A Lizard In A Woman's Skin (Remastered)

Italy - France - Spain | 1971 Directed by Lucio Fulci Starring Florinda Bolkan Stanley Baker Anita Strindberg Color | 103 Min.| Not Rated Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC) Shriek Show

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8     8   10 = Highest Rating   Guest Review by Rod Barnett

Adhering to a public statement made in the wake of disappointment with their first release of this film on Region 1 DVD, Media Blasters/Shriek Show have reissued it in a more fan-pleasing cut. The original release had a beautiful print of the censored American version with the uncut Italian version presented full-frame, culled from a videotape source. You could have heard the howls of outrage through your computer screen. I have to admit I was one of those disappointed by this and it did keep me from buying the DVD, but now that they've gone to the trouble of putting together the longest cut of the film possible I'm happy to say it's well worth the money. The two-disc set released in 2005 is reviewed here; I'll refer you there for a (spoiler-free) plot rundown.     A Lizard In A Woman's Skin is one of director Lucio Fulci's handful of non-supernatural thrillers and is in my opinion one of the best of its type. Most would term it a giallo but I'm not sure it fits the mold — it certainly doesn't line up easily with genre conventions. Made early in the cycle it doesn't sport any of the stereotypical elements so repeated in the decade to follow. There is no black-gloved killer and a surprisingly small number of murders. But don't let those surface inconsistencies keep you from seeing the film. This sucker cooks with so much visual style and wit as to make some later entries in the genre pale into transparency. Made at a time when Fulci was at the peak of his creative powers, he seems to have wanted to craft his own mystery story using the German-produced Edgar Wallace krimi films as his template. As with that long-running series we have a London murder, plenty of suspects, other dark crimes lurking around the edges and ace Scotland Yard detectives trying to unravel the mess. There's even some light comic relief from the cops that made me think of the Eddie Arent character in so many of the krimis. As with those films the police are shown as highly competent, serious-minded pros struggling to track down a wily criminal. This was not always the tack of most gialli, with their amateur Hitchcockian heroes trying to do what the cops can't manage. Although there is a bit of that here (Florinda Bolkan's character trying to track down the two hippies she's seen in a dream) it's mostly the police doing the work. And just like the krimis they do eventually unravel the knot and apprehend their criminal — here in a fantastic graveyard scene with dialog that reminded me a bit of the psychologist's speech at the end of Psycho.     But even as Fulci obviously looked to Germany's Wallace adaptations for inspiration he was definitely looking elsewhere for the style he employed. The first half hour of Lizard is a delirious, almost psychedelic mix of handheld camera shots, jump-cuts, jagged editing and very unconventional sound design that keep the viewer off balance and wondering in what direction the story is going to lurch. This has the effect of making the audience a bit on edge, eyes darting around to the corners of the frame to try to anticipate the next move. That's right! Years before NYPD Blue made shaky-cam the standard of 'realism' in television filming techniques, others used it to give a more logical impression — i.e., the feeling of being disoriented. Using his edits and camera placement for maximum effect Fulci shows he's not using this wild style just to dazzle but to advance the story. In a simple leapfrogging fashion he takes information just presented and jumps to the next scene with it leading the charge. He sometimes has the dialog overlap from one scene to the next to push things forward. It makes for exciting, compulsively watchable stuff even if I began to fear at a certain point he might be rushing things along to keep us from being able to closely examine the mystery. Luckily this is not the case as the final resolution does stand up to close scrutiny.     The film begins with a bizarre Morricone scored credit sequence with white titles over a red-on-black image that remains oddly out of focus. Clearly Fulci is warning us about things to come. He starts the film proper with a nightmare sequence that in hindsight shows us all we need to know about Carol Hammond (Florinda Bolkan)'s mindset. Terrified, she stumbles through a moving passenger train car (classic film sexual symbolism) while trying to gain entry to several compartments. But the elderly, 'respectable' occupants ignore her chatting among themselves (standard outsider/alienated symbol). Clutching her long fur coat (symbol of wealthy upper class) about her she rushes down the corridor (birth canal/rebirth?) which changes and suddenly she's surrounded by an orgy of naked men and women joyously embracing. Then she's falling through a black nothingness to land on the bright red bed of Julia (Anita Strindberg), who laughs as the two women begin making love to each other. Now if that ain't repressed homosexual attraction I just don't know what else to call it. And you can say all you want about the director simply enjoying the sight of two hot women groping each other. It all still fits perfectly with the carefully laid out resolution an hour and a half later. Not to mention that the ingenious dream imagery that he conjures up that at first appears pointless (the huge flying bird for example) which snap into focus as wish fulfillment later on.     Fulci's stylistic approach culminates in a number of whacked out brilliant cinema moments that are a must see for fans of strange film. The most striking is the nightmare murder of Julia in which Carol sees herself stab the nearly naked woman to death while zombie-like hippies watch from above. Starting out as a repeat of the train car dream it advances through images of the corpses of her family arranged around a dinner table, the shadow a huge bird flying over the courtyard of her flat's building and violent shots of blood drenched gore. And that's before the murder! It's an amazing, graceful bit of colorful madness that has the desired effect of placing us in the same bemused mindset of the various suspects. How could she have dreamed of things that she couldn't have seen? And then how could the hippies from her dream be real? Great stuff!     As stated before the cut of Lizard In A Woman's Skin presented here is uncut but pulled from several different sources. This becomes evident when some sequences showing a bit of print damage and a little grain pop up. Also, certain of these scenes are unique to the Italian version and therefore were never dubbed into English. These parts are presented in Italian with yellow subtitles making it obvious what AIP thought was unnecessary. This is a minor complaint for me since I'd rather see the whole thing than a shortened pristine edit. That said, there is at least one scene included in this cut that in hindsight might have been best left on the cutting room floor. (I find it strange to be agreeing with AIP's notorious chopping crew for once.) The first non-English sequence takes place after the murder but before Carol's husband has been allowed to view the flat where the crime occurred. We're told that Carol has been frantically running around trying to find her fur coat and then later the family dinner is interrupted by a phone call from a gossipy friend. This sequence is the very definition of extraneous giving us nothing we don't get better in the following few minutes of the movie. Still, in the end I'm glad to have it even if the other additions are better integrated and much more satisfying.

This re-release is a single disc affair and Shriek Show has done a commendable job. The film is in anamorphic widescreen and except for the already mentioned sections of lesser sharpness it's a very pleasing presentation. They've ported over their 5.1 remix of the English soundtrack along with the original English and Italian Mono as well. The Italian track is subtitled showing the many minor differences in dialog between the two versions. The extras are pretty praiseworthy also with a great 30-minute interview with Fulci expert Professor Paolo Albiero. He discusses the director's career and Lizard in particular in an engaging manner with a number of insights I found fascinating. This is a fine, scholarly but never dull talk and is one of the best DVD extras of the year so far. This is followed by a short history of the film's censorship from Prof. Albiero and a chance to see the original Italian title sequence. The final extra is a reel of Fulci trailers. Of course, the sad thing to note is the exclusion of the fantastic documentary Shedding the Skin from the first release. A very well-produced love letter to Lizard, it has interviews with surviving cast and crew members and visits to the film's shooting locations. Not incorporating it into this package is a mistake that can only be seen as a crass attempt to boost sales of the first set. 3/18/07

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