A Lizard In A Woman's Skin

Italy - France - Spain / 1971 Directed by Lucio Fulci Starring Florinda Bolkan Stanley Baker Anita Strindberg U.S. VERSION: 95 Min. ITALIAN VERSION: 98 Min. Color / Not Rated Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC / 2-disc set) Shriek Show

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I've never been a fan of the late Italian director Lucio Fulci. I was less than impressed by some of his more well-known horror movies (The Beyond, House By The Cemetery); I'm also unwilling to put the admittedly enjoyable Zombie in the same league as George A. Romero's Living Dead films. Until this writing my favorite Fulci film was the giallo Don't Torture A Duckling (1972); an even earlier murder mystery/thriller, A Lizard In A Woman's Skin, shows conclusively that Fulci benefited from the more confining parameters of the whodunit. After all, a mystery has to make some kind of logical sense (by the end, at least) or the audience will feel cheated. To my mind, many of Fulci's horror films are simply too open-ended, too loosely structured, to have much impact, even when they splash the screen with squishy gore. Grotesque, nightmarish imagery only goes so far... With little or no logical reality to put it in context, where is the threat? Where is the fear? The suspense? The dread? My tastes may be too conventional, but for me, when a filmmaker displays a predilection for 'cool' set-pieces over any kind of even semi-rational/coherent narrative, it's usually just an excuse for a bad, shoddy script. A surreal approach to horror is certainly a valid one, of course, whether I personally care for it or not. But equally valid is this viewer's reaction: I just might've given a shit had any of this made a friggin' lick of sense!     ...Which brings us back to A Lizard In A Woman's Skin, known here in the States in a slightly edited form as Schizoid. It's actually got a plot. There's a murder. There are suspects. And the resolution at film's end wraps up the loose threads. (You certainly won't be left scratching your head at the finale — muttering "What the hell was THAT?" — as with Fulci's City Of The Living Dead.)     The mystery revolves around Carol Hammond (Duckling's Florinda Bolkan), daughter of a rich, prominent and politically-connected London barrister (Leo Genn of The Bloody Judge). Lately Carol — the frigid wife of her father's junior law partner — has been having some rather bizarre sexual dreams about the mysterious woman living in the townhouse apartment next door. The neighbor, former model/actress Julia Durer (Who Saw Her Die?'s Anita Strindberg), has a sordid reputation for associating with hippies and riffraff. Gossip has it that her raucous late night parties are drug-fueled, psychedelic sex orgies. (The rumors are correct.) Carol tells her psychotherapist about the dreams, in which she and Julia are lesbian lovers. He theorizes that it's Carol's subconscious way of shedding her sexual repression and inhibitions. She's to write down descriptions of her dreams afterwards so as to unlock their hidden symbolism in further therapy sessions.     On a stormy night while her husband is away, Carol dreams of another erotic encounter in Julia's flat — only this time she stabs her lover to death with a dagger-like letter opener. In the dream she also sees two hippies there, a man and a woman with white, blind-looking eyes, whom she didn't realize were present during the slaying. Reporting this to her therapist, Carol is told that the 'murder' represents a psychic break with her repressed hedonistic desires. But when it's discovered that Julia actually was murdered shortly thereafter, in exactly the way Carol described in her dream, it seems that that break may be with her sanity instead. Carol's letter opener was used as the murder weapon; it and her fur coat were found at the crime scene. It would appear an open-and-shut case of schizophrenic homicide for Scotland Yard... yet hard-nosed Inspector Colvin (Zulu's Stanley Baker) senses otherwise. So does Carol's father, who, desperate to believe his daughter innocent and not insane, pulls a few strings to get her out of police custody on bail. He suspects his son-in-law (Jean Sorel) after learning the man has been cheating on Carol for two years. Is Carol being framed for the killing? Did someone read her notes and then replicate the dream in the commission of the crime? The mystery deepens when Carol, resting at a private clinic, is chased by the male Dream Hippy — with obvious hostile intent, and this time during the day when she's wide awake. Was he real? Or is his sinister reappearance yet another symptom of mental instability?     Lizard In A Woman's Skin is a fine example of the giallo-style thriller, even if (unlike a number of fellow aficionados) I'm not yet willing to place it in the same exalted league as Argento's Deep Red and Tenebre. There's no faceless, black-gloved maniac on the loose here so the body count is absurdly low compared to your 'typical' giallo. The film also takes its sweet time establishing the outline of its central puzzle and where the various characters fit into it. Fortunately that puzzle happens to be a good, engaging mystery. Despite a relatively small pool of suspects, one's guesses as to whodunit will have to be reevaluated with each new twist in the plot. Fulci certainly brings a surfeit of style to the proceedings, employing a host of visual techniques (slo-mo, reverse, rapid zoom, staccato editing, even a brief flirtation with split-screen) to often stunning effect. The trippy, hallucinogenic dream sequences are real highlights, as is the film's main suspense set-piece, when Carol is pursued by a knife-wielding stalker through the crypt-like bowels of a derelict cathedral. These are moments of bravura moviemaking, easily placing Lizard head and shoulders above all the Fulci films I've seen to date. The cast is solid, too, at least in the lead roles, though Fulci's attempt to give his detective a memorable character 'tic' — Colvin is constantly whistling, often at inappropriate times — eventually becomes annoying. Maestro Ennio Morricone's dissonant, nerve-jangling jazz-pop score complements the director's imagery perfectly.     For my own personal tastes the film is perhaps a bit too talky, a bit too leisurely paced, to be placed alongside the very top-drawer gialli. Apart from the dream sequences it doesn't truly kick into high gear until the final half hour. Even so, if you're a giallo fan you'd be remiss not to catch this one. (NOTE: My Movie Rating of '7' applies to both the U.S. and Italian versions; see below).

