome acts his audience is about to bear witness to in Cat in the Brain, a film that might appear to be lazily put together at first glance, since more than half of the film’s running time is composed of clips from some of his previous efforts – Touch of Death and Ghosts of Sodom, for example – and a few other equally macabre productions, like Bianchi’s Massacre. But between all the gore and grue that the maestro offers up during his 95 minute exercise in intense and unapologetic violence, he manages to create a thought-provoking story about the problems faced by an aging director that is no longer at the top of his game, the effect of horror films on the human psyche, and the general public’s perception of them.
Fulci is, apparently, a strong believer in the phrase, “If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself,” as he cut out the middle man and stars as himself, an aging horror director whose worked himself into quite a frenzy on his latest shoot. He’s begun having strange hallucinations and, much like Tenebrae’s Peter Neal, is unable to separate reality from art – or, in this case, fact from film. With the current shoot becoming too much for him to bear, he begins seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Egon Schwarz (David L. Thompson), to help him retain his focus and deal with his stress. The good doctor has other plans, of course – this is a Fulci film, after all.
Suspicious of his wife’s faithfulness, Dr. Schwarz begins taking his frustration out on innocent bystanders, most of which connotate sexuality, such as a hooker, and a couple having sex in their car. But the doctor needs a patsy, so he hypnotizes Fulci into thinking he’s the murderer and, really, who better to point the finger at than the famed director? As the deranged M.D. says, “Doesn’t that stupid old theory say that seeing violence on the screen provokes violence?”
Fulci’s frustrations of working within the film industry are on full display in Cat, stemming from the basic idea of becoming type-casted in the genre. Like many horror directors, critics accused Fulci of repeating himself over and over again and being unoriginal, which makes using clips from older films a rather ingenious idea. By integrating past productions into his film-within-the-film, he intentionally plays right into the stereotype by passing off previously shot sequences as something new and presenting other people’s work as his own. And, if there’s one thing that a director is more afraid of than being called a copycat, it’s the fear that their style will become so workman-like that it can be copied by anyone, which is illustrated by the fact that Fulci’s film is taken over by the producer in his absence and the scene is cut into existing footage without anyone questioning it.
The fake-looking nature of the special effects is what really drives the idea of the perception of reality home. While many might scoff at the sight of a cat puppet chowing down on Fulci’s brain – a lenticular cover of which is included in the first 2500 copies of Grindhouse Releasing’s 2-disc set – or the rubbery appearance of every amputated body part, they’re kind of missing the point. Since Fulci’s world is upside down and he can’t differentiate between what’s real and what isn’t, it needs to be fake looking in order for the parallel realities to work alongside the notion of him experiencing murders that he isn’t even present for.
In time, I think Cat in the Brain will become a more beloved entry in Fulci’s filmography and be regarded as his swan-song. Some aspects of the film are questionable, such as the acting and production values, but they satisfyingly convey the film’s ideas at play, whether it was intentional or not.
Special Features
Lucio Fulci at Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors: NYC 1996 (22:07) – For many, many years, I kept seeing bootlegs of this panel at various conventions and was always curious about what exactly was said at Fulci’s first and only U.S. convention appearance – one that has gained a legendary status over the years and has given attendees bragging rights, since the director succumbed to diabetic complications two months later. Fulci looked like he was having a lot of fun in the camcorder footage provided, taking playful jabs at fellow horror icons, such as Wes Craven and Dario Argento, and working the crowd like a seasoned speech-giver. He bravely answers questions about the misogynistic nature of his films, and talks briefly about The Wax Mask, his collaboration with Argento that promised gore beyond our wildest dreams. Unfortunately, Fulci died a week or two before its first scheduled day of production, and I’ll always wonder whether it was him or Daniele Stroppa who wrote the T-800-esque character into the film, which went on to be helmed by Sergio Stivaletti.
Lucio Fulci: Rome, July 27th, 1995 (81:00) – Split into two 40-minute segments, this interview will, no doubt, become the definitive Fulci interview, if only because he really tells it like it is. In the first part, Genre Terrorist, Fulci talks about the actors and actresses he’s worked with – both good and bad – and his thoughts on the Italian film industry, leading to an in-depth discussion about his peers, why he classifies some of their films as thrillers and others as horror, and the fantasy aspect of his more grotesque films. The second part, The Television Years, focuses on the mid-80’s period of his oeuvre, where he spent most of his time working on made-for-TV movies that were, often times, too violent to be shown in their entirety on television. This period is often thought of as the lowest point of his career, so it’s interesting to hear him candidly talk about all the problems he faced and why he chose to make a few small-screen productions.
Brett Halsey: Living La Dolce Vita (45:58) – This fairly lengthy conversation with Brett Halsey is more of a career retrospective, rather than a piece on just his experiences while working with Fulci – a topic that comes up about 21 minutes into the interview. Starting off as a contract player for Universal Studios, he began his career working on films such as Revenge of the Creature (in 3-D!) and Ma and Pa Kettle at Home before traveling across the Atlantic to work on Italian productions with the likes of Mario Bava (Four Times That Night and Roy Colt and Winchester Jack) and, eventually, Fulci. Halsey’s relationship with Fulci became strained after Cat, since all of his scenes were taken from previous Fulci productions and spliced into Cat without him being informed or paid. Aside from that incident, he had almost nothing but admiration for the director and talked about his quirks and on-set habits.
Memories of Lucio Fulci (4:53) – A collection of short interviews with Cat in the Brain stars Jeoffrey Kennedy, Sasha Maria Darwin, and Malisa Longo. The clips – pulled from the excellent Fulci documentary, Paura – show the actors briefly reminiscing about Fulci, whether the impression he left on them be good, bad, or otherwise.
Easter Eggs – On disc one, press left after highlighting the Weekend of Horrors featurette on the extras screen to select the pulsating eyeball and view a short segment of Fulci autographing posters and interacting with fans at his convention appearance. It’s exactly what it sounds like, so there’s not much to it. However, for someone who wishes they were at that convention as much as I do, it’s a nice addition. On disc two, highlight any option (except for Jeoffrey Kennedy’s interview) and press left to select the eyeball and see outtakes from Fulci’s Rome interview sessions.
DVD score: 4.5/5
Here’s what we know about Longlegs so far. It’s coming in July of 2024, it’s directed by Osgood Perkins (The Blackcoat’s Daughter), and it features Maika Monroe (It Follows) as an FBI agent who discovers a personal connection between her and a serial killer who has ties to the occult. We know that the serial killer is going to be played by none other than Nicolas Cage and that the marketing has been nothing short of cryptic excellence up to this point.
At the very least, we can assume NEON’s upcoming film is going to be a dark, horror-fueled hunt for a serial killer. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five disturbing serial killers-versus-law-enforcement stories to get us even more jacked up for Longlegs.
MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003)
This South Korean film directed by Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho (Parasite) is a wild ride. The film features a handful of cops who seem like total goofs investigating a serial killer who brutally murders women who are out and wearing red on rainy evenings. The cops are tired, unorganized, and border on stoner comedy levels of idiocy. The movie at first seems to have a strange level of forgiveness for these characters as they try to pin the murders on a mentally handicapped person at one point, beating him and trying to coerce him into a confession for crimes he didn’t commit. A serious cop from the big city comes down to help with the case and is able to instill order.
But still, the killer evades and provokes not only the police but an entire country as everyone becomes more unstable and paranoid with each grizzly murder and sex crime.
I’ve never seen a film with a stranger tone than Memories of Murder. A movie that deals with such serious issues but has such fallible, seemingly nonserious people at its core. As the film rolls on and more women are murdered, you realize that a lot of these faults come from men who are hopeless and desperate to catch a killer in a country that – much like in another great serial killer story, Citizen X – is doing more harm to their plight than good.
Major spoiler warning: What makes Memories of Murder somehow more haunting is that it’s loosely based on a true story. It is a story where the real-life killer hadn’t been caught at the time of the film’s release. It ends with our main character Detective Park (Song Kang-ho), now a salesman, looking hopelessly at the audience (or judgingly) as the credits roll. Over sixteen years later the killer, Lee Choon Jae, was found using DNA evidence. He was already serving a life sentence for another murder. Choon Jae even admitted to watching the film during his court case saying, “I just watched it as a movie, I had no feeling or emotion towards the movie.”
In the end, Memories of Murder is a must-see for fans of the subgenre. The film juggles an almost slapstick tone with that of a dark murder mystery and yet, in the end, works like a charm.
CURE (1997)
If you watched 2023’s Hypnotic and thought to yourself, “A killer who hypnotizes his victims to get them to do his bidding is a pretty cool idea. I only wish it were a better movie!” Boy, do I have great news for you.
In Cure (spoilers ahead), a detective (Koji Yakusho) and forensic psychologist (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) team up to find a serial killer who’s brutally marking their victims by cutting a large “X” into their throats and chests. Not just a little “X” mind you but a big, gross, flappy one.
At each crime scene, the murderer is there and is coherent and willing to cooperate. They can remember committing the crimes but can’t remember why. Each of these murders is creepy on a cellular level because we watch the killers act out these crimes with zero emotion. They feel different than your average movie murder. Colder….meaner.
What’s going on here is that a man named Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara) is walking around and somehow manipulating people’s minds using the flame of a lighter and a strange conversational cadence to hypnotize them and convince them to murder. The detectives eventually catch him but are unable to understand the scope of what’s happening before it’s too late.