Shriek Show's February release of Lizard, after a lengthy delay (the title was first announced in 2003), has sparked controversy in the online cult movie fan community. This is because the uncut Italian version of the film is relegated to the status of a 'glorified extra' on Disc Two of the 2-DVD set, its transfer mastered from a substandard videotape cropped to 1.33 fullframe. The main presentation on Disc One — utilizing a generally excellent-looking anamorphic widescreen print — is of the slightly watered down U.S. edit originally distributed by American International Pictures under the title Schizoid. Having now viewed both versions I can state that personally, I really don't have too much of a problem with this.     So what's in the almost three minutes of footage shorn by AIP for U.S. audiences? Some additional nudity from Bolkan and Strindberg, an unimportant telephone conversation between Bolkan's character and a gossipy neighbor, and a few brief moments of gore, including the infamous 'eviscerated dogs' seen at the clinic. While it's a shame that some of the nudity was axed by AIP, I find that the removal of the gore does not affect the consistency or tone of the film whatsoever. The additional stabbing footage should have (in hindsight) been retained, but quite frankly the dog sequence adds absolutely nothing to the narrative. It doesn't have anything to do with the plot or characters and seems to have been included for mere shock value. (Had I been in Fulci's shoes, I would've cut it from the script just to save the cost of building the animatronic dogs.) Still, you can see everything that was trimmed via the Italian version found on Disc Two. It's just not going to look anywhere near as good.     The Schizoid edit on Disc One is visually quite impressive despite being assembled from two different sources (as stated in a disclaimer before the film begins). It's not exactly pristine, and there's some minor grain in evidence, but details are sharp, colors vivid and blacks dark and deep. The 16x9 enhanced transfer is letterboxed at 1.85:1, which is apparently the original aspect ratio — the framing of shots does not appear compromised in any way. A newly created Dolby 5.1 audio track really accentuates ambient sound effects and (especially) Morricone's score, seemingly at the expense of the English-language dialog, which comes off a tad low in the mix. Even so, the distortion-free track is more than satisfactory and certainly a cut above the norm for Euro-Cult titles on Region 1 DVD. (The original mono English track is also selectable.) Naturally, in contrast the fullframe Italian cut — coming as it does from an inferior source — fares comparatively poorly. It's not so terrible as to be unwatchable, though, being more akin to a decent-quality bootleg dupe. Apparently this was the best print of the Italian version that SS could obtain. Aside from the opportunity to see the AIP-excised footage (albeit in the wrong aspect ratio), its chief merit is the mono Italian language track with well-written English subtitles, which allows for comparisons between the scripts.     In addition to the two versions of the feature film, SS has packed the set with an impressive roster of extras. On Disc One you'll find Lizard's original theatrical trailer; two U.S. radio spots for Schizoid (which sells it as a horror movie rather than a mystery/suspense thriller); a trailer reel of six other Fulci-directed films; and a lengthy (5½ min.) promotional video for Death Trance, a Japanese samurai vs. undead ninja epic which Shriek Show's parent company Media Blasters will reportedly release in theaters later this year. Disc Two contains a sizable image gallery — comprised of behind-the-scenes stills, promotional artwork, video covers and some cheesecake nudie shots of Bolkan and Strindberg — plus a terrific documentary on the film. Entitled Shedding the Skin, the 33-minute featurette is hosted/narrated by Penny Brown, who played hippy chick Jenny. Via film clips and recently recorded interview sessions with various cast/crew members, it provides not only an engaging retrospective on Lizard's production and its director, Lucio Fulci (who died in 1996), but also a general overview of the giallo subgenre.     Finally, as an extra treat, SS has included a nice 8-page reproduction of AIP's original Schizoid press kit. 3/08/05

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