If you thought dealing with a psychopathic murderer was hard, imagine dealing with one who could convince you to go home and murder your wife. Not only is Cure amazingly filmed and edited but it has more horror elements than your average serial killer film.
MANHUNTER (1986)
In the first-ever Hannibal Lecter story brought in front of the cameras, Detective Will Graham (William Petersen) finds his serial killers by stepping into their headspace. This is how he caught Hannibal Lecter (played here by Brian Cox), but not without paying a price. Graham became so obsessed with his cases that he ended up having a mental breakdown.
In Manhunter, Graham not only has to deal with Lecter playing psychological games with him from behind bars but a new serial killer in Francis Dolarhyde (in a legendary performance by Tom Noonan). One who likes to wear pantyhose on his head and murder entire families so that he can feel “seen” and “accepted” in their dead eyes. At one point Lecter even finds a way to gift Graham’s home address to the new killer via personal ads in a newspaper.
Michael Mann (Heat, Thief) directed a film that was far too stylish for its time but that fans and critics both would have loved today in the same way we appreciate movies like Nightcrawler or Drive. From the soundtrack to the visuals to the in-depth psychoanalysis of an insanely disturbed protagonist and the man trying to catch him. We watch Graham completely lose his shit and unravel as he takes us through the psyche of our killer. Which is as fascinating as it is fucked.
Manhunter is a classic case of a serial killer-versus-detective story where each side of the coin is tarnished in their own way when it’s all said and done. As Detective Park put it in Memories of Murder, “What kind of detective sleeps at night?”
INSOMNIA (2002)
Maybe it’s because of the foggy atmosphere. Maybe it’s because it’s the only film in Christopher Nolan’s filmography he didn’t write as well as direct. But for some reason, Insomnia always feels forgotten about whenever we give Nolan his flowers for whatever his latest cinematic achievement is.
Whatever the case, I know it’s no fault of the quality of the film, because Insomnia is a certified serial killer classic that adds several unique layers to the detective/killer dynamic. One way to create an extreme sense of unease with a movie villain is to cast someone you’d never expect in the role, which is exactly what Nolan did by casting the hilarious and sweet Robin Williams as a manipulative child murderer. He capped that off by casting Al Pacino as the embattled detective hunting him down.
This dynamic was fascinating as Williams was creepy and clever in the role. He was subdued in a way that was never boring but believable. On the other side of it, Al Pacino felt as if he’d walked straight off the set of 1995’s Heat and onto this one. A broken and imperfect man trying to stop a far worse one.
Aside from the stellar acting, Insomnia stands out because of its unique setting and plot. Both working against the detective. The investigation is taking place in a part of Alaska where the sun never goes down. This creates a beautiful, nightmare atmosphere where by the end of it, Pacino’s character is like a Freddy Krueger victim in the leadup to their eventual, exhausted death as he runs around town trying to catch a serial killer while dealing with the debilitating effects of insomnia. Meanwhile, he’s under an internal affairs investigation for planting evidence to catch another child killer and accidentally shoots his partner who he just found out is about to testify against him. The kicker here is that the killer knows what happened that fateful day and is using it to blackmail Pacino’s character into letting him get away with his own crimes.
If this is the kind of “what would you do?” intrigue we get with the story from Longlegs? We’ll be in for a treat. Hoo-ah.
FALLEN (1998)
Fallen may not be nearly as obscure as Memories of Murder or Cure. Hell, it boasts an all-star cast of Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, James Gandolfini, and Elias Koteas. But when you bring it up around anyone who has seen it, their ears perk up, and the word “underrated” usually follows. And when it comes to the occult tie-ins that Longlegs will allegedly have? Fallen may be the most appropriate film on this entire list.
In the movie, Detective Hobbs (Washington) catches vicious serial killer Edgar Reese (Koteas) who seems to place some sort of curse on him during Hobbs’ victory lap. After Reese is put to death via electric chair, dead bodies start popping up all over town with his M.O., eventually pointing towards Hobbs as the culprit. After all, Reese is dead. As Hobbs investigates he realizes that a fallen angel named Azazel is possessing human body after human body and using them to commit occult murders. It has its eyes fixated on him, his co-workers, and family members; wrecking their lives or flat-out murdering them one by one until the whole world is damned.
Mixing a demonic entity into a detective/serial killer story is fascinating because it puts our detective in the unsettling position of being the one who is hunted. How the hell do you stop a demon who can inhabit anyone they want with a mere touch?!
Fallen is a great mix of detective story and supernatural horror tale. Not only are we treated to Denzel Washington as the lead in a grim noir (complete with narration) as he uncovers this occult storyline, but we’re left with a pretty great “what would you do?” situation in a movie that isn’t afraid to take the story to some dark places. Especially when it comes to the way the film ends. It’s a great horror thriller in the same vein as Frailty but with a little more detective work mixed in.
Look for Longlegs in theaters on July 12, 2024.
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